ALCOHOL WAS A FACTOR: Weekly Newspapering in Rural Alaska

JANE’S ADDICTION

I have come to call it Jane’s Addiction.

The Chilkat Valley News is a weekly newspaper (circulation 1,500). Our deadlines are on Wednesday and we all stay until midnight or later laying out the paper. There are four of us: a layout guy, part-time copy editor and two reporters.

I have written headlines, and cut-lines for the photos I have taken during the week. Then, before we can go home, before the paper is sent electronically to a southeastern Alaska town hundreds of miles away, we have to proof read each page; three times.

Let me tell you, A’s start to look like E’s at 1 a.m.

After I hit the sack, the paper is brought to life. By morning, even before the sun comes up, before I rise, the thing is printed ready for distribution in Haines.

But here’s where the trouble starts.

And here is the reason I came to Haines in the first place.

In my early journalism career, I skipped the stop in a small town like Haines. I landed a job as a police reporter in Norfolk, Virginia, where the daily paper had a circulation of 140,000; ten times that of the weekly in Chilkat.

I saw this gig as a way to find out what I missed. I wanted to write headlines and take photos, I wanted to deliver papers.

Boy, did I get my wish.

Because, up here in southeastern Alaska, there is a madcap weekly battle just to get the paper into town.

That’s where Jane’s Addiction comes into play.

Jane is the wife of the newspaper owner. She’s Australian and her accent is a breath of exotica here. She pays the paper’s bills and each week, drives herself half-crazy making sure those four boxes of papers can get to town.

Each week, it’s a battle against the foul and fickle Alaska weather, where snow and rain and fog and gloom can sock the town, and not allow the one propeller-plane airline to make landings here.

The papers are printed in Petersberg, down near Ketchikan. The first leg is easy enough: The printers put the boxes on a commercial Alaska Airlines flight to Juneau.

But then it gets tough.

The owners of the smaller airline will not allow Jane to put her boxes on flights as freight. The U.S. mail is the only delivery that gets that privilege. Jane has to buy a ticket and actually take the flight herself, or get someone else to do it, to be able to get the papers delivered by air.

And many weeks, especially during the winter, the weather messes with pilots here, making the Alaska bush-pilot job one of the nation’s most dangerous professions.

Sometimes, Jane will send her husband Tom to Juneau on the morning flight Thursday, where he picks up the papers and flies right back. She has advertised in the paper that she’ll pay $100 to anyone taking the half-hour puddle-jump from Juneau to Haines.

Carry the four boxes and make $100 bucks — enough to buy a few oranges here.

So far, no one has taken Jane up on her offer.

So that leaves the ferry. The Alaska Marine Highway connects a bunch of small towns throughout southeastern Alaska.

But even the daily ferry is no sure deal. The ferry people will not allow freight without a passenger, so Jane has devised a secret way to get around all the bureaucracy.

It’s genius, if you ask me.

Every week is a nail-biter. When things go well, the papers arrive on Thursday. When things go bad, really bad, they don’t arrive until Monday.

For the last two weeks, I have had the privilege of playing paperboy again.

One day I drove the three miles out to the ferry terminal and picked up the four boxes. Then we drove back to the office and had to hand-stuff a green holiday ad flier into each paper. It was like a backwoods assembly line. My fingers were black from newsprint.

Then we had to place address labels on the papers that go to the post office in town. Nobody has home delivery here; they come to town and check their P.O. boxes.

As Jane did the labels, I counted out papers, in stacks of 25, for delivery at local business outlets. the IGA gets 150 a week, but the Captain’s Corner Motel only 10.

Then, on that first delivery day, Jane and I hit the streets. She pulled up to each locale and I ran in with the new papers. At each stop, people were there to greet me.

“Finally! The paper!” they said. Sometimes, people were even waiting for the pleasure.

Because, in Haines, people don’t just read the weekly paper; they study it.

Before I leave each shop, however, I have to collect the unsold papers, for which the merchants are given credit.

Every Thursday, if the paper does arrive, is a sprint to get the thing delivered hot off the press.

Or in Alaska, cold off the plane. Or boat. Or truck.

The weather report is in for this Thursday.

Things don’t look good.