It’s not exactly old hat, but for the fourth time in his life, Emerson Lynn has scored a “first.”
At a ceremony Sept. 19 in Manhattan, Lynn was awarded the first-ever Huck Boyd Lifetime Achievement Award in Community Newspapers.
Lynn, 88, is associate editor of The Iola Register and continues to provide the bulk of the Register’s editorials and weekly reports of Rotary meetings.
The Huck Boyd National Institute for Rural Development and the Huck Boyd Center for Community Media at Kansas State University selected Lynn for the prestigious award.
Lynn was also the first Kansas newspaper publisher to be placed in the Kansas Press Association’s Hall of Fame. Previously, the award was given posthumously. He also was awarded the first Clyde Reed editor’s award and the first KPA mentor award.
Lynn’s leadership in community journalism through his steadfast commitment for local endeavors was noted by Ron Wilson, director of the Huck Boyd Institute.
Lynn started in journalism as a newspaper carrier, when his grandfather, Charles F. Scott, was publisher. His official career began in 1950 when he worked as a journalist in Kansas and Texas. In 1965, he and his wife, the late Mickey June Lynn, came back to Iola to assume ownership of the Iola Register, which his uncle had owned and where his parents had worked.
In 2001, he sold the Register to his daughter, Susan Lynn.
In the field of journalism, Lynn has served as president of the Kansas Press Association and the William Allen White Foundation at the University of Kansas.
