Is the ADN really for all Alaskans?

SPECTRUM/Lew M. Williams Jr.

Male chauvinism is alive

and well at Alaska's largest newspaper.

On its Web site 10 days before the general election, editors of the Anchorage Daily News ran an editorial endorsing Tony Knowles for governor. The editorial was accompanied by a flattering picture of Knowles.

It's fine for a newspaper to take a stand on candidates and issues. But then ADN editors ran a second editorial endorsing independent candidate Andrew Halcro as a possible future governor. A nice portrait of Halcro accompanied that editorial.

As for Sarah Palin, the Republican who attracted more votes in the primary election than the combined totals of Knowles and the other Democrat, Eric Croft, there was nothing but a political cartoon. In the cartoon Palin says: &#8220My education plan? On the job training.” The unattractive woman reporter, which tells us what the cartoonists thinks of his female colleagues, responds: &#8220Uh … not your personal education plan.”

In boosting Knowles, ADN editors condescendingly wrote about Palin: &#8220whose cheery persona distracts attention from her religious social

agenda. … Ms. Palin has undeniable charisma and outsider appeal …”

&#8220Cheery persona … undeniable charisma?” Beauty over brains and a political future? Even male chauvinists can be catty.

For those who follow the newspaper industry this is unsurprising.

According to the Knight Foundation, which examines newspapers and their practices, Alaska's largest newspaper - part of the California-based McClatchy chain - also has the worst diversity rating of 90 daily newspapers in the 50,000 to 100,000 circulation group. And it is getting worse. In 1997, 7.1 percent of the newsroom was nonwhite. By 2005 it had slumped to 3.4 percent.

On its nine-member management team are only two women - the director of marketing/PR and the director of organizational development, whatever that is. It certainly isn't diversity development.

The newspaper says it is &#8220Alaska's Newspaper.” It's mission statement: &#8220To be Alaska's best source of news and information, enhancing the lives of Alaskans.”

Then the newspaper reiterates that Don Young is &#8220Congressman for All Alaskans except Ear (a political columnist) and a Few Others.” Young, of course, has the support of more voters - 213,000 in '04 - than ADN's 71,000 daily readers.

To disagree with Alaska's lone congressman is fine. But to ridicule him again and again over 30 years instead of occasionally helping him help Alaska tells us a lot about the ADN management and staff. It also helps Alaska's critics.

Adopting that cute trick ADN uses to ridicule Young, try this: &#8220Alaska's Newspaper - except for Southeast, Central, Northern, Northwestern and Western Alaska.” Or, as the Turnagain Times says: &#8220The world according to the Anchorage news media ends at Potter Marsh.”

Southeast is used to getting clobbered by the newspaper that says it is all about &#8220enhancing the lives of Alaskans.” Recently, it editorialized against spending money on a road to the site of Ketchikan's future bridge to Gravina Island.

A few days later, it had nothing to say about contracts for transportation projects in Anchorage. The Gravina road, incidentally, accesses land for development even if the bridge is never built.

Five years ago, the newspaper's editors wrote that they would sacrifice the Tongass National Forest timber industry for oil exploration on the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge's coastal plain.

Understandable. One of its staffers was fresh from an environmental organization opposed to Tongass logging. However, since then, the newspaper has done virtually nothing to promote development in ANWR.

Examples of how locally owned newspapers can boost their state were exhibited when Alaskans fought for statehood. Bob Atwood, publisher of the old Anchorage Times, wrote more than 250 editorials promoting statehood, many were reprinted in the Lower 48. He was joined by Bill Snedden, publisher

of the Fairbanks Daily

News-Miner, who set up

an editorial mill turning

out copy for Lower 48

newspapers.

Chain publishers lack the assets of local publishers for investing in community promotion, but they are not helpless.

For example, where was the ADN when Alaska was getting clobbered about earmarks and bridges to nowhere?

Alaska has only two earmarks from the federal treasury, $300,000 for Anchorage's Family Medicine Center and $200,000 for the Nenana Student Living Center.

The prize hypocrite is earmark critic Dr. Tom Coburn, a Republican senator from Oklahoma. His state has $6,610,000 in 20 earmarks. One half of them, including the three largest, are for medical programs!

What about the money for bridges to nowhere that Coburn wanted to send to Katrina-hit states and that the national media

criticized?

The bridge money is Alaska's from another source. Congress created the Federal Highway Trust Fund in 1956. It is fed by the highway taxes that all motorists pay. Every five years, Congress divides the money among states based the size of the state, the number of miles of highway, the amount of money contributed and so forth.

Under the division approved in July 2005, Alaska receives $2 billion over five years. That is Alaska's money by law. Sen. Stevens earmarked some of it for the controversial bridges.

That's Alaska's business, no one else's.

If &#8220Alaska's Newspaper” spent more time promoting Alaska instead of tearing it and its leaders apart, 60 percent of Americans wouldn't believe that most of Alaska is covered with ice and snow and incorrectly believe that Alaskans oppose ANWR development.

Lew M. Williams Jr. is the former owner of the Ketchikan Daily News.

Contact him at lmwjr@

worldnet.att.net.