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Newspaper's founder recalls early adventures

February 3rd 3:04 pm | Carey Restino Print this article   Email this article   Create a Shortlink for this article

The first edition of the Bristol BayTimes looked, according to its publisher, more like a counterculture newsletter than a newspaper. Handwritten artwork and a timeless story about the potential impact of an oil lease sale on the fishing industry were the foundation of the "oddball" production, produced by hand on an IBM typewriter, said the paper's founder, Fritz Johnson.

Johnson arrived in Southwest Alaska in the late '70s, planning to sail his recently-purchased Bristol Bay double-ender to Homer. He didn't make it even 20 miles past Clarks Point where, he likes to say, "I pretty much washed up on the beach." The people of Clarks Point took him in and befriended him, and Bristol Bay became his home.

A college-trained journalist, Johnson was surprised to learn the Bay had no local newspaper. He inquired about teaming up with a local advertising publication, but that didn't work out. Instead, he decided to do it on his own. On Sept. 26, 1980, the first edition of the Bristol BayTimes, all eight pages of it, hit the stands for 50 cents a copy.

"There was a lot of community support for having a local paper," said Johnson, who still lives in Dillingham.

The second edition of the paper substantiated that support, the founder said. A controversial story about the construction quality of recently-built low income housing caused a bit of a stir.

"That story helped kick the paper into gear," Johnson said, "People realized that a newspaper could be an advocate for people who felt they didn't have a voice."

As the publication expanded, it eventually became a biweekly and finally a weekly. Over the next 12 years, dozens of writers, artists and photographers contributed to the effort in large and small ways, covering an area spanning some 40,000 square miles.

Johnson found a mothballed printing press that had been purchased by a group of nonprofits but sat unused in Naknek, and the Mosquito Press print shop was born.

There were some missteps, like trying to produce an unusually-formatted paper with fold-out leafs like a magazine.

"The joke was that you couldn't put the BayTimes down because it was folded like a road map," he said.

The publisher also learned the hard way that people often took the printed word literally. A humorous piece by guest writer describing a fictional brawl between members of the local press club was misinterpreted by many readers as real, Johnson recalled. The lesson? Articles intended as humor ought to be labeled as such, or readers could be mislead.

In the early days, when the paper was published infrequently, news sometimes got old before the next publication date. In one case, there was a shooting in Dillingham that killed a local school board

member right after the paper had come out.

By the time the next edition was published, the basic news of the murder was widely known. But the story couldn't be ignored, nor could the fact that school board elections were right around the corner. How best to cover both stories in limited space?

"The headline on the story read, 'Shooting leaves school board vacancy,'" he recalled.

Johnson continued fishing in the summers, arranging for 'guest editors' to keep the presses rolling during the fishing season.

"Fishing subsidized the newspaper, and when fishing wasn't great, the newspaper and the print shop helped subsidize those of us who worked there," he said.

But running the paper took a lot of effort and was never very profitable, and eventually Johnson began to look for a buyer that would keep the paper alive.

Other publications started up in the region, further diluting the BayTimes profitability. But though buyers presented offers, none were acceptable to Johnson, who said he considered the newspaper an important part of the Bristol Bay community.

"I like to think it was a well-respected grass-roots community effort," he said. "Certainly a great many people contributed to it in really meaningful ways."

In 1992, Alaska Newspapers Inc., owned by Calista Corporation, purchased the newspaper just as Johnson said he had about decided to close up shop.

While the effort was substantial, he still believes in the need for a community paper, especially in places like rural Alaska.

"Newspapers are important to a community," he said "They give substance to community issues in ways that Facebook can't when every minute's posting is as important as the last. Some community issues demand the kind of deliberate attention you only get with ink on paper."

 

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