Talk:Anchorage Daily News

message: A picture or logo would be nice for this newspaper article.---JeffreyAllen1975 06:38, 15 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I couldn't copy their masthead from their site. An inspection of the source code for the main page seems to indicate they use a java script to display the masthead--probably in order to prevent copying. That may also be the reason that their site takes so freaking long to load in Safari on my computer and leaves me with spinning beachballs all the time... cluth 21:52, 13 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I nabbed it with a screen capture program (they're great for lifting logos of websites). It's not much of a logo but I'll upload it anyway. Jarfingle 01:09, 26 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: If it would complement the article, a GIF of each day's front page is available on the ADN site near the bottom (try this link for the one from today, unless they remove it daily). Clicking on the link brings up a PDF of the front page, although that may be a copyvio. The low-res front page image would more easily qualify for fair use... cluth 06:26, 12 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Oh, heck, I was bold and just uploaded it and put it in the article. cluth 06:41, 12 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Picture or logo?

message: An edit recently added a section about criticisms of this newspaper for their positive coverage of the Iditarod . I'm curious: Is this really that notable? There is one citation, but it comes from a site that seems to have a definite animal rights agenda. I'm not from Alaska, so I don't really know the views up there; does anyone have any opinion on the notability of this new section? Heimstern Läufer 23:25, 25 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I certainly don't think it's notable. Very unlogical and basically is substantiated as a complaint by one woman who made remarks on a Texas radio show, from what I can see. It seems like this is an animal rights activist who, looking through the history and repeatedly posted the same blurb time and time again without consulting anyone. Furthermore, it is certainly not NPoV as there's no argument from ADN's PoV. Just my thoughts. Jarfingle 01:09, 26 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The general consensus of about 95% of Alaskans from all political standpoints (but don't take my word for it--my polling data is NOT scientific...) is that Outside animal rights folks who criticize the Iditarod have absolutely no clue what they are talking about. Everything I've ever seen and heard indicates that these dogs WANT and LOVE to run (they're bred to run!) and that the dogs are far better taken care of than most domestic pet dogs. Mushers love and take care of their dogs as their children (you should see them playing and hugging them--the love is obvious), and they and the dogs truly develop a symbiotic dependence on each other. Just from standing at the start line and watching the dogs chomping at the bit to get going, it's my opinion that it would be animal cruelty NOT to allow them to run. Furthermore, the race is staffed with thousands of volunteers and veterinarians to ensure that the dogs are properly taken care of. If a dog gets sick or injured, the vets ensure that the dogs are properly cared for and removed from the race if necessary (many mushers will do this voluntarily and will even bundle the dog up in the sled to get it to the next checkpoint--they don't want their dogs hurt, either). Just my opinion and what I know from living up here for 11 years. I'm sure there are properly sourced interviews and articles on this subject that we can dig up if this complaint ends up deserving mention... cluth 06:24, 12 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: There's a little more info in the Dogs section of the Iditarod article. The following section discusses criticisms of the race, but that section (especially based on my experience) doesn't sound very NPOV to me--there's no "defense" of the other side (such as the support that veterinarians in the race give). That could probably use work... cluth 08:14, 12 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Iditarod controversy?

message: According to one of my journalism professors, the ADN has consistently won awards for its modern design and layout (and especially with some of the art on the front page of the Life &... section). As always, I will try to look this up and perhaps write something, but I always tend to forget, so if someone else is familiar with this subject and can expound upon it, feel free... cluth 06:47, 12 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Layout awards?

message: There's a definite need for more discussion of the story of the period of the Fannings' ownership.Ehol (talk) 03:59, 23 March 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Fanning years

message: I came to this site to find out if the ADN was accused of (or suspected of) having a bias in favor or against a particular political party or ideology, given that it's been the paper of record regarding a great many of Gov. Sarah Palin's scandals (Troopergate, Librarian-gate, etc.), but could find nothing here nor elsewhere.  Is there a simple answer or is the answer so contrived that only someone with a complex understanding of Alaskan politics could answer it?  If anything, it should be a part of this article, yeah?  
After all, a mention of the political position(s) of other newspapers of record are on those Wikipedia articles … so why not this one?  —MicahBrwn (talk) 00:57, 6 September 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Political positions of the editorial board? 

message: Todd Purdum claims that the paper "maintains no full-time bureau in Juneau to cover the statehouse." True?--The lorax (talk) 15:42, 2 July 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: No full-time bureau in Juneau?

message: The ADN changed its name today, to the Alaska Dispatch News.
In the "Criticism" section, there is discussion of a 17-year-old important article carried by the Anchorage Press. Because of its age, that article cannot be found on either the Anchorage Press website, nor any apparent non-archive source.  Wikipedia does not permit archive sources, but the Press article is important nonetheless. I'm not sure what to do, so I'm pasting the article in its entirety. If another Wikipedia editor can find a better solution, I would welcome it. I believe a few typos are probably from the original Press article.
Paper in Peril
by David Holthouse
May 15 - 21, 1997 / Vol. 6, Ed. 19
My family moved to Alaska in 1978, when I was seven, and I grew up reading the Anchorage Daily News. There were still two papers in town then. People used to say The Anchorage Times put them to sleep, and the Daily News pissed them off. But I remember the Daily News as a fearless paper, provocative and well-written. It made me want to be a journalist. Now it just makes me a little sad.
Pick up this morning's copy and compare it with the same day's paper from two or three years ago. You'll probably notice several differences: The paper looks more conservative. Photos are smaller. So are the stories. There's more routine, report-by-numbers journalism - stories about government press releases or chamber of commerce meetings, for example, which are inevitably duller than what a good reporter can dig up on her own. Articles once relegated to briefs inside the Metro section now play on the front page, and the type of in-depth, vividly written news features that once set the Daily News apart and won it a Pulitzer Prize are few and far between.
The paper has shifted from selective, enterprising journalism to broad, shallow coverage. In a fast-paced age when local papers are struggling to even stay relevant, the Daily News is hurtling backward, to a time when the newspaper on your doorstep was as comfortably bland and predictable as the bottle of milk beside it.
Daily News staffers agree the quality of journalism in the paper has taken a nose dive. Several of its best reporters have recently quit in frustration. Newsroom morale has sunk to an all-time low, and the mood toward Kent Pollock, who replaced Howard Weaver as editor-in-chief last year, is so pervasively mutinous that if Pollock's corpse turned up on the mud flats tomorrow, there'd be a long list of suspects.
A lot of people hate their jobs and despise their bosses, but for Daily News journalists, such fear and loathing is still a novelty, something they associated with other people - with, say, the subjects of their own past investigations. More than 10 current Daily News staffers were interviewed for this story. All but one spoke on the condition of anonymity, and even then did so nervously. "Kent would probably fire me for talking," one editor says. "I'm a journalist, and I'm afraid to openly tell the truth. That should tell you how bad things are here."
Pollock says he actually has a lot of friends in the newsroom. But, he concedes, "Change has not come easily here. That's no secret." His primary goal as an editor, he says, was to re-shape the paper's coverage to make it more balanced. "What I've tried to institute, first and foremost, is a value for fairness and an absolute ban on commentary in our news stories. That's something that eats away at the one thing we have to sell, which is our credibility. So I've been pretty strident about that." However, he says, "I think the staff has come around nicely."
That feeling does not seem to be widely shared. In fact, no one I spoke with except for Pollock seemed optimistic about the paper's future. Columnist Mike Doogan was the only one to speak on the record.
When Howard left, he took the idea of this newspaper with him," he says. "That idea was informed both by the fact that Howard's a great journalist, and that he was born and raised here. We haven't replaced that." Doogan describes Pollock's vision of newspapering as "much more mainstream and conventional," and says Pollock has made the Daily News "more like other newspapers than the Daily News of the past."
At the top level, we've lost a sense of identity."
The golden age
Jerry Grilly - the charismatic, party hound publisher who helped Howard Weaver lead the Daily News to victory over the Times in one of the country's last great daily newspaper wars - used to exhort his staff to make "The best fucking paper in the country."
The Daily News was never that good, but there was a time when it was arguably the best paper in the country with a weekday circulation under 100,000.
In 1989, the paper received journalism's most prestigious honor, a Pulitzer Prize, for "People in Peril," a dramatic series of stories on alcoholism, suicide and other social problems in rural villages across Alaska. Around the same time, the Exxon Valdez ran aground. A team of Daily News reporters and photographers were the first journalists from outside Valdez to arrive on the scene, and they quickly set the pace. For the first week following the disaster, reporters for the Washington Post and New York Times could be seen in Valdez hotel lobbies frantically cribbing facts and angles from that morning's Anchorage Daily News - writers for the largest, most esteemed papers in the country were getting scooped like 31 flavors.
The golden age of the Daily News began to dim one day in June of 1992, when the presses rolled for the last time inside the Anchorage Times building on 4th Avenue. McClatchy Newspapers - the Sacramento, Calif.-based media conglomerate that purchased the Daily News in 1979 - quickly bought the old Times presses, dismantled them and shipped the pieces to Tacoma, Wash.; no need to make it that much easier for an upstart to meddle with McClatchy's new monopoly. Without a competitor, the Daily News was suddenly worth $100 million or more, and could produce an endless stream of profits in the millions of dollars yearly.
For the bean counters at McClatchy, the death of the Times may have been occasion to rejoice, but for the newsroom staff, the victory was bitterly Pyrhhic. "The Times had been the focus of everyone's energy," says Doogan. "The competition was a tremendous motivating factor, and once it was gone, the paper lost momentum."
Morale also suffered when newsroom employees - many of whom had put in grueling hours during the war - received no payoff for helping McClatchy take out the competition. "I think you could see the writing on the wall the day the Times died," says longtime copy editor Desmond Toups, who left the paper last fall and now works at the Seattle Times. "After a battle like ours, there might have been a little pomp and ceremony and bonuses to end it. Instead it was, 'Great, we won, now go back to work.' No class at all. And it went downhill from there."
In a competitive situation, McClatchy had reason to pump resources into the paper. Once that scenario ended, the company focused on milking its new cow. The changes came gradually at first: news sections were shrunk, annual raises got leaner (by 1993, employees with "excellent" job reviews could expect 2 to 3 percent raises, a practice that continues today). And rates for advertising space and home delivery began to rise.
McClatchy replaced Grilly as publisher in June 1993 with the comparatively colorless Fuller Cowell, who quickly began drawing the purse strings tight. Cowell's selection inaugurated a new regime of McClatchy-appointed management.
It's hard to imagine McClatchy, via Fuller Cowell, signing off on another 'People In Peril,'" says one journalist who played a key role in the series. "Whereas Gerald Grilly used to say 'Let's be the best fucking paper in the country,' Cowell's motto is more like "Let's be an excellent paper for our circulation class.'"
That's a publisher's way of saying "Be as good as you can be, but don't ask to spend more money." The results are obvious. McClatchy's other paper of the Daily News' size, The Modesto Bee, is a long-standing bastion of mediocrity. Anchorage's only daily paper resembles it more with each passing day.
The Daily News used to have a reputation for irreverence toward politicians, big business and old-school journalism. It was known as a "writer's paper," which meant reporters were allowed and even encouraged to use a literary sense of storytelling and stretch beyond standard news writing.
Larry Campbell, a former Daily News reporter who now chairs UAA's journalism department, once wrote a front page article as a poem.
The morning it came out, Howard Weaver came by my desk, and he said 'That was interesting. I'm not sure we'll ever do it again, but it was interesting,'" he recalls.
Campbell also wrote a profile of Floyd, a local character who stood in all seasons at the intersection of Minnesota and Northern Lights, holding up hand-lettered signs and waving at traffic. Campbell spent several days with him, getting a feel for his unusual staccato cadences, and wrote the story's conclusion in Floyd-speak. It was a hell of a piece.
It's hard to imagine such an article having a place in today's Anchorage Daily News. This isn't entirely Kent Pollock's fault, Doogan says. "It's pretty simplistic to pin it on one guy. There's really no way to talk about what's happened to the Daily News honestly without admitting that it just feels more corporate. There are more meetings, and people are doing more paperwork."
Years before Pollock or Cowell arrived, reporters say, the fire in the paper's belly was flickering. Several things sucked away its air: The death of the Times; the meager raises; the loss of several top writers, who left for bigger, better-paying papers. Also, the newsroom was getting older - more journalists were married with children.
But while Daily News journalists agree the paper began to grow more staid after the Times folded, they say Pollock's arrival greatly accelerated the decline. They charge he is "dumbing down" the Daily News - making it more friendly to the rich and powerful, concentrating its efforts on perfunctory fact gathering and crushing its maverick image. It's the flip side of Pollock's self-proclaimed campaign to stamp out bias in the news pages. He portrays himself as the paper's savior, but his nickname in the newsroom is "El Loco."
Battle stations
On September 13 of last year, Fuller Cowell called a special meeting in the middle of the newsroom.
It is a testament to the incredible investigative skills of this newsroom that what I'm about to tell you folks is not a surprise to any of you," he began. "It's my distinct pleasure to introduce the new editor of the Anchorage Daily News, Mr. Kent Pollock."
Applause was less than enthusiastic. For many, the announcement was a shock. When Howard Weaver announced he was leaving his post at the helm of the paper to take a job in Sacramento advising McClatchy on its electronic media efforts, many in the newsroom assumed managing editor Pat Dougherty would replace him (Weaver has since taken a job as editorial page editor of McClatchy's flagship paper, the Sacramento Bee. He declined to comment for this story.) Weaver and Dougherty went back 20 years, to when they co-owned and edited The Alaska Advocate, an alternative weekly newspaper known for its exposés and biting political commentary.
Weaver had previously been a reporter for the Daily News - he helped it win a 1976 Pulitzer for coverage of the Teamsters - and rejoined it as editorial page editor. In January of 1980, he helped bring Dougherty on board to create and edit We Alaskans magazine. When Weaver was named editor-in-chief in 1981, he set the paper on the ambitious, experimental course for which it later became well known. Dougherty was his right hand man. Under their leadership, the Daily News began to win the circulation war in Anchorage and build a reputation for hard-hitting, first-rate journalism.
In a news story about his resignation, Weaver endorsed Dougherty as the next editor. It was like Picard leaving the Enterprise - the crew was sure Commander Riker would inherit the captain's chair.
But McClatchy brass had other plans. Soon after Weaver announced his departure, friends in the Sacramento Bee newsroom told several Daily News reporters that one of the Bee's assistant managing editors was up for the Anchorage job. That same week, Pollock visited the Daily News and, incredibly, met with employees in every department but the newsroom, including advertising, production, circulation and human resources. The handling of Pollock's hiring, including his avoidance of the newsroom, the dismissal of Weaver's counsel, and the fact that he was a Californian who knew little about Alaska, bred disappointment, anger and suspicion.
By the time Cowell called the meeting, Pollock knew he was facing a staff that was wary if not downright hostile, and seemed anxious to assuage their fears.
The personality of this newspaper is awesome," he told the newsroom. (Several reporters recorded the meeting.) "It's not just another newspaper. And I want to sort of get all the ideas that I'm coming here from Sacramento to Bee-ize the Anchorage Daily News out of the way, because nothing could be further from the truth ... my orders - very direct orders - are not to change the personality of this paper."
Once Pollock opened the floor to questions, he was immediately challenged. The mood, says one witness, was "venomous."
"What's the personality of the paper that you spoke about?" a journalist asked.
Aggressive," Pollock replied. "Creative. Well-written. Not run of the mill. Surprising. Unpredictable. Professional."
"What's there to change if you don't change that?" a sports writer asked.
"Maybe nothing," said Pollock.
"Why do we need a change in managers then?" someone shouted from across the room.
Because Howard's going to Sacramento."
Copy editor Desmond Toups spoke up: "We want to know why you're here instead of Pat if there's not going to be any changes."
"Well, I didn't say there are not going to be any changes," Pollock said.
The first impression was lousy on both sides. "Attacking Kent then and there was poor judgment," one journalist says. "Like it or not, he was the new boss ... The paper's still suffering the fallout from that day. We got off on the wrong foot, and Kent's relationship with the newsroom just went to shit."
Despite journalists' suspicions, Pollock says he did not arrive with corporate marching orders. After he was hired, he says, he went to McClatchy C.E.O. Erwin Potts and several other top guns and said "OK, I got the job, thank you very much, now what do want me to do up there?' And I'm not bullshitting you, what they said was 'We believe you're a good journalist, go do good journalism.' There was absolutely no agenda."
Pollock seems to be of two minds about whether, despite his initial vows, he has altered the Daily News. "I don't think I've changed the paper's character greatly. Some people would say I have, but I've tried not to. I guess some of the things I've done have absolutely changed the character, so I suppose I failed there. But I have to follow my own values."
Ear ache
What are those values? Before he formally took over, Pollock gave a wide-ranging interview to former Anchorage Press editor Chris Ridder, in which he said senior city desk reporter David Hulen had recently written a story that "just went on and on," and described the layout of a story put together by Toups as "sort of vomited onto the page." Pollock told Ridder one of his primary goals was to reduce bias in the Daily News. A laudable ambition, perhaps, but not one Pollock raised when he met his new staff. They heard about it first from the Press.
During his first few months as editor, Pollock frequently put himself in front of microphones at public affairs ranging from community councils to Rotary Clubs and the Anchorage Chamber of Commerce. He often spoke about his mission to combat slanted reporting at the Daily News, infuriating many journalists there. It seemed like he was desperate to ingratiate himself with the community at their expense. Sources at the Daily News say Pollock also trashed the paper and Howard Weaver in private conversations that he naively assumed would not get back to the staff.
Pollock now maintains he wasn't slamming the Daily News so much as he was criticizing biased journalism in general. "In almost every case, I was careful to frame (the criticism) in something like 'I haven't been in Anchorage long, but I haven't seen any evidence that the Daily News newsroom is any different than many in that it has some problems with the community's perception of what it does.
"I feel that newspapers generally are viewed as being detached and aloof, and come off as unnecessarily arrogant. That was a specific problem to the Daily News, but they didn't own the problem."
So Pollock set about reforming the paper - with a cleaver. First he sliced off The Alaska Ear. "That was the first clear indication we'd entered a brave, new world," says one staffer.
Irreverent, witty, and widely-read, the Ear was a weekly gossip column compiled by a series of reporters and editors, most recently reporter Sheila Toomey, who developed the Ear into an art form. Every Sunday, it poked fun at politicians, bluebloods and prominent businessmen. Joseph Pulitzer once said that newspapers should "afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted." The Ear certainly followed the first half of that dictum. Toomey loved to catch important people with their pants down - in some cases literally.
Pollock printed the following statement to explain why he killed the column: "Today's Alaska Ear is the last, ending a tradition that has long been a part of this paper's personality. Ear was launched in 1977, a couple of years before McClatchy's newspapers bought the Daily News. Since then, many of our journalistic standards have evolved to sharpen our discomfort with some aspects of the Ear - the way it's prepared, some of the material it includes, the anonymity of some of its sources ... it seems fundamentally in conflict with journalistic principles we hold dear. This can not continue."
Oddly, however, Ear was replaced on page two with the same "People" column that runs the other six days of the week - a frequently unsourced miscellany of gossip and speculation that differs from Ear principally in that it's about national celebrities instead of Alaskan politicians and business leaders. The hypocrisy was not lost on many within the newspaper.
Soon after the last Ear came out, a brain drain began. Someone could build one hell of a small paper or magazine with the talent the Daily News has lost in the last 18 months: Veteran business reporter Hal Bernton, a master of the big picture story, decamped for the Portland Oregonian. He was followed by city hall reporter Peter Goodman, who was recently hired by the Washington Post, and Deb McKinney, easily the best features writer at the paper. Desmond Toups also quit. So did news-feature writer Robert Meyerowitz. Senior copy editor Leon Unruh went to the Dallas Morning News. Artist Dee Boyles moved to the Orange County Register. The outstanding features design director, Galie Jean-Louis, now works for MSNBC. Editors interviewed for this story agreed the turnover was notably higher than usual for the paper, and blamed Pollock specifically for the departures of Goodman, Meyerowitz and Toups.
Hemorrhaging experienced people is especially painful for the Daily News. Every city is unique, of course, but while a reporter in Cleveland can go to Detroit and pick up the ball pretty quickly if he's any good, Alaska has so many convoluted traditions born of isolation that Sourdough journalists are crucial to a paper's success.
Longtime Daily News Juneau correspondent Ralph Thomas recently left as well. His wife took a job with Gov. Tony Knowles, and editors felt Thomas would have at least the appearance of a conflict of interest - which would be unremarkable if that rule were applied across the board at the Daily News. Apparently it is not. Much to the discomfort of some newsroom employees, Christmas Cowell, the wife of Daily News publisher Fuller Cowell, opened a downtown tourist shop called PhotoFun with the wife of Mayor Rick Mystrom. Last summer, the two women were contracted by the Daily News to produce coffee mugs commemorating the paper's coverage of the Big Lake wildfire. The Daily News recently endorsed Mystrom for re-election. If Pollock or McClatchy has a problem with this festering conflict of interest - real or apparent - someone forgot to tell the Cowells.
Asked about the gift shop, Pollock says "it would be horribly, horribly sexist and insensitive of Fuller to not allow his wife to pursue her interests based on his career." Now, ask yourself what this says about Thomas and the Daily News: That it's OK to force Thomas to choose between being "horribly, horribly sexist" and unemployed?
The reign of El Loco
Without exception the Daily News staffers who spoke on condition of anonymity described their boss as maddeningly erratic and prone to temper tantrums. They nicknamed him "El Loco" after Ecuadorian president Abdala Bucaram, who was forced from office earlier this year on the grounds of mental incapacity. "Some people are starting to call him 'Mobutu' now," says one Daily News journalist. "It's sort of whatever tin-pot dictator is in vogue."
Pollock says he's doesn't know where his reputation for petulance comes from. "I haven't lost my temper since I've been here," he says. "I haven't yelled at anyone ... I've probably raised my voice. I guess I can be intense. Newspapers and newsrooms are very, very special to me, so I do get passionate about things."
But employees say it's not a matter of too much passion - Pollock, they say, leads by intimidation. Where a good leader uses "Because I said so" sparingly and only as a last resort, they say their editor habitually assumes that position. One joked that Pollock coming to the Daily News to cure a problem of arrogance must be based on the same theory as giving amphetamines to hyperactive children.
Told that many Daily News staffers don't like his management style, Pollock says "I guess I'm willing to accept that they don't feel like I'm a manager, because I don't feel like a manager. I consider myself more like the head coach."
Journalists at the paper are also upset over Pollock's friendship with Anchorage businessman Bob Penney, one of the biggest power brokers and political patrons in the state. Pollock calls Penney "my best friend in Alaska ...We go fishing together, dine together, play cards with each other. We also disagree politically on almost every issue, so we enjoy debating issues with each other. I see no problem with this. Our news and editorial coverage has not been altered in any way as a result of this friendship."
Once, after a fishing trip on the Kenai River with Penney and Gov. Tony Knowles, Pollock excitedly told several journalists how he had accidentally switched suitcases with the governor, pointing to Knowles' bag in a corner of his office. "It was 'me and Tony this,' 'me and Tony that,' one journalist says. "It was embarrassing. Howard wouldn't have been caught dead in a fishing boat with the governor."
"That's absolutely right," Pollock says. "I absolutely disagree with Howard on this issue. Should only reporters be able to talk to governors? Hell, no. I want my reporters and editors involved in this community. I don't want them being so detached in the name of not appearing to be somehow compromised that they are viewed as arrogant and uniformed. And that is a huge difference between Howard and I."
For the record, I asked Pollock one last time if any of his personal dealings with Knowles, Penney or anyone else influenced his judgment as an editor.
"Absolutely not," he replied, "and I would challenge anyone who feels that way to give me an example."
Daily News journalists are happy to oblige. Several reporters and editors pointed to Pollock's handling of two separate stories about British Petroleum that appeared in the paper last Dec. 17. Both were written by staff writer Stan Jones. One covered a dog-and-pony-show news conference, where Gov. Knowles appeared with BP Exploration (Alaska) Inc. President John Morgan at BP's Anchorage headquarters to announce that the company would spend an extra $1 billion in Alaska over the next five years. Morgan credited an improved relationship with state government and "oil-friendly" laws enacted by Knowles and the Legislature for the increased spending. That story ran on the front page.
The second story was based on a leaked document that showed BP plans to cut its Prudhoe Bay work force nearly in half over the next three years. The number of jobs would drop from 1,018 to 575. At Pollock's order, that story ran six sections back, on the business page, although the cuts were summarized in the front page story. Many journalists thought the layoff story should have received at least equal treatment. Pollock points out, correctly, that impending BP layoffs had already been reported in the paper, although no specifics had been revealed. "The layoffs just weren't as newsworthy," he says. "That's why I made that call."
But Daily News journalists suspect there was more to it than that. Here's why: During the press conference, Jones confronted BP officials with the leaked document. After the conference was over, Gov. Knowles came to the Daily News building and went into Pollock's office, raising eyebrows in the newsroom. The two men talked for several minutes behind closed doors. When Pollock emerged, he went to the afternoon budget meeting, where stories are finalized for the next day's paper. Despite the strong feelings of other editors present, Pollock insisted the press conference was the bigger story and ordered it placed on the front page. The lay-offs were exiled to the business section.
The day the BP stories ran, several reporters say, the oil company's public relations officer called Jones to say thanks for the damage control.
Pollock remembers meeting with Knowles the day of the press conference, but says "I don't think he mentioned the layoffs." Instead, Pollock says, Knowles came by to talk about the paper's editorial opposition to a deal the state was trying to cut with BP to develop the state-owned Northstar oil field. An editorial had recently criticized Knowles and BP for engineering the deal in secret. "That was the biggest oil deal since I arrived," Pollock says, arguing that Knowles doesn't influence him. "And we took a hard stance against it."
Daily News reporters were also put on guard when they learned Pollock had accepted a seat on the board of advisers for Alaska Regional Hospital. Not only is that hospital a large, private, local business, it's also part of the Columbia/HCA Healthcare Corporation, the world's largest health care company. According to an investigative report in last Sunday's New York Times, Columbia charges higher-than-average prices for its services and uses what the paper called "brass-knuckle" tactics to grab and hold its market share. The company is the subject of several federal investigations, including a criminal one in Texas two months ago. Columbia usually plays hardball when journalists scrutinize its business practices, which, according to the New York Times story, include adjusting prices depending on a patient's insurer and using lay-offs and large executive bonuses to meet its financial targets.
Are these practices in effect at Alaska Regional? So far, the Daily News is mum.
Daily News journalists say they are particularly offended by the way Pollock has meddled with the paper's political coverage. When Mayor Mystrom was stumping last year for a $12 million bond issue intended in part to develop a South Anchorage sports complex, the paper's city hall reporter, Peter Goodman, covered the proposal aggressively, showing how a local couple stood to reap a $4.4 million windfall for their property if the bond passed. After Mystrom complained to Pollock, another story on the bond was assigned to Robert Meyerowitz. He dutifully called Mystrom, and was stunned when Mystrom spokesman Chuck Albrecht said, "Right, Kent said someone would be calling to do a positive piece." Albrecht says he clearly recalls the conversation.
Meyerowitz's story ran on the front page of the Sunday paper, above the fold, with a headline that said "Mayor Says Fields of Play Will Pay."
"I wrote a lot of stories for that paper that ended up on the front page, and I was thrilled," Meyerowitz says. "That one, about the sports bond, was one of the few times where I wasn't happy to see my story played big. That's a weird feeling ... I was told it was what Kent specifically wanted. I know my editors weren't happy about it.
Asked about this, Pollock says he has no idea what Albrecht was talking about. "I don't know what would have prompted him to make such a statement." Albrecht does. He remembers meeting with Pollock to complain about Goodman's coverage. "(Pollock) said 'Well, let us take a look at it and we'll see if we can't get the other side in there,'" Albrecht says.
During the last city elections, reporters say Pollock demanded that a story be prepared about Mystrom after the mayor complained there had been too many stories about his opponent, Tom Fink. Mystrom apparently came to this conclusion by counting how many times Fink's name appeared in recent headlines. After speaking with the Mayor, Pollock reportedly walked over to the city desk and barked to editors, "I want a story with Mystrom's name in the headline."
A story was already in the works about Fink's advertisements. Reporters say Pollock ordered it be changed; the result ran on the front page of the Metro section under the headline "Fink Fires First Ad; Mystrom Vows To Reply."
Pollock also denies this incident happened the way reporters say it did. "I never said anything close to that. We had done two or three stories about Fink, and I said 'Look, it's time to do a story about Mystrom's campaign.'"
Epilogue
A veteran ADN journalist recently hosted a dinner party attended by several current and former DN staffers. After dinner, conversation turned to work. One of the guest had just launched a small business. Someone asked how long it would be until the grueling hours stopped. "I don't know," he answered. "Right now I'm there 18 hours a day, but I don't mind." One of the other guests was incredulous. "Really?" "Well," he said, "this is what I've always wanted to do, so the hours don't really seem that important." The room went quiet for a moment. The host looked at his shoes. "You have to understand," he finally said -- "that's how we all used to feel about working at the paper."
According to McClatchy's annual disclosure filing with the SEC, the Daily News' net revenues increased 35% in the five years from 1992 to 1196. McClatchy has given no indication it plans to sell this money-maker, nor is there any reason to think a new owner would behave any differently than the old one -- that they, any more than the current regime, would buy the credo sacred to journalists: that it's a newpaper's duty to print the news and raise hell.
Anchorage had that rarest thing once and not so long ago, a free and lively, hell-raising press. It's ad to think how easy it was to kill. There used to be a blue and white banner in the DN pressroom proclaiming "We are a great newspaper." One day it disappeared, and no one seems to know where it went, or whether it will ever return.
The archive source can be found at: http://www.archive.today/uh8Uk Activist (talk) 20:27, 20 July 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Anchorage Daily News changes name - "Paper in Peril" Anchorage Press article supplied 

message: The page needs to be updated/moved to reflect the reverting of its name back to Anchorage Daily News by its new owners. Jason.cinema (talk) 22:36, 24 November 2017 (UTC)
thread_title: The paper has rebranded back to Anchorage Daily News