[Congressional Record Volume 156, Number 20 (Tuesday, February 9, 2010)]
[Senate]
[Pages S532-S534]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
TRIBUTE TO THE LYNN BROTHERS
Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, lucky is the town that has a good civic
minded newspaper.
Vermont is fortunate to have several, and two reasons for that are
the brothers Emerson and Angelo Lynn. The Lynn brothers have shown how
public spirited newspapering is also good business.
A profile of the Lynn brothers in a recent edition of Vermont's Seven
Days newspaper, written by Ken Picard, opens with this: ``Newspapermen
Emerson and Angelo Lynn learned a long time ago that it's not enough
for a community paper to be good. It's also got to do good. And the one
that achieves both goals can thrive in its niche--even when larger
corporate newspapers are struggling.''
Emerson and Angelo Lynn--with roots in Kansas and newspapering in
their heritage--have made their homes in Vermont since the 1980s, and
it was the chance to publish newspapers that brought them to our State.
Emerson has published the St. Albans Messenger since 1981. Angelo
arrived soon after to purchase and publish the Addison County
Independent.
The Messenger, the Independent and the other publications they own
and manage have flourished under their management. Not only have they
invested significant time and energy into the success of their own
newspapers; they also generously mentor and support other local
publishers.
This is a time of uncertainty and introspection in the Nation's
newspaper businesses. Alternate media streams and a severe economic
recession have driven down earnings and have driven some papers out of
business. New formulas will be tried. But in the meantime, Emerson and
Angelo Lynn have shown that the old formula of civic minded journalism
can still work.
The Lynn brothers have been successful because they care deeply about
where they live, and they invest in their communities in every sense,
including their hearts and souls. They
[[Page S533]]
act out of a sense of responsibility to their readers. Their tone is
civil and constructive. Mr. Picard quotes veteran Vermont journalist
Stephen Kiernan: ``These guys have a real sense of place. They know
when a business is doing well; they know when something is changing;
they know what's in the wind. A sense of place is essential to any
business in Vermont, but it's especially true in the media business.''
These two extraordinary Vermonters continue to give their best, and
their businesses have become keystones in the civic infrastructure of
Franklin and Addison Counties, and beyond.
I ask unanimous consent that a copy of the article from Seven Days,
``Brothers in Ink,'' by Ken Picard, be printed in the Record.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:
[From Seven Days, Jan. 27, 2010]
Brothers in Ink
While others elegize print journalism, Emerson and Angelo Lynn are hot
on the presses
(By Ken Picard)
Newspapermen Emerson and Angelo Lynn learned a long time
ago that it's not enough for a community newspaper to be
good. It's also got to do good. And the one that achieves
both goals can thrive in its niche--even when larger
corporate newspapers are struggling.
Emerson Lynn, editor and publisher of the six-days-a-week
St. Albans Messenger since 1981, knows his paper has
influence in the community. Shortly before Christmas, the
Hannaford supermarket in his town participated in a company-
wide ``Fund-a-Feast'' campaign. Throughout the holidays,
shoppers could buy a $10 box of food to donate to their local
food shelf. The store in Vermont that sold the most boxes
would win $1000 for its food shelf, and the winning store in
the entire 171-supermarket chain would get an additional
$2500.
A week before the contest ended, Emerson approached store
manager Dan LeCours and asked him how many boxes he needed to
win. LeCours said he didn't know, but was sure he didn't have
enough on hand to even come close.
``Emerson said, `You get me that number, and I'll take it
from there,' '' LeCours recalls. ``Coming from Emerson, if he
says it, he means it.''
Knowing that one in eight Vermonters is now on food stamps,
Emerson ran free full-page ads in the Messenger the following
week, asking his readers to rise to the challenge. They did.
``That last weekend we sold $9000 worth of Fund-A-Feast
boxes. None of that would have happened were it not for
Emerson Lynn,'' says LeCours. ``It just goes to show the
power of the press when the person behind it is highly
trusted and highly respected.''
Lately, it's hard to find any good news about print
journalism. In December, the now-defunct-in-print Editor &
Publisher magazine essentially wrote its own obituary when it
reported that more than 40,000 newspaper jobs disappeared in
2009, nearly twice as many as the 21,000 that vanished in
2008. Mainstream newspapers such as the New York Times and
the Boston Globe have continued to echo that death knell.
But you won't find that story anywhere in the pages of a
Lynn publication, or in their bottom lines. Emerson's younger
brother, Angelo, has been editor and publisher of the twice-
weekly Addison County Independent since 1984. According to
Emerson, 2008, the first year of the current recession, was
the Lynns' best year ever. Emerson admits that profits are
down, but only slightly, and neither brother has laid off
staff.
In fact, both the Messenger and the Independent have
employees who've been with them for more than 30 years. In
the Messenger's newsroom, editor Gary Rutkowski and staff
writer Leon Thompson have a half-century of combined
experience between them. Emerson and Angelo insist their
papers wouldn't be where they are today without that level of
institutional memory.
Of course, reaching out to the next generation is crucial,
too. Both the Messenger and Independent routinely devote
space to publishing the work of students in the Young Writers
Project. Once a month, Angelo delivers 200 free copies of the
``Addy Indy,'' as it's often called, to Middlebury Union High
School. Inside each is a copy of the Tigers' Print, the
student newspaper. Emerson does the same thing for Bellows
Free Academy--St. Albans.
This isn't just smart PR for the Lynn newspapers--it's also
a long-term investment in their readerships.
``For our newspapers,'' says Emerson, ``this is our seed
corn.''
It's a fitting metaphor, coming from two Kansas brothers
who moved to Vermont more than 25 years ago to sow the seeds
of community journalism in the Champlain Valley. Since then,
the Lynns have reaped the journalistic equivalent of a bumper
crop. In addition to the Messenger and the Independent, the
brothers now publish the Colchester Sun, Essex Reporter,
Brandon Reporter and Milton Independent. Angelo also puts out
Vermont Ski & Ride Magazine, a winter monthly on the ski
industry, and several telephone books in southern Vermont.
In an age when the public has an overabundance of news
sources to choose from--websites, blogs, social networking
sites, 24/7 cable-news channels--how do Lynn publications
manage not just to survive, but to thrive? Very simple,
Emerson explains. They remain faithful to their core mission:
Give readers in-depth local coverage--school board meetings,
high school sports, property taxes and so on--that they want
and can't find anywhere else.
``When you have a tight-knit community, everybody likes to
know that everybody else is on the same page, and Addison and
Franklin counties are pretty tight-knit communities,'' Angelo
adds. ``What you find now is that, increasingly, the
community newspaper is the glue that binds.''
Stephen Kiernan agrees. A former staff writer at the
Burlington Free Press for 15 years and a longtime Middlebury
resident, he's impressed by how involved Angelo and Emerson
are in their respective communities. This means, for example,
that he sees Emerson out running at a middle-school lacrosse
jamboree attended by hundreds of parents and children. Or he
spots Angelo at a performance of the play Our Town, and the
next day reads his editorial about how the play reflects
Middlebury's diversity.
``These guys have a real sense of place,'' Kiernan says.
``They know when a business is doing well; they know when
something is changing; they know what's in the wind . . . A
sense of place is essential to any business in Vermont, but
it's especially true in the media business.''
Steve Terry, also a longtime Middlebury resident and former
editor of the Rutland Herald, agrees. He says that whenever
big institutions in Addison County want to break a story,
they make sure the Independent gets it first.
``People could read in the Herald or the Free Press that
something happened in Middlebury,'' Terry says, ``but they
just wouldn't believe it or feel it was covered until they
read it in the Independent.''
Tyrone Shaw, director of the journalism program at Johnson
State College, is an aficionado of sorts of small community
newspapers. Shaw says that Lynn newspapers consistently
provide ``aggressive but responsible'' news coverage of
important local issues. He's especially fond of their
editorial and letters sections, which he calls ``meaty and
interesting.''
In large part, that's because Angelo and Emerson typically
write their own editorials. They come from opposite ends of
the political spectrum. Angelo is more left leaning than
Emerson and far more likely to criticize the governor, Jim
Douglas' residence in Middlebury notwithstanding. Emerson, a
regular contributor to the conservative blog Vermont Tiger,
is more likely to attack Bernie Sanders and the actions of
the left-dominated legislature. In the last election,
however, he supported Barack Obama.
Despite some divergent views on elected officials, economic
growth and job creation, the Lynn brothers insist they see
eye to eye on all social issues, such as abortion and
gay rights. Back in July 1997, the Messenger was the first
daily paper in the state to endorse civil unions. It's
that sophisticated understanding of the issues, Shaw says,
that makes the brothers' papers invaluable reading in
their communities.
``I think they were both born with newspaper ink in their
blood,'' he concludes. ``They're old-fashioned newspapermen
in the very best sense.''
That assessment of the Lynn DNA isn't far off. Emerson and
Angelo are fourth-generation newspapermen. Their great-
grandfather, Charles F. Scott, bought the Iola Register, a
small weekly in southwestern Kansas, in 1882. His son, Angelo
Scott, took over the paper and ran it until 1965, when he
turned it over to Emerson and Angelo's father, who's also
named Emerson.
The elder Emerson and his wife, Mickey, met at college in
Australia, but returned to Kansas in 1950. They published
first the Humboldt, Kan., Humboldt Union, then the Bowie News
in Bowie, Tx., where Emerson and Angelo lived for seven
years.
``Every single Wednesday night Dad would load us into the
car and take us down to the paper, and we'd insert the
papers,'' recalls Angelo. It's a job the brothers still do on
occasion in the Messenger's ancient, lime-green press room in
St. Albans.
In 1965, the Lynns' parents returned to their Kansas roots
and took over the Register. They ran it until last year, when
Emerson and Angelo's mother died and their father turned over
the publishing duties to their sister, Susan Lynn. The
siblings have a third brother, Michael, a pastor in Hamden,
Conn. Angelo jokes, ``The four of us are either preaching
from the pulpit or from the editorial pages.''
Perhaps it was inevitable that Emerson and Angelo would
choose the newspaper business. In 1970, when Angelo was 16,
he attended a summer camp at the University of Kansas for
kids interested in journalism. On the third day, he recalls,
antiwar protesters bombed the student union. He happened to
be in the office of the photography instructor, who grabbed a
camera and dashed to the scene.
``Minutes later,'' Angelo remembers, ``we were crouched
behind a police car, the cops with pointed guns surrounding
the student union, and us with our cameras clicking . . . I
was hooked.''
Both Emerson and Angelo eventually graduated from KU's
William Allen White School
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of Journalism. Emerson got married and moved east to work on
Capitol Hill as a speechwriter for then-U.S. Sen. Jim
Pearson, a Kansas Republican--then for his successor, Sen.
Nancy Kassebaum.
But Emerson quickly grew bored with his duties and began
looking around for a newspaper to buy. He considered some in
the Rocky Mountain area, but quickly realized he'd never
afford one. In 1981, a broker approached him with a proposal
to buy a stridently right-wing daily in northwestern Vermont.
The St. Albans Daily Messenger, then owned by publisher
William Loeb, had never made money. Emerson bought the paper
and quickly improved its reputation and financial
performance.
Three years later, Gordon Mills, owner of the Addison
County Independent, approached Emerson and asked him if he
was interested in buying his newspaper, too. Emerson declined
but suggested he contact Angelo, who at the time was running
the Yates Center News, a small, struggling weekly in
southeastern Kansas.
So in August 1984, at age 30, Angelo bought the Vermont
weekly. Four years later, he turned it into a twice-weekly
paper. Today the Addison County Independent has a staff of 21
employees, seven of whom (including Angelo) work in the
newsroom. Angelo insists that his commitment to news coverage
continues to pay off. Though he says he's made only a modest
investment in the paper's website over the years, in 2009 the
Vermont Press Association named it the state's best.
Meanwhile, the Lynns have continued to acquire flailing
newspapers and turned them into money-making ventures. And
they've done so with seemingly boundless energy.
``As Angelo likes to say, we're always the last ones on the
treadmill,'' Emerson says. ``You may be smarter than us, but
you'll never outwork us.''
Indeed. As kids, Emerson and Angelo spent most summers at a
family cabin in Colorado. Each morning they'd wake at the
crack of dawn, load their packs and spend the next 10 to 14
hours hiking to a summit.
That commitment to rigorous outdoor exercise hasn't
flagged. Emerson and Angelo are well past 50--in a rare show
of vanity, Emerson declines to disclose his age, and Angelo
won't betray his brother. But neither looks or acts it. Trim,
hale and handsome, the brothers have chiseled bodies and
resting heart rates that would be the envy of men half their
age.
Both routinely compete in marathons, triathlons, canoe
races and other competitions that demand iron-man stamina.
Angelo skis 40 to 50 days per year. Last year, he competed in
the Canadian Death Race, a three-day endurance course that
traverses a raging river and three mountain summits and
includes 17,000 feet of elevation change.
Never one to be outdone by his younger brother, Emerson
recently took on a 3100-repetition weight-training workout
challenge. He completed it in under one hour and 50 minutes.
``We're excessive,'' Emerson admits unapologetically. ``The
two of us are extraordinarily competitive. But it's never me
against him or him against me. It's ``Let's see what we can
do.' ''
That drive for peak performance is reflected in their
careers. Both are self-described workaholics--Emerson is
still married, Angelo divorced--and are intimately involved
in every detail of their publications, from writing daily
editorials to selling ads to distribution. On a recent visit
to Seven Days, Angelo's station wagon was filled with
newspapers that needed delivering.
``I have never met anyone in daily journalism who has
maintained such a high level of energy day after day after
day,'' notes Chris Graff, the former Associated Press writer
who ran the Montpelier bureau for 26 years. Speaking of
Emerson, he recalls, ``When I was at the AP, his routine was
to arrive at work at 5 a.m. every day--and he wrote an
editorial every day.''
But the Lynns' competitive spirit doesn't come with a
bullying or predatory attitude. The brothers have helped
fellow Vermont publishers, including those at Seven Days, who
benefited from Angelo's free advice when this paper launched.
Angelo was also on hand when a group of journalists and
publishers gathered recently in Grafton to discuss working
cooperatively in the digital age.
M. Dickey Drysdale, editor and publisher of the Herald of
Randolph, calls the Lynn brothers ``the best gift that Kansas
has ever given to Vermont journalism.'' Drysdale, who's been
at the Herald since 1971, says Emerson and Angelo have given
him business advice and suggestions for advertising campaigns
over the years, never expecting anything in return.
``You can sometimes get the idea that press lords are
supercilious and very, very serious,'' Drysdale adds. ``Both
[Emerson and Angelo] seem to approach their jobs with a high
seriousness, but also a cheerful attitude that makes them fun
to deal with and makes their newspapers very approachable.''
The Lynns say they don't view other community newspapers as
competition, even in markets where they compete for ad
revenues. As the state's biggest dailies shrink in size--
lately, the Monday Burlington Free Press has had fewer pages
than the Monday Messenger--neither brother sees any reason to
alter their course.
``I don't think you get stronger because other people get
weaker. You're stronger because of your adherence to your
mission,'' Emerson concludes. ``We're not having to
rediscover that local news is important. We've been doing
that forever. That's our bread and butter.''
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