[Congressional Record Volume 159, Number 123 (Wednesday, September 18, 2013)]
[Senate]
[Pages S6590-S6591]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                       TRIBUTE TO THE LYNN FAMILY

  Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, I would like to bring to the attention of 
the Senate a notable family whose work has made a unique and meaningful 
contribution to the Vermont newspaper community and to our State. The 
Lynn family runs several Vermont newspapers, reporting local news and 
serving general commerce in these communities.
  In 1984, Angelo Lynn bought the Addison County Independent, marking 
the beginning of a family newspaper operation based out of Middlebury, 
VT. Today, Angelo's three daughters have joined a five-generation 
newspaper tradition, each taking on a different Vermont town newspaper. 
With Elsie running the Colchester Sun and the Essex Reporter, Polly 
running the Mountain Times in Killington, and Christy working side by 
side with her father overseeing the advertising sales team of the 
Addison County Independent, the Lynn family reports stories Vermonters 
depend on.
  While some of the biggest newspapers struggle, local papers are 
thriving, and the Lynn family has embraced the opportunity to influence 
the future of the newspaper industry. Focusing on local government, 
events, schools, sports and businesses, the Addison County Independent 
is a vital piece of the community it serves. It is personal and caring, 
and it reflects what matters to the residents of the community.
  I congratulate Angelo Lynn on the success of his family-run newspaper 
operation. Mr. Lynn, his daughters, and his brother Emerson have 
harnessed local newspapers to strengthen our Vermont communities. I 
have included the New York Times article ``Vermont Sisters with Roots 
in News Embrace Small-Town Papers'' that covers each Lynn family 
member's individual story. I ask that the text of this article, dated 
August 15, 2013, be printed in the Record.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

      Vermont Sisters With Roots in News Embrace Small-Town Papers

                        (By Christine Haughney)

       Middlebury, VT.--King Lear's three daughters had their 
     lands and loyalties to fight over. Jane Austen's Dashwood 
     sisters had the prospect of marriage to occupy them, and 
     Anton Chekhov's three sisters had local military officers to 
     brighten their days.
       None of them ever contemplated a future as risky as 
     newspapers.
       For a long time, neither did the Lynn sisters, even though 
     they are a fifth-generation newspaper family. Polly, Christy 
     and Elsie

[[Page S6591]]

     Lynn left behind their father's dusty but cozy newsrooms for 
     college and careers.
       Now they are back. Elsie, 26, moved home in 2010 after she 
     ran out of money while working and traveling through Asia. 
     She manages two of her father's weeklies in the Burlington 
     suburbs of Colchester and Essex.
       Polly, 29, returned in 2011 from Denver, and has thrown 
     herself into running the weekly newspaper in Killington, the 
     popular ski town. Christy, 28, moved back in June after her 
     boyfriend finished graduate school in Vancouver. She helps 
     her father, Angelo, running the business side of Middlebury's 
     paper, The Addison County Independent.
       It is conventional wisdom that newspapers are a fading 
     enterprise. Last month, the Tribune Company bought 19 local 
     television stations even as it sought to sell its portfolio 
     of papers, and twice in August, big-city papers changed 
     hands: The New York Times sold The Boston Globe and other 
     properties for $70 million, after paying $1.1 billion for The 
     Globe 20 years ago, and the Graham family said it would sell 
     The Washington Post after eight decades of ownership.
       But instead of fleeing the newspaper business, the Lynn 
     sisters have embraced it, and not just because it is part of 
     their heritage.
       ``I've grown up in the papers,'' said Elsie Lynn. ``But I 
     don't think that's the reason I'm in it. The future is 
     exciting for me. We have this chance and this opportunity to 
     be pioneers and change our career and change this industry.''
       The papers the Lynn sisters help run have been surprisingly 
     profitable. They have not faced bankruptcy like newspapers of 
     the Tribune Company including The Los Angeles Times and 
     haven't cut coverage like The Times-Picayune of New Orleans. 
     In these parts of Vermont, where Internet connections are 
     less reliable and winter snowstorms can block roads for days, 
     readers often prefer print.
       Mr. Lynn said that he had run his newspapers debt-free for 
     a decade. While his papers aren't making money yet from their 
     digital efforts, his newspaper and phone book businesses 
     generate about $4.5 million in gross revenue.
       ``We can't afford not to make money,'' Mr. Lynn said as he 
     sat in his office here surrounded by photographs of his 
     daughters, the family dogs dozing loudly nearby. ``There's no 
     future losing money in any of these papers.''
       It helps that Mr. Lynn has a long history in the business. 
     His great-grandfather, Charles Scott, bought The Iola 
     Register in Kansas in 1882. Mr. Lynn was raised upstairs from 
     the offices of another nearby Kansas paper called The 
     Humboldt Union. In 1984, Angelo Lynn bought The Addison 
     County Independent in Vermont and started building up his 
     chain of papers. Mr. Lynn's older brother, Emerson, owns two 
     papers with his wife, Suzanne, and Angelo as well as two 
     other Vermont papers.
       Angelo Lynn speaks fondly of the newspaper life. He spends 
     his weekends hiking and skiing with his daughters and 
     weekdays churning out enterprising local journalism.
       ``Once you become part of a community, you see the good 
     that a paper does,'' Mr. Lynn said. ``That's very 
     fulfilling.'' His daughters' newspaper futures were less 
     certain. When Elsie Lynn arrived at the newsroom of The 
     Colchester Sun and The Essex Reporter, she had never studied 
     journalism or held a journalism job. She wasn't convinced she 
     wanted to work with her father and uncle.
       ``I've said, `Man, I don't know, Dad, if this is what I 
     want to do,' '' she said as she sat in her threadbare 
     newspaper office in a converted stable space on the outskirts 
     of Colchester. ``He said `No pressure.' ''
       She settled in, typing up wedding announcements, but before 
     long her father asked her to review the papers' finances. 
     Elsie discovered they were owed $120,000 from advertisers. In 
     three months, she collected $90,000. She also saved her 
     father labor costs by absorbing multiple job titles. Elsie 
     said she often logged 13-hour days writing and editing 
     stories and promoting them on social media.
       Polly Lynn was living in Colorado working for an 
     educational tour company with her partner, Jason Mikula, when 
     her father received an offer to buy The Mountain Times in 
     Killington. Mr. Lynn asked the couple, who were already 
     thinking of moving, to come to Vermont to run it. The couple 
     took over in September 2011 just as Hurricane Irene hit and 
     Killington was hit with some of the storm's worst flooding. 
     She produced the first editions from her father's dining room 
     table.
       Since then, Polly said, she has kept a nonstop schedule of 
     publishing deadlines and has designed a hyper-local news app 
     for Killington. She spends evenings attending town planning 
     meetings and winters skiing with sources and advertisers.
       There has already been a payoff. Polly and Mr. Mikula 
     increased the paper's revenue by 15 percent, or about 
     $100,000, by improving editorial content and strengthening 
     its advertising relationships, according to Mr. Lynn.
       Mike Miller, a Killington business owner and former 
     selectman, said local businesses appreciated the couple's 
     forthright approach: when they made early mistakes on 
     advertisements, they admitted they were wrong, fixed them and 
     even offered to make more creative advertisements. They also 
     appreciate the couple's efforts to participate in the 
     community.
       ``I'm just amazed at their energy,'' Mr. Miller said. ``If 
     there's something that there are going to be more than 10 
     people there, they cover it.''
       In some ways, Christy Lynn had the toughest transition. 
     While her sisters work at papers an hour's drive from their 
     father, she works steps away from him. Her father focuses on 
     editorial content, and she oversees the advertising sales 
     team and comes up with new promotions.
       She has accomplished some small coups. She realized that 
     the Waterfalls Day Spa in Middlebury was promoting itself on 
     social media but did not advertise much in the paper. So she 
     persuaded the owners to advertise more in both the paper and 
     online. Mr. Lynn said that advertising revenue grew 6 percent 
     in this year's first quarter under Christy's watch.
       Gary Greene, a newspaper sales broker, said successful 
     community newspapers shared specific traits. Unlike larger 
     newspapers, local community papers have little debt and don't 
     depend heavily on classified advertising. They hire enough 
     employees to report on town meetings and sports events and 
     publish material people can't find elsewhere. They are in 
     county seats, where they receive legal notices and 
     advertisements from local businesses.
       Mr. Greene, who sits on the boards of small newspaper 
     chains nationwide and sees their financial statements, says 
     those qualities are critical to profitability.
       ``These papers have all made money through the downturn,'' 
     Mr. Greene said. ``What other business categories are doing 
     15 to 20 percent margins? Most businesses would love to make 
     that kind of money.''
       For now, newspaper analysts say these papers' futures 
     remain promising as long as they remain the sole information 
     source. Alan D. Mutter, a newspaper consultant who writes the 
     Reflections of a Newsosaur blog, said that there was still 
     value in information like school lunch menus and high school 
     sports scores.
       ``Weeklies in healthy communities that do a good job 
     reporting on local news and serving local businesses are by 
     far the healthiest of publications,'' he said.
       ``The Messenger has been in business for 150 years,'' said 
     Emerson Lynn, referring to one of his Vermont papers, The St. 
     Albans Messenger. ``Do I think Google is going to be in 
     existence for 150 years? Not a chance.''
       It's unclear how long the Lynn sisters will work in 
     newspapers. While Mr. Lynn has made no succession plans, he 
     also doesn't want to sell. While some of the nation's largest 
     papers are being sold for a small fraction of their purchase 
     price, the market for smaller community papers is healthier. 
     Mr. Greene, the newspaper broker, said that this year his 
     company closed eight deals with 23 publications, nearly 
     double the sales volume in 2011 and 2012. And the resale 
     value of smaller newspapers--the deals worth less than $20 
     million--is higher than that of bigger papers and chains.
       It also helps that the Lynn family seems committed to the 
     business. In March, Angelo and his wife, Lisa Gosselin, 
     invited his brood and their partners and dogs for dinner at 
     his home, a renovated camp building on Lake Dunmore. Dinner 
     conversation revolved around food, skiing and newspapers. 
     Polly warned her father to expect calls of complaint about a 
     forthcoming article.
       None of them talked about how long they would remain in the 
     business. But long after they finished their dessert of 
     poached pears and blueberry pie, they lingered at the table 
     to chat. Before they left, Elsie remembered that The 
     Colchester Sun was sponsoring a cold-water dive into Lake 
     Champlain.
       ``Who is going to jump in the lake with me?'' she asked.
       There was a flurry of reporterlike questions: ``How cold is 
     the water? When is it?''
       But one by one, they all agreed to take the plunge.

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