12/25/2024
THE END OF AN ERA
Jim Lowell's retirement at the end of this year will end nearly a century of Lowell family involvement in The Concordia Blade-Empire newspaper.
The Blade-Empire is the longest-running, continuously operating business in the history of Concordia, Kansas. Though it was officially established in 1902, the Blade-Empire can trace its roots back to 1870, to a man by the name of Henry Buckingham, and a tiny log cabin near Clyde where the paper was first printed.
Art Lowell joined the paper in 1930 as a bookkeeper. Since then, for 94 years, a Lowell - sometimes many Lowells - have been a part of the Blade-Empire.
"Over the past 50 years I have had a grandfather, father, brother, sister, son, daughter, niece, nephew, cousins, and a step-mother who have worked at the Blade at one time or another," Jim Lowell said.
Art Lowell worked his way up through the ranks at the paper. When Snowden Raymond Green, the owner of the Blade-Empire, passed away in 1950, he bequeathed all the stock in the business to its longtime employees.
Art Lowell, having the most shares, became the corporation's president.
In June of 1967, Art's son Brad Lowell joined The Blade-Empire staff. In 1978, Art Lowell stepped down as president of the corporation, and Brad was elected president of the board and publisher. For the next 45 years Brad had a ringside seat to most of the important events in Concordia history. "I'm a news ju**ie," Brad once said. "It's what keeps me going."
Brad's son Jim joined the newspaper in February 1983 to work as a sports writer. He covered sports in the north-central Kansas area for nearly 42 years.
“My grandfather was a businessman turned newspaperman," Jim said. "My dad was the consummate newspaperman who had a firm belief that the local paper played a critical role in the community. He had a passion for the paper. He had a passion for the community and he had a passion for the people who worked so hard to cover the community as employees of the Blade-Empire."
Brad Lowell's other son, Jay, joined the newspaper permanently in 1997. Jay was the principal photographer, digital edition editor, ad salesman, and IT person running the websites.
"To think that four generations of our family have had a hand in this is really unique," Jay said. "I'm proud of what we did and brought to the community, We've had some great people here."
Throughout its century-plus run as a sentinel for the town, the Blade-Empire has covered hundreds of thousands of stories, big and small, local and national, with award-winning results. In 1930, Blade-Empire journalist Marion Ellet was named by the Wichita Sunday Eagle as one of the 10 outstanding journalists in Kansas. In 1970, The Concordia Blade-Empire won the Kansas Press Association (KPA) sweepstakes award as the best small newspaper in Kansas. In 1986 the Kansas News Business Magazine ranked the Blade-Empire the third-best daily newspaper in the state, ahead of juggernaut papers like the Topeka Capital, the Lawrence Journal-World, and the Salina Journal.
In February of 2024, the Blade-Empire was sold to Sweet Tea Media and its owner Kevin Zadina. Jay retired in May of this year, and Jim will retire at the end of December.
"It's going to be different because it's pretty much all I've known," Jim said.
In an article for the New York Times Magazine, Luc Sante wrote: “a newspaper is a measure of days, an index of passing time. In arching degrees, a newspaper is a watchdog, a mouthpiece, a pulpit, an investigator, and even a guidance counselor for the community it serves.”
It takes a lot to produce an edition of a newspaper: a dozen people working different tasks against seemingly impossible deadlines, and coping with a cantankerous printing press. A hundred different things can go wrong and often do. But the Blade never missed a publication day. "I remember one day it had been snowing all night and we received about a foot of snow," Jim said. "Getting around town was very difficult, and the decision was made that it was too dangerous to send out the young carriers. Mike Lamm, who was at Babe Houser Motor Company, provided us with a couple of four-wheel drive pickups, and Dan Haist who worked at the Blade at the time, had a four-wheel drive. We split up the town and the Blade employees went out and tromped through the snow delivering all the papers. There were times that it was late for one reason or another, but we always got a paper out."
Jim and Jay have many vivid memories of their decades at the Blade. "A couple of highlights in covering sports were covering the 1999 Concordia High School football team that won the 4A state championship, and covering the 2001 Cloud County Community College women's basketball team that won the NJCAA national championship," Jim said.
"The state championship was really neat to be around, the buildup to that over the weeks," Jay agreed. "And that national championship at the college was special."
Some technological innovations - like digital cameras - were extremely beneficial to the newspaper business. Jay's photographic skills won him a Kansas Press Association award. "Cameras are all digital now, but back when you were shooting film, you couldn't look at your pictures," Jay said. "But sometimes you just knew you had it. You knew you got the shot you wanted."
Jay recalled one time that he was covering a cross country meet, and climbed a tree to get a good shot of the runners on the course. "I had my bag and camera with me, and I got the shot I wanted. But then it took me a while to figure out how to get down from the tree."
Brad Lowell once said: "People are what make a good newspaper, and here at the Blade we've been fortunate to always have good people."
“It has been an interesting journey over the past 42 years and there has been nothing more special to me than the people I have shared it with," Jim said. "Working at a small town newspaper is far from a lucrative profession, and we have had dedicated employees who have spent much of their lifetimes at the Blade. There are too many to name, but they all have played important roles. For many years I couldn’t figure out why many of them stayed, knowing they could make more money elsewhere. I came to believe that it was because they knew they were a part of creating something important, a newspaper, that is recording history as it happens. And that is rewarding in its own right.
"For nearly 55 years, starting when I was pedaling my bike around delivering papers, the Concordia Blade-Empire has been a big part of my life," Jim added. "There are plenty of things I will miss about working in the newspaper business, and some things that I won’t. I would like to thank all of the coaches, school officials, government officials, board clerks, those who work in the offices at the local schools and everyone else who helped make my job as easy as possible. Thank you to the subscribers and advertisers for supporting the paper.”
SEE THE FULL STORY IN THURSDAY'S BLADE-EMPIRE NEWSPAPER, OR VISIT THE BLADE'S WEBSITE bladeempire.com
