FIFTH OPENING – The Sitka seine boats Hukilau and Rose Lee pump herring aboard this afternoon at the end of Deep Inlet during the fifth opening in the Sitka Sound sac roe herring fishery. The opening was being held in two locations beginning at 11 a.m. (Sentinel Photo by James Poulson)
By GARLAND KENNEDY
Sentinel Staff Writer
The future of management and operations at the Perform [ ... ]
By Sentinel Staff
The Sitka Sound commercial herring sac roe fishery continued today with open [ ... ]
By GARLAND KENNEDY
Sentinel Sports Editor
After storming into the state 3A boys basketball brac [ ... ]
By Sentinel Staff
The Queen Bees’ spotless season record ended Tuesday night with a 2-1 loss [ ... ]
By SHIRLEY SNEVE
Indian Country Today
A major renovation at an Alaska museum to attract tourist [ ... ]
By CLAIRE STREMPLE
Alaska Beacon
A presentation about a jump in the number of inmate deaths in [ ... ]
By NATHANIEL HERZ
Northern Journal
Tribal and environmental advocates calling for a crackdown o [ ... ]
Police Blotter
Sitka police received the following calls by 8 a.m. today:
March 26
At 2:10 p.m. a man e [ ... ]
Big Rigs Sought
For April 13
The 3 to 5 Preschool’s spring fundraiser and Big Rig event is happening [ ... ]
By SHANNON HAUGLAND
Sentinel Staff Writer
The city’s reassessment of taxable real estate, alo [ ... ]
By Sentinel Staff
The third opening in this year’s Sitka Sound sac roe herring fishery was held Mon [ ... ]
By GARLAND KENNEDY
Sentinel Sports Editor
Sitka High’s Lady Wolves bounced back from an openi [ ... ]
By GARLAND KENNEDY
Sentinel ports Editor
Competing in the state 3A basketball tournament in Anc [ ... ]
By Sentinel Staff
Playing in a competitive division City League volleyball game Monday evening [ ... ]
By JAMES BROOKS
Alaska Beacon
A bill that passed the Alaska House of Representatives on Monday [ ... ]
By NATHANIEL HERZ
Northern Journal
Gus Schumacher, the Anchorage Olympic cross-country skier, a [ ... ]
By CLAIRE STREMPLE
Alaska Beacon
Alaska’s rural schools are on track to access faster interne [ ... ]
By YERETH ROSEN
Alaska Beacon
In the language of the Gwich’in people of northeastern Alaska, [ ... ]
Police Blotter
Sitka police received the following calls by 8 a.m. today:
March 25
At 7:48 a.m. a calle [ ... ]
Vietnam-Era Vets
Invited to Lunch,
Commemoration
American Legion Post 13 will host a luncheon 1-3 p.m. [ ... ]
By GARLAND KENNEDY
Sentinel Staff Writer
The 2024 Sitka Sound sac roe herring fishery got under [ ... ]
By SHANNON HAUGLAND
Sentinel Staff Writer
The Assembly will start the annual process of determi [ ... ]
By Sentinel Staff
Competing in the 3A state championship title basketball game Saturday, the M [ ... ]
By Sentinel Staff
Playing through the afternoon Sunday, City League volleyball teams faced off [ ... ]
Daily Sitka Sentinel
Free to a Good Home: Skagway Newspaper
By MARK THIESSEN
Associated Press
ANCHORAGE (AP) — Free to a good home: One newspaper.
Not a single edition of a paper but the entire newspaper.
Publisher Larry Persily is willing to give away The Skagway News to the right person or couple who are willing to move to Skagway, a cruise ship town that once boasted four newspapers during the height of the Klondike Gold Rush days.
“The only way this paper has a long-term future, and anything that I’ve ever seen that works with small town weeklies or bi-weeklies is where the small town editor owns, lives and are in the community,” he said. “And that’s what this needs.”
Persily has been editing the newspaper he purchased in April remotely from Anchorage, which is 500 miles west of Skagway, near the top of the Alaska Panhandle.
It’s a two-person shop, with an editor and a business person on site. The editor gave notice, prompting Persily, a Chicago transplant who has a long history in Alaska journalism, to look for another solution.
He declined to say what he paid for the newspaper, but he said it was more than a fully decked-out SUV but less than six figures.
The paper has a circulation of about 500, pretty good for a town with a population of less than 1,000 people, but the population swells with young people in the summer working tourism jobs.
The newspaper also benefits greatly from tourist trade.
With the help of a robust and advertising-filled visitors guide that is handed out to the 1 million or so cruise ship passengers that visit Skagway every summer, the newspaper can pay the owners a salary, but they probably also can’t cover a mortgage.
Persily said the new owners need to stem the circulation decline, turn online readers into paid subscribers with the help of a paywall and get even more advertising into the visitor’s guide.
“I think this is the best way to do it, is to find the right person or couple,” he said.
This May 29 photo shows Larry Persily, publisher of The Skagway News, in the newspaper office in Skagway. The publisher is willing to give the paper away to the right person. (Molly McCammon via AP)
Persily will set you up to “run the paper and hopefully you and Skagway will live happily ever after. And that’s what’s best.”
Weekly newspapers change hands with some amount of regularity, said Rick Edmonds, the media business analyst for the Poynter Institute, a nonprofit school for journalists.
Typically, they are put for sale, and the best-case scenario is they are purchased. If not, the owners consider either closing the newspaper or in some cases, giving it away.
Edmonds said gifting a newspaper is not unheard of in the industry.
Persily said he has not considered selling the Skagway News. “You can’t sell a paper that doesn’t make money,” he said.
It has been a tough 15-year stretch for newspapers because of online pressures and the recession of a decade ago, which led to the closure of many Main Street businesses that traditionally bought newspaper advertising, according to research by Penny Abernathy, the Knight Chair in Journalism and Digital Media Economics professor at the University of North Carolina.
Since 2004, about a fourth of them, or 2,100 newspapers, in the U.S, have closed, including 70 dailies. Abernathy’s research found that has left 200 counties in the U.S., with populations ranging from 600 to 1 million, without a newspaper.
Jeff Brady started the Skagway News in 1978 and owned it until 2015. He encouraged his friend Persily to buy the paper earlier this year from other owners.
“I certainly hope it carries on, and the town certainly doesn’t want it to go away” he said.
Brady still lives in Skagway and is more than willing to help out the new owners of the paper — to a point. “I just don’t want to be covering assembly meetings till midnight anymore,” he joked.
Persily is adamant that the person who ultimately gets the newspaper must cover all things Skagway.
He said one person asked him if there would be time to do investigative reporting of statewide and national interest while also running the paper.
“No, you’re going to cover volleyball games, the assembly, bake sales, the remodel of the kitchen at the school, road conditions in the winter,” Persily said. “It is small town life. Don’t think this is going to be your step to investigative prominence reporting.”
Persily said his first preference is to give the newspaper to someone from Alaska “so I don’t have to explain to them why the ferry system is messed up or why global warming is affecting salmon returns with low water in the streams or how school funding is a political issue here.”
If Alaskans aren’t an option, his selection process will be somewhat arbitrary. However, be forewarned: You’re out if you misspell “Skagway” or “Persily” in your email to him at paper@alaskan.com.
His goal is to have new owners in place by January. If he can’t find anyone, he’ll need to fill the editor’s position while he continues to find new owners.
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20 YEARS AGO
March 2004
Matthew C. Hunter of Sitka recently returned from Cuba as part of a St. Olaf College International and Off-Campus Studies program. Hunter, a junior physics major at St. Olaf College, is the son of Robert and Kim Hunter of Sitka.
50 YEARS AGO
March 1974
Eighth graders have returned from a visit to Juneau to see the Legislature. They had worked for it since Christmas vacation ... Clarice Johnson’s idea of a “White Elephant” sales was chosen as the best money-maker; Joe Roth won the political cartoon assignment; highest government test scorers were Ken Armstrong, Joanna Hearn, Linda Montgomery, Lisa Henry, Calvin Taylor and David Licari .....