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Sid Yudain

Inducted into MDDC’s Hall of Fame in 2009. This article is based on information submitted at the time.


Sidney Yudain began his publishing empire as a young boy when he and his brothers followed the Hearst-Pulitzer tradition of trading blows via their own newspapers, produced on the family Remington. And from there, he never stopped, publishing newspapers in elementary and junior high school before taking over the newspaper his older brother founded at their high school.

When he later took a job at a Stamford, Conn., radio station, Sid created an in-house newspaper for the staff. Later, during a stint in the Army, he started a newspaper for the California-based gun battery he served in, and then another one for cancer patients at a Van Nuys hospital, where he was sent with a broken nose.

Sid went on to become a magazine writer covering Hollywood before joining Al Moreno’s Congressional campaign in 1950. When Morano won the election and moved to Capitol Hill, he took Sid with him to be his press secretary.

In 1955, with a budget of $90, Sid began his next newspaper, Roll Call, with the goal of providing a community newspaper for Capitol Hill. Sid was the editor, publisher and often reporter for his paper, eventually adding to his stable of talent and expanding from a biweekly to a weekly before he sold The Newspaper of Captiol Hill in 1986.

Now retired, Sid enjoys performing big-band music with friends.

It is my great pleasure to nominate Sid Yudain for induction into the MDDC Newspaper Hall of Fame. In 1995, Sid created what has become a thriving industry – Capitol Hill newspapers – by founding Roll Call, the first of its kind and still the leading provider of Congressional news.

In those early days of publication, Sid pulled double, really triple, duty; publisher and editor of Roll Call as well as staffer to Rep. Al Morano (R-Conn.), who allowed his office to be used as the newspaper’s headquarters. Obliviously, under today’s standards Sid would have been raked over the coals for such a conflict of interest. But in those days, when Sid’s primary goal was to establish a means of communication among Members of Congress, it was certainly understandable and advantageous. Ad it gave him a foothold as he attempted to make successful what had only proved to be a failed business in the past.

In 1958, he moved his headquarters to a townhouse near the Capitol and began publishing on a weekly basis. Because Sid was publishing on a shoestring budget and could not afford to hire reporters, he gave “credentials” to Members of Congress, who happily contributed stories to the newspaper. He eve received and published articles from Vice President Richard Nixon and Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson.

With assistance from lawmakers, family and Congressional staff volunteering their time, Sid developed an intimate publication that everyone on Capitol Hill wanted to read because it was the only source for non-legislative news about Congress. In 2005, he told a Roll Call reporter, “We never, very seldom, mentioned legislation unless it had to do with the Congress, the

operation of Congress.” That idea continues to fuel every reporter and editor working at Roll Call today.

Sid ran the paper until selling it to Arthur Leavitt in 1986, but his tenure did not end then, because he continued to write a column for the newspaper. And it must be noted that during his tenure atop the masthead, the bylines of some of Washington, D.C’s most notable journalist and commentators graced Roll Call’s pages: Mark Russell, Nina Totenberg, Karen Feld, Walter Winchell.

Sid is now off enjoying his retirement and playing big-band music, while a staff of 70 produces a four-days-a-week newspaper covering the people, process and politics of Congress like no one else. We’ve come a long way from the one-man shop that opened in 1955, but Sid Yudain’s legacy remains a driving force behind everything we do, and for that he deserves to be honored.

Submitted by
David Meyers
Managing Editor
Roll Call