Here's a link to a C-SPAN2 BookTV segment on my stepfather, the late Lyle Lahey.
Go to video on C-SPAN.
Showing posts with label green bay news-chronicle. Show all posts
Showing posts with label green bay news-chronicle. Show all posts
Thursday, March 5, 2015
Sunday, March 3, 2013
The Local Lyle Lahey
BACK STORY
Home away from home: Lyle Lahey's local powerBy John Zipperer
Breathing is difficult for me right now, but it’s not because of fear or excitement. I have just returned from a week in my childhood hometown of Green Bay, Wisconsin, where the temperatures were in the single digits (Farhenheit, alas) and the air so dry that my head decided that breathing was an option it could skip.
The reason for my trip to Titletown was the sudden death of my stepfather, Lyle Lahey, at the age of 81. I spent a week with my siblings...
Friday, February 8, 2013
Lyle Lahey, 1931-2013
At about 7:15 p.m. Central Time, on Friday, February 8, 2013, Lyle Lahey passed away. Known to many in Wisconsin as an independent (and ever-opinionated) political voice, Lyle was also my stepfather.
I don't remember the first time I met Lyle Lahey, but it was probably during a visit to my mother's office at Brown County Publishing in Denmark, Wisconsin. There, lots of talented albeit underpaid professionals assembled a number of local newspapers and one magazine; the magazine was my mother's brainchild; the newspapers were where Lyle worked as a political cartoonist, editorial page editor, and designer.
At some point, Mom must have taken me down to her friend Lyle's office, and there, amidst his drawing board and reference material and stacks of books and magazines and newspapers, was the tall, lanky political cartoonist whose work I saw every day in the Green Bay News-Chronicle and stories of whom I had heard my mother retell.
Over the years, I saw Lyle numerous times, and he eventually became my stepfather. I knew people in Green Bay, Wisconsin, who subscribed to the News-Chronicle soley because of Lyle's political cartoons. I had a (friendly) argument with a friend in high school who was certain Lyle's last name was pronounced laHEY and who didn't believe me when I said I was pretty sure my own stepfather pronounced his name LAhey. For 35 years, Lyle produced political cartoons on a daily basis for Brown County Publishing and the Green Bay News-Chronicle. He rarely took vacations, he never stopped (he had high respect for Bill Watterson, but I think Lyle thought him to be a bit of a weakling when Watterson called it a day after 10 years of "Calvin and Hobbes"), and he did something that artists almost never do: When he had to decide between producing material that was blander and more commercial so it could be syndicated nationally, he chose to stick to local topics because he felt that the people of Green Bay, Wisconsin, deserved to have a cartoonist who addressed their issues.
Lyle also, many years before, created "Bunky," a weekly comic strip in The Farmer's Friend (another Brown County Publishing newspaper). A year ago, I suggested republishing his "Bunky" comics through the magic of Amazon's print-on-demand service; he and my mother gave their blessing. Now, it's an imperative that that be done. Lyle's desert-dry sense of humor is perfectly transmitted in that strip's mixture of a befuddled space alien, a farm boy, and a sojourn to Maoist China.
Lyle Lahey was the man who sent home from the office a couple dozen issues of Omni magazine for me to devour. He was the man who helped my mother come to terms with it when I came out. He was the man who brought home library books of early Superman, Little Nemo, and (the greatest of all) Krazy Kat. He was the man who was the staff political cartoonist for the smallest daily newspaper in the country to have its own political cartoonist. He was the man who shared copies of Car Design and Comics Scene magazines with me, because he knew we both liked the publisher and I really knew nothing about cars. He was the man who shared Harlan Ellison and thriller books with me. He was the man – the stepfather – who got along great with my father; they traded stacks of car magazines each time they saw each other at frequent family gatherings.
And, like a generation so removed from my own ironic generation, he said what he meant and he took you seriously when you said something serious.
Lyle was a good man, a better man than I am or ever have been. He was, in the best sense of the term, an old-fashioned man. He read widely and a lot; he cared about what he talked about, and when you spoke to him, he always focused on what you were saying.
No man is perfect, but you won't get any admissions from me of errors in Lyle Lahey.
Rest in peace, Lyle; you've earned it.
At some point, Mom must have taken me down to her friend Lyle's office, and there, amidst his drawing board and reference material and stacks of books and magazines and newspapers, was the tall, lanky political cartoonist whose work I saw every day in the Green Bay News-Chronicle and stories of whom I had heard my mother retell.
Over the years, I saw Lyle numerous times, and he eventually became my stepfather. I knew people in Green Bay, Wisconsin, who subscribed to the News-Chronicle soley because of Lyle's political cartoons. I had a (friendly) argument with a friend in high school who was certain Lyle's last name was pronounced laHEY and who didn't believe me when I said I was pretty sure my own stepfather pronounced his name LAhey. For 35 years, Lyle produced political cartoons on a daily basis for Brown County Publishing and the Green Bay News-Chronicle. He rarely took vacations, he never stopped (he had high respect for Bill Watterson, but I think Lyle thought him to be a bit of a weakling when Watterson called it a day after 10 years of "Calvin and Hobbes"), and he did something that artists almost never do: When he had to decide between producing material that was blander and more commercial so it could be syndicated nationally, he chose to stick to local topics because he felt that the people of Green Bay, Wisconsin, deserved to have a cartoonist who addressed their issues.
Lyle also, many years before, created "Bunky," a weekly comic strip in The Farmer's Friend (another Brown County Publishing newspaper). A year ago, I suggested republishing his "Bunky" comics through the magic of Amazon's print-on-demand service; he and my mother gave their blessing. Now, it's an imperative that that be done. Lyle's desert-dry sense of humor is perfectly transmitted in that strip's mixture of a befuddled space alien, a farm boy, and a sojourn to Maoist China.
Lyle Lahey was the man who sent home from the office a couple dozen issues of Omni magazine for me to devour. He was the man who helped my mother come to terms with it when I came out. He was the man who brought home library books of early Superman, Little Nemo, and (the greatest of all) Krazy Kat. He was the man who was the staff political cartoonist for the smallest daily newspaper in the country to have its own political cartoonist. He was the man who shared copies of Car Design and Comics Scene magazines with me, because he knew we both liked the publisher and I really knew nothing about cars. He was the man who shared Harlan Ellison and thriller books with me. He was the man – the stepfather – who got along great with my father; they traded stacks of car magazines each time they saw each other at frequent family gatherings.
And, like a generation so removed from my own ironic generation, he said what he meant and he took you seriously when you said something serious.
Lyle was a good man, a better man than I am or ever have been. He was, in the best sense of the term, an old-fashioned man. He read widely and a lot; he cared about what he talked about, and when you spoke to him, he always focused on what you were saying.
No man is perfect, but you won't get any admissions from me of errors in Lyle Lahey.
Rest in peace, Lyle; you've earned it.
Monday, May 30, 2011
Independent Newspaper Legend Frank Wood, RIP
For all of you publishing exec-wannabes (like me), it is useful to know that Wood became smitten with newspaper publishing when he served in the Allied occupying armies in Germany after World War II. In the early 1960s, he and his wife bought their first newspaper, the Denmark Press. They eventually bought or started more, until they had a string of them, most of them modestly profitable, along with a successful printing operation.
But it was the Green Bay News-Chronicle that defines his legacy for many of us. The morning paper started as a strike paper by employees of the much-larger Green Bay Press-Gazette. When Wood bought the fledgling paper, he brought in additional talent, including my mother and the man who eventually became my stepfather. (I can remember my mother working into the evenings to help oversee the production of the little daily paper.) The Chronicle grew into a scrappy independent voice in the Green Bay area, almost always losing money but subsidized by the profits made elsewhere in the Wood family publishing company.
Eventually, the losses at the paper became unsustainable, and when the Gazette switched from afternoon to morning distribution, that was the death knell for the Chronicle, which went into a circulation tailspin. Eventually Wood sold the paper and most of his company to Gannett, which owned the Gazette and against which Wood had fought bravely for decades. The story of that war was the subject of Richard McCord's 1996 book The Chain Gang.
The above cartoon was created by Lyle Lahey, my stepfather and for about 25 years the daily editorial cartoonist for the News-Chronicle.
More info at the Green Bay Press Gazette obituary.
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
So Much for the Theory that Blogs Would Save News
The Huffington Post is having a featured sale this month! You can tell, because they promote it all over the place day after day after day. Check it out: Move your money out of big banks into smaller banks. It's a way to punish big banks, see, and it's Huffington Post founder Ariana Huffington's pet cause of the moment. So it's featured all over the front page of HuffPo. Repeatedly. As if it's a national movement with broad grassroots support when it's really just a manufactured campaign by Huffington and her crew.
Sort of like the Tea Party of the Left.
What's happening to the political blogosphere? If you've been listening to some of the evangelists for blogs, they are supposed to be better than the mainstream media (and especially newspapers) at reporting real news and what people really care about because they can't be controlled. The blogosphere (a word that always reminds me of Blagojevich, but whatever) was said to be self-correcting, because bloggers will write whatever they want to, regardless of what big advertisers or media barons with agendas or politicians try to get them to do or say.
Media owners with agendas are nothing new, and they're not necessarily bad. When I was a kid (and too young to remember this myself), the Green Bay News-Chronicle ran a long and eventually successful campaign supporting the movement to build a third bridge in the city.
But that wasn't as shameless in its mixing of real news (look, this just isn't so important a movement that it deserves multiple news spots on HuffPo's home page) with a campaign, nor did it have the cult-of-personality feature that has started to take over Huffington's site.
Alas, it's probably the wave of the future. Huffington Post continues to grow (though I check it out less and less often, preferring Talking Points Memo), and media barons love their crusades. But newspapers did it better.
Sort of like the Tea Party of the Left.What's happening to the political blogosphere? If you've been listening to some of the evangelists for blogs, they are supposed to be better than the mainstream media (and especially newspapers) at reporting real news and what people really care about because they can't be controlled. The blogosphere (a word that always reminds me of Blagojevich, but whatever) was said to be self-correcting, because bloggers will write whatever they want to, regardless of what big advertisers or media barons with agendas or politicians try to get them to do or say.
Media owners with agendas are nothing new, and they're not necessarily bad. When I was a kid (and too young to remember this myself), the Green Bay News-Chronicle ran a long and eventually successful campaign supporting the movement to build a third bridge in the city.
But that wasn't as shameless in its mixing of real news (look, this just isn't so important a movement that it deserves multiple news spots on HuffPo's home page) with a campaign, nor did it have the cult-of-personality feature that has started to take over Huffington's site.
Alas, it's probably the wave of the future. Huffington Post continues to grow (though I check it out less and less often, preferring Talking Points Memo), and media barons love their crusades. But newspapers did it better.
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