Texas Newspaper Hall of Fame to induct Laurie Ezzell Brown

Laurie Ezzell Brown, who has gained national recognition as publisher of the Canadian Record and her fight to stave off a news desert in her rural Panhandle community, will be inducted into the Texas Newspaper Hall of Fame during the TPA Awards ceremony Friday, June 20, during the TPA Convention and Trade Show in Denton.

The second generation to run her family newspaper, she joins her father, the late Ben R. Ezzell, who was inducted with the Hall of Fame Class of 2009.

Brown is past president of Texas Press Association as well as two-time president of the Panhandle Press Association, a group in which her parents were also active and both served as president. Ben Ezzell was inducted into the PPA Hall of Fame in 1992 and Laurie followed in 2008.

In an interview with the Texas Press Messenger published in 2015, Brown recalled her childhood in Canadian.

“Because publishing a weekly newspaper is as much a way of life as it is a job, my five siblings and I were often present at The Record office and were enlisted for a variety of jobs as soon as we were tall enough to stand on wooden crates and insert newspapers or roll and wrap them for mailing,” she said. “The smell of ink and newsprint were comfortingly familiar, and the rhythmic clatter and clink of the linotype and press were the pulse and heartbeat of our family life.”

Brown has served as editor of The Canadian Record since the death of her father in 1993. She put out the first edition after his death.

She later assumed the role of co-publisher with Nancy Ezzell until her mother’s retirement in 2010. Brown continues in her parents’ footsteps today, chronicling the life of the Texas Panhandle city of Canadian and Hemphill County — but doing it digitally.

In 2007, the University of Kentucky’s Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues presented The Canadian Record and the Ezzell family with the Tom and Pat Gish Award for courage, tenacity and integrity in rural community journalism, recognizing the mother-daughter team still publishing the newspaper at that time.

As editor and publisher since her mother’s death in 2013, Brown is quick to credit her loyal and hardworking staff. The Record, published in tabloid format until it ceased print distribution two years ago, has won regional and state awards as well as accolades from across the country for its coverage, quality of writing, graphics and photography. 

Like community newspapers across the state, The Canadian Record faced changing economic times as local businesses — and as a result, local advertising — declined in rural areas and readers turned to internet sources for news. By 2023, after being unable to find the right buyer, economic conditions forced Brown to stop printing her award-winning newspaper.

“We have arrived at this decision with great difficulty, having tried for at least the last two years to find someone who will take over this job. There is no way to adequately express our sadness in closing these doors,” Brown wrote in announcing the closure. “We can only assure you that we have chased every lead, walked down every dead end, and knocked on every door in an attempt to find an alternative to quitting.”

However, she continues to provide local news and information to her community through the Record’s website and social media, posting obituaries, news and other things she considers her job to provide to Canadian.

When being named president of Texas Press Association in 2018 Brown said, “We have seen many changes in this profession that I revere, and I believe we have reached a defining moment in the future of journalism, and of a free and independent press. It is we who will define it. Some things have never changed, and never will. We must continue to seek the truth and report it fearlessly. What we do matters.”

When asked in that interview in 2015 where she thought the newspaper business would be in 10 years, Brown said she did not know, but “I have a strong gut feeling that if it no longer resembles in these key respects the industry I grew up in, it will have failed the democratic principles that gave birth to it.”

She added, “I believe the Texas Press Association and its members are well poised, though, to take on the challenges that will inevitably appear in the road ahead.”