The Juneau Empire will focus more effort on its digital edition and less on newsprint. On May 3, it will only provide a printed paper two days a week, and that paper will be printed in Lakewood, Wash., south of Tacoma.
Publisher David Rigas said it was a change needed to keep the newspaper viable.
“This is a significant change in the way the voice of Alaska’s capital city does business and it’s not something we take lightly,” Rigas said in the Empire today. “However, it’s a change that needs to happen and one that will mean improved presentation of local news.”
The print department is being laid off. Print subscribers will be offered a reduced rate for a print edition that will only be available on Wednesdays and Saturdays. That means the bundles will be flown into Juneau, where weather can sometimes cause flight delays. The newspaper didn’t say where its existing printing press will go, but these speciality items are harder and harder to sell, as newspapers around the country continue to reduce print editions. It may be worth more as scrap metal.
In the 1990s, the Juneau Empire launched the Sunday edition and had a circulation of over 8,000 copies in a town that had about 10,000 households.
It launched its online edition in 1998, under the direction of Publisher John Winter and then-Managing Editor Suzanne Downing, who is now publisher of Must Read Alaska.
The Empire was founded in 1912 as the Alaska Daily Empire. It was owned by Major John Franklin Alexander Strong, who owned several newspapers, prior to his term as territorial governor of Alaska. Strong served as the editor of the Empire until May 24, 1913, after which John W. Troy took over. Troy was inaugurated governor on April 19, 1933.
The Empire, in its early days, had an editorial and political stance that was a counter to the socialist newspaper, the Alaska Sunday Morning Post. The paper aimed to unseat “Bull Moose” Republican James Wickersham from the congressional delegation by any means possible, according to an account by the Library of Congress.
The paper changed its name to the Daily Alaska Empire from Dec. 8, 1926 until July 21, 1964. It became the Juneau Alaska Empire through July 8, 1968, before switching to the Southeast Alaska Empire until February 8, 1980.
Finally, the paper changed its name to the Juneau Empire, which it retains to this day. William S. Morris III purchased the newspaper in 1969 and made it part of Morris Communications.
In 2017, the Empire was sold by Morris Communications to Gatehouse Media, which sold it to Sound Publishing, the largest community news organization in Washington state, with dailies and weeklies in Washington and Alaska. The parent company of Sound Publishing is Black Press, of British Columbia. Headquartered in Surrey, British Columbia, Black Press was founded and is majority owned by David Black, who is not related to another Canadian-born media mogul, Conrad Black. (Disclosure: This writer was the editor of the Bainbridge Review on Bainbridge Island, when David Black owned that weekly.)
How about that loyalty, huh?
Newspapers are slowly becoming a thing of the past They depend on advertising dollars for their existence. Unfortunately advertisers have concluded that the advertising dollar is better spent in the online world, other media outlets, and on social media platforms.
Circulation numbers for newspapers have been steadily falling. Not only do advertisers go elsewhere but news junkies find current news elsewhere. That’s because the news you read in a newspaper is old news, sometimes two days old.
One of these days some kid will ask his parents: What’s a newspaper?
Sad, but inevitable. It was inevitable the day Capital Weekly disappeared.
Perhaps if they had done a better job of covering our local issues than doing whatever they’ve been doing since Morris sold them off.
I’ve seen some really talented people pass through their doors. I give it 5 years before it’s completely gone.
The only question is, why did this take so long? For the same reason all newspapers, magazines, malls, netflix, theaters, ma&pa stores, music stores, bank lobbies, etc are all going bye-bye. As the internet took over, they stood by, dazed and confused, watching helplessly as it ate their lunch.
Sadly, the JE has not been worth the paper it’s printed on for several decades.
Two days a week is still two too many. This publication (it’s not a “news” paper) has just become a mouthpiece for the DNC and merely regurgitates propaganda found in the NYT, CNN, etc. Sad for people to lose their jobs but the writing on the wall has been up for a long time. Glad it’s going away.
You used to be able to show up downstairs at the Channel Drive building in the morning and hand stuff/sort papers for 2-3 hours or so, get paid directly afterwards, and then be able to buy enough hooch to get f’ed up all day. Those were the days!
My god you lived in Juneau for that long? Why?
Well, I come by it honestly, as I moved there in high school under duress. – sd
Lol people still read newspapers?
The Juneau Empire is failing. Good riddance to a bad paper. Its biggest problem was it’s leftist editorial policy. I can’t wait for the Homer News to join it in the dustbin of history.
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