Scope and ContentART LANE The Lane Years with The Commercial Record Oral History Interview Synopsis July 26, 2011 Interviewer: Jack Sheridan Soft-spoken but detailed and articulate, Art Lane takes us through his years as owner and editor of the Commercial Record in the first video episode. This includes his and Kitʼs interest in moving north to avoid the Southern Illinois summer heat, the reasons for choosing the CR and its purchase. This was followed by a walk through the broadened news and editorial coverage, printing mechanics, staff expansion, marketing, and how a week of getting out a weekly newspaper in a small but sophisticated town is experienced. Further on in this episode he describes his formal (Michigan University) and informal journalism training in the field at several small and large newspapers. He also describes how he met his wife, Kit, after her Michigan State degree in journalism (and a three month post graduate tour of Europe) when working for the same newspaper. In the second episode, Jack asks Art to trace his most memorable experiences. Interestingly he cites the introduction of Cohoe Salmon into the Kalamazoo River as a local culture changing incident as it converted the old commercial fishing industry folks into purveyors of sport fishing, thus bringing more people to the town. He also extoles the Saugatuck-Douglas community continuing virtue of ready acceptance of all cultures. In the third episode Art takes us on a virtual tour of all the past building sites of the Commercial Record and describes how the buildings were used. Excerpts from this video that should be shown in our Saugatuck-Douglas middle and high school writing classes.