When former teachers Melinda Munson and Gretchen Wehmhoff took over The Skagway News in Alaska, its future looked bleak.
Poor quality and bad economics had run down a newspaper that for decades served a historic port city hosting throngs of tourists in a typical year. A would-be savior who bought the paper intending to run it from afar had concluded his plan wouldn’t work. Then the pandemic crippled its cash cow: A travel guide popular with cruise ships docking in the local harbor.
Munson and Wehmhoff faced the prospect of either saving the News or seeing it into its grave beside many other small-town rural newspapers. “At a time when newspapers are dying, somebody’s like, ‘Here, take this and make it work.’ And we knew we could do it,” said Munson.
Since taking over in March 2020, the pair have fully digitized the paper, introduced subscription renewals by email instead of postcard and provided PDFs for readers online. Plans to install a paywall are on hold during the pandemic, but still on the agenda.
Other changes include live-streaming Assembly meetings for those uncomfortable attending in person, increasing coverage of the Skagway Traditional Council and other native Alaskans in the community and adding an alternating editors’ column.
In a town where internet access is not a given, the pair decided to display a home-printed copy of the paper in the windows of a bookstore on the first floor of the newspaper office for passersby. Munson personally delivered printed copies to seniors who had no other way to obtain it.
Support for the pair runs high among community members. Jeff Brady, who founded the paper in 1978 and owns the downstairs bookstore, continues to root for their success. “They’re almost two years into it now at the worst possible time to get a paper, even for free, with the pandemic,” he said. “But they’re going to make it, and I’m really happy about that.”
Skagway Mayor Andrew Cremata said he’s seen big improvements. “The professionalism of the paper is back,” he said. “It’s focused locally, which is what it should be. If there’s a basketball game that’s important, that’s covered. If there’s an Assembly item that’s important, that gets covered.”
For Munson and Wehmhoff, running the paper can be hard at times, but they have faith in each other, they said. “I don’t think we’ve ever doubted ourselves,” Wehmhoff said. “I think there’s been times we’ve gone, ‘What the hell have we got ourselves into?’ ”
“Every day,” Munson added.
The pair’s dive into the news business began after Larry Persily, owner of the Wrangell Sentinel, another small-town Alaskan newspaper, bought The Skagway News in 2019.
Before Persily, the paper went through what Mayor Cremata describes as “a difficult time,” with paragraphs being repeated, stories missing their endings and errors in spelling and punctuation.
The 70-year-old Persily had high standards and decided he couldn’t run the paper from outside Skagway. As Brady noted, “It just wasn’t working out having somebody else do it here for him, and so he did the unthinkable and gave it away.”
Persily said he intended to give away the paper by approaching a few select friends, but the offer went viral. Persily received about 140 emails from interested parties across the world, including Israel, Ukraine, Canada and Australia.
“I didn’t intend it to get that out of hand,” Persily said. “I was trying to do a word-of-mouth, but doing word of mouth when all of your friends are journalists was a dumb idea.”
Persily responded to all 140 applicants and interviewed about a dozen. Munson and Wehmhoff stood out, he said, as they showed initiative by driving 800 miles to see Skagway for themselves.
Just weeks after Munson and Wehmhoff started, the pandemic almost ended their tenure. With its printer located in Canada’s nearby Yukon territory, and the Canadian border closed, the paper had no choice but to temporarily go all-digital.
Even more threatening to its future, the cruise industry practically shut down, a severe blow to the local economy and, especially, to The Skaguay Alaskan, a special travel issue the newspaper produces to distribute free among passengers, using a different, historic spelling of the town’s name.
“In past years, we’ve printed 110,000 visitors’ guides,” said Persily. Rather than rely on subscription income, ad revenue from the tourist issue “keeps the newspaper alive,” he said.
But what happens during a pandemic when cruise ships are docked for the season and there’s no tourist edition? “We didn’t get paid,” said Munson. “We’re like the world’s oldest interns.”
When cruise ships returned in the summer of 2021, running at reduced capacity, Wehmhoff and Munson produced 10,000 copies of The Skaguay Alaskan in just two weeks. Wehmhoff crammed the travel guides into her white Jeep Compass and drove them 800 miles from their new printing location in Wasilla.
Munson said she thinks this business model will continue to support the paper in the future with the reappearance of cruise passengers to Alaska. The pair plans to print 60,000 Skaguay Alaskans this coming summer to match predictions that passenger capacity will be at 60 percent of pre-Covid levels.
Global pandemic aside, running any small-town paper comes with challenges. Munson said it is hard to maintain neutrality in a town of 800 people. On occasion, she’s called her husband for information on the town’s senior-services program.
“I’ll call him and say, ‘Hi Paul. This is Melinda Munson from the Skagway News…’ and I know that’s ridiculous because we’re married, and in two hours I’m going to be like, ‘Why didn’t you load the dishwasher?’ ” she said. “But when I introduced myself with my full name, and I said, ‘This is the Skagway News,’ it’s completely clear, and there’s no confusion about if we’re on or off the record.”
Next up? A movie. The headlines about Persily’s quest for new owners attracted filmmaker and former Skagway resident Stan Bush, who worked as a reporter for the paper while in high school. “You cannot have a community without a functioning newspaper,” he said.
His documentary, “The Last Front Page,” aims to show Skagway as it navigates the depths of the pandemic through to recovery. Filming began in September 2020, and production is set to wrap in July 2022.
Munson and Wehmhoff express no regrets about taking over the paper in uncertain times. “I had a little panic moment when we first got here, and it lasted about a day or two,” Munson said. “Then I kind of dug in my heels and said, ‘Okay, we’re just going to do it.’
“I feel like my bones belong in this town, and this is where I want to live forever.”
Fiona Skeggs is a master’s student in the Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communications at Northwestern University. She reported this story as a project in the school’s “Researching the State of Local News” course. This is the second in a series of stories produced by students in that class.