News-Miner Editorial
Goodbye to the Times
Vestiges of Alaska institution have finally disappeared
Published Monday, December 1, 2008
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Stumble It!We’re a month tardy with this obituary, but the final demise of The Anchorage Times deserves some note and a sad farewell.
During the past 16 years, the Times shrank from a full-blown newspaper down to a half-page in the Anchorage Daily News and finally to a Web site. The Web site published its last on Oct. 31, the victim of a lack of advertisers and sponsors willing to ignore the paper’s association with Bill Allen, the former owner of the oil service company VECO, who sits at the center of the scandals tearing up Alaska politics.
The newspaper traced its roots to the May 27, 1915, edition of the Knik News. It became an Anchorage paper two years later. Robert Atwood bought the paper in 1935 and ran it until 1989, when he sold it to Allen. By then, though, the end was in sight. The Daily News, after being purchased in 1979 by the McClatchy newspaper chain, had surpassed the Times’ circulation in 1985.
Allen said he bought the paper to provide an unbiased news source and preserve a conservative editorial page in Alaska’s largest city. He hired a large new staff. upgraded the Times’ building and installed a new computer system. It wasn’t enough to reverse the Daily News’ lead.
“I’m sorry we couldn’t continue,” Allen told the staff members in the newsroom on the afternoon of June 2, 1992, the day before the final edition of the full paper appeared. “But there’s just not enough (advertising) base here for two papers.”
Allen sold the Times to the Daily News. As part of the deal, McClatchy’s owners agreed to publish a half-page of opinion provided by the “Voice of the Times,” a small group of editors from the Times that Allen continued to support financially. The original agreement was for 10 years.
It wasn’t an easy arrangement. In a June 5, 1997, editorial, the Daily News said the Times’ half-page was worth publishing because it “adds value to our newspaper,” but it added this caveat: “There is often more rhetoric than substance in the Voice’s editorials. Its columns frequently ignore facts, skew reality and mangle truth in an unfair, personal and malicious approach to issues.”
Editors at the Times had a similar view of their Daily News counterparts, and regularly said so in the Times’ half-page. This relationship lasted 15 years, remarkably.
The Daily News, in the same editorial, said the Times “provides Alaskans with opinions of the perspective of the oil patch.” But editors at the Voice of the Times said Allen never directed their work.
“Allen was a hands-off publisher who never tried to direct editorial content,” they said in their Oct. 12-13, 2008, announcement of the impending shutdown. “The editors were on their own ... and followed the dictates of their own consciences.”
However, Allen no doubt knew when he hired those editors, a group of longtime Alaskans, that their views largely matched his own. And he knew they weren’t shy. Paul Jenkins, one of the editors, said in his farewell column that he hoped “to land someplace where I can continue doing what I do, getting paid for not doing much, and having the pleasure — no, the delicious privilege — of really ticking some of you off.”
When CH2M Hill bought VECO International last year, it declined to take The Times Publishing Co. The Times went into a holding company owned by the Allen Family Trust, which supported the Web site for the past 17 months. Now, the Times’ voice is finally silent.
One writer on the Times’ final Web page said the closure shows that the “Republican’s (sic) message of hate and lying is seriously flawed. Great to see you clowns on the unemployment line.”
The silencing of the Times is nothing to cheer. It not only ends an important institution in Alaska’s history but also reduces the pool of informed, experienced commentators offering their insights on Alaska’s current affairs. For that, no one should rejoice.
Community Discussion
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Few will miss the VECO Times... Its owner, Bill Allen, showed that with enough money he could corrupt all who came into his path.
Take the Anchorage Daily News. For $$$ they accepted the half page Big Oil propaganda (VECO editorial) directly in the middle of their editorial page.
What is the difference a prostitute and the ADN? Only the price.
Alaska can not advance when so many in leadership positions are willing to put self interest ahead of public interest.
Earnings Plummet for Papers Endorsing Obama !! LMAO !!
Remember all these newspapers, many newspapers that have endorsed Obama are seeing their earnings plummet.
Layoffs are exceeding the national average by a gazillion percent. The Washington Post's earnings are down 86%. The New York Times has been rated "junk" by Standard & Poor's. The Los Angeles Times is headed in the same direction. It refuses to report the news. Good riddance to the Drive-By, propaganda-driven media. Newspapers endorsing Obama: Earnings plummet .Note: This is happening for the News T.V. Stations too!
Well, this is a fair assessment and report on the Anchorage Times-Daily News saga. Without question Bill Allen's touch tainted the Anchorage News from the day he touched it. But there is more to the decline and demise of newspapers than just Bill Allen. Newspapers everywhere are struggling, as the Glockmod23 comment points out. I grew up with newspapers and have been a devoted newspaper addict all my life. But times have really changed. First television changed the way we absorb information. The linear logic of print, which began with the Gutenberg printing press, and revolutionized the world by bringing literacy to the common person, gave way to the kaleidoscopic collage of TV thinking, hence, the "sound bite" mentality of superficial logic. Newspapers and in-depth reporting became endangered species. Even lawyers were forced to change their arguments to juries from reasoned linear discourse to flashy sound bite tactics as juries lost their ability to concentrate on structured debate. I lament the decline of newspapers but today I don't buy or subscribe; I read it on-line.
The FNM has become the only major Alaskan news paper left that is still standing in for Alaska. The State has had a long list of News Papers over the years....a good read on that history is "bent pins to chains"....I printed the last on line fairwell from the VOT and put it in my copy of Bent Pins to Chains.
It will truely be a sad day when the only News Paper vocie we have left in Alaska is a "chain" owned paper..
typo- Allen touched the Anchorage Times, and later the News with his Voice of the Times.
In response to Glock, The reason news media is losing money is that some time ago now people were trained to stop caring about the truth and wanting to know the real story and instead started wanting to be entertained. Before the advent of 24/7 news channels it was network news, on for an hour in the evening and again before shutting down at night. These news broadcasts were for public service and profit didn't matter. Now everything must turn profit and what seems to sell is the pitting of one side against the other. Sports, politics, war, it all sells if placed in an adversarial light, but the truth gets sidelined by entertainment value and the demands for profit in the new corporate world order.
The loss of the Times "reduces the pool of informed, experienced commentators offering their insights on Alaska’s current affairs."
But...but...what about the informed, experienced commentators who offer their insights on newsminer.com every day?
(Wait, that would be people like me, wouldn't it?)
Glockmod, have you considered that traditional print newspapers are failing because 24/7 TV news and 24/7 Internet news are replacing them? A print edition can only offer news once a day, maybe twice for some papers who print an evening edition. People prefer the "real time" and "live" updates they get by either watching the news on TV or their internet news source of choice.
I don't think it's nearly the political issue you seem to be making it out to be.
this story is really 16 years old. when it stopped being a real newspaper it stopped being any sort of journalistic enterprise. you could even reasonably argue that atwood took their credibility with him when he retired and sold to allen -- 22 years ago.
For the Anchorage Times to go under should not have happened. It was the senior newspaper, compared to the recent upstart Anchorage Daily News. However, the Anchorage Times was an evening newspaper. The Daily News started up as a morning newspaper.
Some of us Fairbanksans remember when the News-Miner was an evening paper. Because morning papers usually wind up taking circulation from evening papers, the News-Miner wisely changed to a morning paper, and in so doing it trumped any effort by anyone to establish a competing morning paper. The Anchorage Times had all the circulation in the Anchorage area, before there was an Anchorage Daily News. If they had only changed to morning publication, they might have kept their circulation and advertising, and might still be going today, and it would have been the fledgling Daily News that would not have been able to have gotten enough of the Anchorage market to keep going.
Instead, an historic newspaper went under. Anchorage is poorer for it, as is all of Alaska. In fact, journalism is poorer for it. Newspapers are REAL journalism. The approximation of journalism that television offers is but sound bites, and their reporting is but expanded headlines.
Good newspapers are necessary to a free and informed society. We must continue to educate our young people that reading a newspaper is part of good citizenship. I salute the Fairbanks News-Miner for their participation in the “Newspapers In The Schools” program. In the last few weeks I have heard one person refer to the News-Miner as a "liberal rag," yet another person called it a "conservative rag." If the fringe extremists of both ends equally disparage the Fairbanks News-Miner, it must be a pretty good newspaper. In other words, it is real and professional journalism.
Interesting to note how people tend to stop reading from sources that project an aura of bias, isn't it.
I would like to see that section of the paper replaced with an ongoing roundup of information about bribery investigations that lead back to Mr. Allen. Kind of a fitting eulogy don't you think?
the times did switch to mornings sometime in the '80s but it didn't do them any good.
Oh no… I feel a tangent coming on:
crosswind wrote:
>>>>First television changed the way we absorb information. The linear logic of print, which began with the Gutenberg printing press, and revolutionized the world by bringing literacy to the common person, gave way to the kaleidoscopic collage of TV thinking, hence, the "sound bite" mentality of superficial logic. Newspapers and in-depth reporting became endangered species. Even lawyers were forced to change their arguments to juries from reasoned linear discourse to flashy sound bite tactics as juries lost their ability to concentrate on structured debate.<<<<
This is the most concise summary of one of the mechanisms responsible for the “dumbing down” of America that I have ever read. (Of course, the observations and implications are global, and not limited to America.)
As a child I can remember seeing the TV news and thinking that I couldn’t wait to read the whole story in the newspaper. Now it seems that the opposite is the case for a large part of the population. I don’t even want to think about the long-term implications of this.
For what it is worth. Every article I have read in any newspaper which I had the inside information and the exact details were reported wrong by every newspaper, every time without exception. Even a couple of news reports where the report was about me and I was the one interviewed by the "reporter." If that records holds true for the rest of the articles or news I question if any of them are believeable or have any accuracy to them at all. Wonder if the news on TV, on every network is just as inaccurate. Probably so, since the recent presidential election and the "reporting" that was done there because some of us know exactly what happened and what got twisted and why.
CPW
CPW -
I agree with you there. My experience is the same. It is amazing to me what people (reporters, police, etc) are willing to ascribe to another as a "quote." Occasionally, it is downright criminal.
"It will truely be a sad day when the only News Paper vocie we have left in Alaska is a "chain" owned paper..."
None of the three major dailies in Alaska (ADN, FDNM, Juneau Empire) are locally-owned. They're all owned by Outside groups. McClatchy, Dean Singleton/MediaNews and Morris, respectively.
That's just the reality of the modern newspaper biz... and I agree, it's sad.
considering the state of newspapers today, maybe the chains will sell them back to local owners for pennies on the dollar pretty soon.
Notice how much Anchorage news has been making its way into our own Fairbanks newspaper. My mom stopped paying for the newspaper to be delivered because she wanted to here about local news not news from the town below.
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