Laurie Ezzell Brown, The Canadian Record (Texas)

On this episode of The Journalism Salute, we’re joined by Laurie Ezzell Brown. She was the publisher and editor of The Canadian Record, a community weekly covering Hemphill County in the northeastern Texas Panhandle from 1893 to 2023, and a legacy business owned and published by the Ezzell family since the late 1940s.

Laurie spoke about being born into her journalism origin story and provided an oral history of the Ezzell family and how the small, rural newspaper lasted so long before publication was just suspended (however it lives on, for now, on Facebook.

She explained the relationship between her newspaper and how the residents of a town that voted nearly 90% for Donald Trump in both elections were upset at her decision to suspend publication. And she shared how a newspaper can make a community matter to itself.

Laurie’s salutes: The Daily Yonder, The Rural Blog

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