Documentary looks at a newspaper’s challenges

Submitted photo##Laurie Ezzell Brown holds a page from her family-owned newspaper, The Canadian Record. Brown is featured in the documentary “For The Record,” screening Oct. 23 at Linfield.

A documentary to be screened in McMinnville gives an up-close and personal look at the challenges facing newspaper publishers in the 21st century. The film “For the Record,” showing at 7 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 23, presents a view of what’s at stake when newspapers are forced to close their doors.

“For The Record” follows the struggles of the publisher of a weekly newspaper in Canadian, Texas. The 45-minute documentary film will be shown at the Ice Auditorium in Melrose Hall on the Linfield University campus.

The free event, with a panel discussion to follow the film, is sponsored by Oregon Public Information Partnership (OPIP), Linfield University, and Yamhill County’s News-Register. Those wishing to attend are asked to register for the show at tinyurl.com/yd4bctab.

“For The Record” is a mostly vérité documentary following the life of Laurie Ezzell Brown, her town, and her newspaper as she strives to keep the family newspaper alive.

“My parents started this paper in 1947. I don’t want to close the doors,” Brown states in the film. “But there have been weeks when I wasn’t sure we were gonna be able to keep going, when I was publishing a newspaper that was costing me more than I was making.”

The panel discussion and Q&A session will feature Brown as well as the film’s director, Heather Courtney; Dr. Jennifer Rauch, chairman of the Linfield Journalism and Media Studies program; and Chelsea Marr, publisher of the Columbia Gorge News and president of the Oregon Newspaper Publishers Association.

Following the panel discussion there will an informal reception for the panel members where snacks will be served.

Canadian, a small Texas Panhandle town, has survived oil booms and busts, devastating wildfires, and a diminishing population. Through it all, a few things have remained constant — cowboys, high school football, conservative voters, and the family-owned weekly newspaper The Canadian Record. Despite editor Laurie Brown’s liberal editorials in one of the most conservative counties in the country, The Record is loved and relied on by the community. But now, an already poor Texas economy made much worse by the global pandemic – is bad news for a paper that gets 90% of its revenue from advertising.

Over 25% of newspapers in the U.S. have closed since 2005. According to Medill Local News Initiative, the U.S. is currently losing 2.5 newspapers a week. In Oregon, the number is closer to 40 percent of newspapers that have closed their doors in the last two decades. (Last week, the newspaper serving Columbia County closed, after the St. Helens and Clatskanie papers were merged in 2023 by new owners.)

Out of the 3,000-plus U.S. counties, only half have a local print newspaper of any kind. Studies show that people who live in areas with poor local news coverage are less likely to vote, and local governments are more corrupt. Social media often replaces the news vacuum, leading to a growing distrust of the news in general.

“The fact that journalism is being denounced,” said Brown, “and there’s no longer much value being placed on the truth, is just about the scariest thing I’ve ever seen.”