A family legacy that was born nearly a century ago continues with the naming of Bill Hudnutt as the new publisher of The Chronicle-Telegram, Lorain County’s largest daily newspaper.
The younger Hudnutt is no longer a boy toddling behind his father, former publisher A. Cooper Hudnutt, or enlisting his dad to help him deliver newspapers so he could make his basketball practices and fulfill his route duties. Instead, as Bill Hudnutt sits at the helm of a multimedia company in 2017, Hudnutt said he is ready to lead an organization charged with delivering 21st century news to an ever-changing local community.
That means more to him than just a title willed down through several generations.
“I have a very solid foundation already set for me to build upon. I’m not just talking about in our family, but also in the hundreds of collective years of the people who have worked in this building and built their careers with this company,” he said. “The Chronicle has always had a very family atmosphere and in this family, we have a great team of people who have the knowledge, skills and willingness to move us into the 21st century.”
Hudnutt said his first memories of the Lorain County publication trace back to when he was a little boy and he would come to the East Avenue headquarters with his sister to ride around in the large pushcarts that moved the newspapers around the building. He remembers walking alongside his father on the day the elder Hudnutt went to every employee in the building to hand out paychecks and to thank them for their solid work.
“Just walking around the building, the smells of ink and newsprint remind me of so many days spent in this building, watching it transform and me right along with it,” said Hudnutt, a 2001 graduate of Elyria High School who went on to earn a bachelor’s of arts in business administration from Miami University. “Now I am thinking about what this newspaper means to our community in an entirely different way.”
Five years after earning the title of general manager of The Chronicle, Hudnutt, 34, said he is honored by the Lorain County Printing & Publishing Co. board’s decision to appointment him to publisher. He is assuming a role once held by his father, and before him, his grandfather, Arthur D. Hudnutt, and great-grandfather, A.C. Hudnutt, whose purchase of his partner’s interest in the newspaper in 1927 gave him control of it.
The Hudnutt family has owned the paper ever since.