The Des Moines Register will soon vacate the building it occupied in downtown Des Moines since 1918. I spent all of my 33 years at the paper in that building. What is most memorable to me about the place, however, was a co-worker who never had a byline, whose office was on an upper floor and who I came to know well only after we had both retired.
Lyle Lynn was the Register’s advertising director. He had been around a long time and seemed to know everybody. He knew especially what made the community tick, and I could have learned a lot from him, except for his habit of keeping his distance.
Lyle was decent, warm, smart and generous. I asked once why we had not been better acquainted while we were both at the paper. He explained that he stayed away from the newsroom on the fourth floor, where my office also was located, because he didn’t want anyone to think he was trying to influence news coverage on behalf of an advertiser.
Lyle was that kind of person. And the Register was that kind of an institution. The Cowles family, which founded the paper, had instilled and maintained admirable journalistic values all the time they retained control. Lyle Lynn personified those values.
Years later, after the paper changed hands, an editor told me how he visited advertisers when he made rounds with the company’s ad salespeople.
In the popular imagination, that sort of thing goes on all the time as editors are seen as extensions of the advertising department. It would be worth knowing whether Lyle Lynn’s refusal to set foot in the Register’s newsroom has its counterpart at newspapers today or whether editors accompanying ad salesmen are more the norm. Journalism schools would perform a useful service if they put students to work researching the subject.
Sadly, the family-owned newspaper seems largely a thing of the past. As I mourn the padlock on the door of the Register’s building, I mourn even more the passing of Lyle Lynn and what he stood for.
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