ALCOHOL WAS A FACTOR: EPISODE 4:

John Michael Glionna
7 min readDec 15, 2018

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Meeting the Boss

It was late on a Sunday afternoon and I’d just returned from a long walk around tiny Haines, Alaska. I’d hiked up to the entrance of a popular trail up local Mount Rapinski but had to turn back because of the encroaching darkness.
I’d left my iPhone back at the grimy dungeon apartment. It was dark by the time I got home and I turned on a light.
There was a message on the smart phone; from Jane Pascoe, the charming Australian wife of the owner of the Chilkat Valley News.
I called back. Tom wanted to meet me in the office, she said.

In ten minutes.
It seemed more like a summons than an invitation.
So this was it; I was going to meet Tom Morphet, the most-hated and respected man in Haines.

Morphet had been away in Anchorage my entire first week in town. He’d joined other newly-elected local government officials from across Alaska in a seminar on the niceties of politics; you know, how to be nice to one other in meetings, no shouting and no roundhouse punches.
And if you knew Morphet, you’d know how imperative it was that he attended.
As it turns out, Morphet’s trip to Anchorage was part of the reason I was in Alaska in the first place.
For twenty-five years, Tom ran the 1,500-circulation local weekly before he bought the operation in 2011. The previous owner had had enough and wanted out.
Tom was already at the paper 70 and 80 hours a week, in the passenger seat, so to speak; riding shotgun.

So, when the owner opted out, he just slid over and took hold of the steering wheel.
When you live in a place for as long as Tom has, you get to know people; you get to know what’s going on. He’d run into fishermen, river guides and ski-tour operators in the IGA or the Mountain Market or the Haines Brewery.

People talked. They’d tell him things.
Morphet’s paper is all Haines, all the time. There are no wire-service filler stories of any kind. Morphet fills his normally 12-to-16-page newspaper with all things Haines, which wasn’t as hard as you think; thanks to the many government meetings held by the town government.
Government here is known as the borough, and they like to meet. They have committees that give birth to other committee, that run off and sire still more committees. Some people believe there’s not enough to do here in Haines, Alaska.
There are just so many things to decide in a town of 2,500 hardy residents, with an annual budget of $12 million; chump change, if you think about it. In a civic sense, it’s about the same amount of rubles Donald Trump tips his limo driver.
But Tom didn’t always agree with the decisions made by all of those august bodies.

In the fall of 2016, he decided to take a stand:
He ran for a seat on the borough assembly; that big daddy of all Haines committees — Cesar’s court itself.
Charles Wohlforth, a columnist for the Alaska dispatch News in Anchorage did a piece on Tom’s decision. Of course, this being Alaska, a state whose sheer size could swallow tiny Texas and still leave it hungry for New York and California, the columnist did the interview by phone.
Morphet sent a photograph that ran with the piece. He’s sitting back, perusing the latest edition of his beloved newspaper, his leg cocked up on a bunch of scattered files.
It’s the same desk where I sit now, as I write this.
Here’s Wohlforth’s tidy lead:
“Haines Borough Assemblyman Tom Morphet didn’t like a headline last week about his demand for a special election, but he couldn’t complain because he owns the newspaper.”
Tom campaigned for office on a platform for less government, fewer committees and a scaled-down police department, which he suggested could even go part-time, a nod to good old Alaskan self-determination.
“Local essayist Heather Lende writes the obituaries for the paper and has developed a national reputation for her three folksy books about life in Haines. She knows both the town and Tom.
Tom has an Achilles Heel: He’s stubborn. He raises his voice. And he sometimes makes enemies.
“Most people thought when Tom ran there was no way he would get elected,” Lende told the newspaper. “Except for Tom. And he campaigned unbelievably … Even when people would slam the door, he’d say ‘wait-wait-wait.’”
Well, guess what: Tom won.
Lende, who also won a seat, said she believes that even people who disliked Tom acknowledged that he was tough, intellectual and inquisitive and would represent them well.
As a reporter who covered the town for so many years, he was also the most well-informed person who had ever run for office in Haines, Alaska, or anywhere else.
But there was a problem; and her name was Karen Garcia.
A feisty Chicago native, Garcia is a millennial who had worked alongside Morphet for years, putting out the paper. They were like Haines’ Bernstein and Woodward; they broke stories. They made people uncomfortable.
Morphet was proud of Garcia, a creature seemingly spawned from his journalistic loins. He was bemused by her intensity. He told me once that if the New York Times covered the world like Karen Garcia covered Haines, the planet would implode.
Morphet and Garcia competed against a local public radio station, KHNS. Some people said they didn’t need to read the weekly because they already saw the news on the radio station’s website, which posted stories every day.
That pissed Morphet off. He and Garcia started breaking so many stories that the radio station had to hire a second reporter.
Still, Garcia used to beat the station’s two reporters every week. She had attitude, which she expressed with a small battery-operated bullhorn that spouted phrases like “Bullshit or horseshit, you’re still full of shit.” And “That’s BULLshit.”

I was soon to learn the device was indispensable for covering Haines.
Still, Morphet frequently clashed with his reporter. They argued so often in the newsroom, at such pitched levels, the few others in the room had to shush them up.
She didn’t like the fact that Morphet had decided to run for office without the courtesy of informing her beforehand. They went behind closed doors and had it out.

They yelled; a lot. Morphet said his decision to throw his hat into the ring of local politics was last minute.
Still, Garcia felt betrayed. She demanded to know how her boss was going to run a newspaper and put his stamp on the local agenda.
It was a conflict of interest, she said.
And then she quit.
Not long afterward, Morphet made a decision.

At 55, with more than half of his life spent running his scrappy and beloved little newspaper, he needed a change.
And there were whispers around town. Morphet has a strong personality. Some people were worried he’d wield his newspaper like a club, that’d he’d steamroll his personal agenda.
Many began repeating the phrase: conflict of interest.

All of this is kind of ludicrous, if you ask me. In a town whose population could fit inside a high school gymnasium, there simply aren’t enough people to go around for all the jobs that need doing.
In Haines, fisherman and recreation business owners sit on boards that decide issues for the financial gain of a few (Them.)
Residents play various roles here; they have to. You’ll see one person working at the grocery store and then spot them behind the desk at the library. People who choose to live in Haines have to cobble together financial portfolios to stay solvent.
Morphet got it: His untidy situation was something his newspaper would have aggressively covered, were it anyone else.

So he put the paper up for sale, in part to avoid that dreaded conflict-of-interest charge.
Still, he feels strongly that any buyer should have investigative teeth and a commitment to the community. He offered to sell the whole thing to Garcia for $15,000, a quarter of what he paid for it.
She turned him down.
So Morphet stepped aside. He took an office down the hall, a cluttered space (as is his like) in the quarters of a local environment group, maybe 50 steps from the newsroom he once commanded.
He put the word out among friends in the Lower 48 that he needed a seasoned journalist to come to Haines and run the paper while he looked for a permanent buyer.
Stang, the Seattle-area government reporter, was the first replacement. He did two five-week tours of duty in Haines, but decided to bail.

So Tom sent out smoke signals.
And from my backyard in Henderson, Nevada, I spotted the swirling smoke, that call for help. It was there, ever so faint, on the far-north horizon.
I headed for Haines.
And I was about to have my first meeting with the man who brought me there.

Tom Morphet was about to school me on Haines and small-town newspapering.

TOMORROW: The Voice, The Man

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John Michael Glionna
John Michael Glionna

Written by John Michael Glionna

Former Big City Journalist turned Sojourner

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