Two years ago, the veteran editor and publisher covered the historic range fire that devastated a huge swath of the Texas Panhandle. Her coverage was timely and comprehensive, as usual, and her readers hung on every solidly reported word she posted on her website and social media sites. They did not read her stories in print, however, because the Canadian Record no longer had a print edition.
Eleven months earlier, Laurie had made the gut-wrenching economic decision to stop printing her family’s 130-year-old paper and publish the news solely on digital platforms. The reasons: Skyrocketing prices for printing and postage, plus an already faltering local advertising market that was further hammered by the COVID economy.
Laurie’s decision to drop the print edition was made tougher by the knowledge that it would make her paper ineligible for the paid public notices that the Record had run for more than a century. But the paper’s revenue from notices just wasn’t enough on its own to keep the paper afloat.
In mid-March this year – almost year after the big fire and two years after the Record’s last print edition – hurricane-force winds spread fires in the Panhandle once again. Fortunately, the fire damage this time wasn’t as widespread as a year ago, but the days-long windstorm of 2025 wreaked havoc on flight schedules and automobile windshields. Laurie became a victim of both.
She found herself grounded at a critical time: she was scrambling to get to Austin to testify as the star witness in favor of a Texas Press Association-backed bill in the Legislature. If it passes, the bill, currently making its way through the legislature as CSSB 1062, will allow newspapers in a one-newspaper county that make the tough decision to drop their print editions to maintain their eligibility for public notices if they continue publishing local news digitally. The hope is that the public notice revenue, along with paid online subscriptions and improved digital advertising sales, will help newspapers like Laurie’s survive.
Laurie canceled her trip, heartsick at being unable to testify. But as anyone who knows the unsinkable Laurie Brown can tell you, the woman does not quit.
“Could I write my testimony for the committee?” she asked, mere hours before the hearing. I wasn’t sure how that would go over with the committee chairman, but it was worth a shot. “You write it,” I said, “and I’ll hand out copies when I stand up to testify. My testimony will be promoting your written testimony.”
Laurie asked what she should write. Just tell your story, I said. Stories sell and everything else just tells. Legislators are people. And people respond more positively to heartfelt personal stories than polished political pitches.
That’s why TPA leaders are always asking our members to help us in the never-ending legislative fight to protect public notices in newspapers.
So Laurie wrote her story. Like most reporters, she took every minute possible and then a couple more before hitting the send button to TPA. Mike Hodges converted it from 21st Century digital to old-school print and rushed the hard copies from the TPA office to the Capitol. He arrived with minutes to spare.
The dozens of witnesses crammed into the Senate Local Government committee room were instructed to keep their testimony to two minutes because of the lengthy agenda. I used my two minutes for a Reader’s Digest version of Laurie’s story…and to urge committee members to read every word of it for themselves.
I hope every member of the committee reads Laurie’s story. I hope you will too. Here it is.
By LAURIE BROWN, Canadian Record
The Canadian Record was in its 130th year of publication in March 2023 when we announced our decision to cease print publication. As editor and publisher of a family-owned, legacy business, I tell people it was the hardest thing I’d ever done, but that’s not quite true.
The hardest thing I had ever done was publish an independent community weekly newspaper in the rural Texas Panhandle for over thirty years. It is a job not made for the faint of heart, as any rural editor/publisher anywhere in this country will freely attest.
It is our job to report the news of our communities, and to do so fairly and consistently, showing neither fear nor favor. It is work usually done by a small staff, involving long hours, and meager pay.
That’s at least as tough as it sounds, if not tougher.
The one thing I never had to do, though, was wonder if anyone was reading The Record. As soon as it returned from the printing plant 93 miles up the road, and was delivered to the post office and local newsstands, the reviews came flying in—good, bad, or ugly—by phone, by email, or in-person, whether in a visit to the editor’s desk, at the coffee shop next door, or in the produce section of the grocery store.
Whether critics or fans, readers never called it “our newspaper.” It was always “my newspaper,” emphatically claiming their sense of ownership.
The point I’m making—and which has been driven home daily since our print publication ended—is that the local newspaper gets read. Whether a point of pride, or a bone of contention, it gets read, and cussed and discussed, and the news it delivers is rarely reported elsewhere.
For 130 years, The Record reported the news of its community: the city council and school and hospital board meetings, the school honor rolls and graduations, the wins and losses on every field of dreams, the local and state and national elections, the births and deaths, the arrests and citations, the tragedies and victories. The news was personal and it mattered.
Our newspaper was hardly unique. Nor were the challenges we faced in continuing to sustain it.
The pandemic revealed not only the importance of newspapers, but also their vulnerability. It cast new light on the urgent need for clear and reliable information about this little-known public health threat we faced—the symptoms, the safety precautions—and the slowly rising toll it was taking in lives and on our rural community’s medical resources. It also exposed the vulnerability of our area’s economy and the heavy hit local businesses were taking in this new state of uncertainty, as it did the newspaper’s dependence on advertising revenue to produce the news.
While we continued to publish this vital news and honor our commitment to the public, we did so facing increasing costs and expenses, without the financial support necessary to pay them. In one particularly bleak year, as other businesses struggled to recover, The Record was hit with seven printing increases — a 70 percent price hike — and frequent postal rate hikes, while revenues continued to falter.
Community newspapers are hybrids of a sort. Yes, most are privately-owned, for-profit businesses. They are also a public trust, providing an essential service. Newspapers in Texas’ rural areas provide that service in isolated communities with often-struggling economies. They are no less vital to this state’s healthy future.
Many of these newspapers—far too many—are dying. They close for a variety of reasons: aging owners; a dwindling local retail business base; the increasing use of free advertising on social media, and the resulting lack of revenue from retail advertisers; the rising costs of mailing and production and the resulting inability to raise wages and hire much-needed staff.
Many good newspapers are exploring new business models, with mixed success. Some are benefitting from a variety of nonprofit efforts to sustain their vital work. In some communities, there is a renewed interest in community journalism among our younger citizens.
A growing number of newspapers are finding some financial relief in turning to online publishing, where they serve as a bulwark against the more toxic social media pages that trade in rumor, supposition and lies.
Dependable and consistent sources of revenue will be among the necessary factors which can help sustain the regeneration of community newspapers. This legislation will enable good newspapers—without the financial resources needed to continue producing and mailing a print product—to be paid for the essential public notices they have reliably delivered to their readers for generations.
Today, The Canadian Record continues to inform the citizens of Canadian and Hemphill County—and well beyond—online through its web and Facebook pages. Other newspapers around the state are considering or have already made similar efforts to serve their communities, knowing that when a newspaper dies, a community often suffers a similar fate. The problem is that if a newspaper drops its print edition, it no longer qualifies for paid public notices under current Texas law. This bill — which is limited to counties that have only one newspaper — would allow them to continue running paid public notices if they cease print publication but continue their coverage and distribution online.
Today, the work of publishing The Canadian Record online is done primarily by me, for no salary and with no compensation, other than the knowledge that I am still able to serve my community. I have cut as many business expenses as possible, and am presently keeping the virtual doors open with my Social Security check and donations from community members appreciative of the work I do.
It is not a sustainable model. Though we still have a subscriber base, we have been reluctant to promote it, given the uncertainty of our future. Paid public notices would not only help us and other online newspapers sustain this work— it would also benefit the public entities that have always relied on us to inform the citizens who are directly affected by their decisions.
For these reasons, and for the good of the people of rural Texas and the newspapers who serve them, I ask that you approve CSSB 1062. Thank you for your consideration, and for your service to the people of Texas.
Sincerely,
Laurie Ezzell Brown
Editor and Publisher
The Canadian Record
Canadian, Texas
