By: E&P Staff (AP) E. Bartlett Barnes, who ran The Bristol (Conn.) Press for nearly three decades as publisher, died at home Monday afternoon. He was 96.
Barnes has long been ""just an absolute icon of what a newspaper publisher, a public citizen, and a public servant ought to be,"" Mitchell Pearlman, executive director of the Connecticut Freedom of Information Commission, said.
Pearlman said that Barnes was ""one of a very small group of publishers and senior editors"" who started pressing for sunshine statutes in the state in 1955.
It wasn't until 1975 that the Freedom of Information law was finally on the books, Pearlman said, and from the start Barnes was a strong ally of the commission and its mission.
Former Gov. William O'Neill tapped Barnes to serve as an FOI commissioner from 1985 to 1989.
Barnes graduated from Yale University a few months before the Crash of 1929. He worked for eight years at the Stamford Advocate as a reporter and advertising salesman.
Barnes returned to The Bristol Press in 1937 to sell advertising. He moved up the ranks to become business manager and general manager for his father.
When Arthur Barnes died in 1956, Clarkson Barnes and Bart Barnes were named co-publishers, which remained the case until Clarkson retired in 1968, leaving his younger brother as publisher and president of the company.
Barnes led the newspaper from his father's death in 1956 until its sale in 1985.
Funeral services have been scheduled for 11 a.m. Friday at the First Congregational Church.
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