FOR LAURIE EZZELL BROWN, local news has always been a family affair. Her dad was the longtime owner and publisher of The Canadian Record, a weekly paper serving the small Texas Panhandle town of Canadian since 1893. She spent much of her childhood in the newsroom, placing ads and setting type. “You’re in the business whether you like it or not,” Brown says. She liked it, so when her father died in 1993, she stepped up as editor.
