“When a small town loses a paper, it says something about the small town, and it says something’s going wrong, you know, they’re losing something. So, my goal is that this paper is not going to die on my watch,” Gretchen Wehmhoff, the owner/publisher/editor of The Skagway News, says from her home in Chugiak, Alaska.
She makes the statement in reference to her recent decision to relaunch the paper’s print edition. The Skagway News, which bills itself as “serving the gateway to the Klondike,” saw its first print edition in a year roll off the press on Jan. 19, much to the delight of Skagway residents, according to Wehmhoff.
“When I told people about it going to print again, they were so excited, and subscriptions have been coming in,” she says.
As for why she decided to revive the paper’s print edition, Wehmhoff matter-of-factly says that almost every person she spoke to in Skagway told her they missed getting their hands on a physical copy. The PDF version of the paper, which continued to be posted online after the press machines ground to a halt in January 2023, just wasn’t cutting it for many readers.
“Just about every single person said that they missed the real paper, that they’d looked forward to picking it up. They looked forward to holding it in their hand. And some of the people, who are the best supporters, were admitting, you know, I sometimes don’t read it when it’s online,” Wehmhoff tells the News.
“When I heard people weren’t reading it because it wasn’t printed, that’s what really got my attention.”
She says another reason for relaunching the paper is because it’s popular among tourists in the summer months, when cruise ships transform the sleepy town of approximately 1,200 residents into a veritable tourism mecca.
The Skagway News traces its roots back to the late 1970s, but shares a name with a much older paper. Wehmhoff and a business partner acquired the paper from Larry Persily just as the pandemic began to rear its ugly head across North America in March 2020.
When Wehmhoff took over the paper, they printed one edition before the Canada-U.S. border closed. As their papers were printed in Whitehorse at the time, this meant an end to physical copies.
“Of course, you couldn’t drive up, and shipping was too expensive. So, we ended up not printing all of 2020,” she says.
Thanks to a grant, the paper resumed printing in 2021 and 2022. However, in the early days of 2023, the paper again dropped its print editions for financial reasons, a move that happened when Wehmhoff and her partner closed their office in Skagway. Wehmhoff describes the paper’s troubles in early 2023 as “rough.”
Wehmhoff and her business partner parted ways towards the end of last year, but she is soldiering on as the paper’s owner-operator. From her home in Chugiak, near Anchorage, she writes, edits the stories that appear in the paper, handles advertisers and pays the bills. She says she visits Skagway as frequently as possible.
And while The Skagway News could be fairly described as a solo operation, Wehmhoff does have help. She tells the News she just hired a new photographer and that community members have been keen to submit work for publication.
“People in the community enjoy writing, so, for instance, we just got a new columnist who’s going to be talking about pets and animals and taking care of animals. And so, although I do some of the writing, I also bring in writers,” Wehmhoff says, adding that she also has syndication agreements with other regional publications.
“There’s a lot of good writers in Skagway.”
For Wehmhoff, The Skagway News is a labour of love. She says that, in 2022, her and her former business partner made exactly zero dollars, and they’d joke that they were the world’s “oldest interns.” Now that she is the paper’s sole owner, she said restarting the print edition didn’t require consultations and that she was “willing to take the risk.”
The new printed editions of The Skagway News are now printed twice a month in Wasilla, Alaska, and shipped to Skagway. Asked whether the paper will be available for purchase in Whitehorse, Wehmhoff says she’d like to expand into Whitehorse and the Yukon at large.
Speaking to the future, Wehmhoff says she wants to see the paper become more of a community paper, and she’s keen to involve students from local schools who are interested in contributing. She notes that while some small-town papers take content contributions from students without paying them, she wants to be able to offer compensation for their work.
“Adults can make a choice to do it for free. But I want kids to be respected,” she says.
Wehmhoff also wants to launch a podcast that allows Skagway residents to share their stories.
“I would like to have a short podcast where I interview people in Skagway and get their cool stories. Because they’re there, and if no one asks them, they don’t get told,” she says.
News of The Skagway News’ return to print comes at a time when many papers in North America — large and small — are facing considerable challenges. Just days ago, 142-year-old publication The Los Angeles Times announced it was laying off around 20 per cent of its newsroom. Last week, iconic sports publication Sports Illustrated announced it was laying off all its staff.
Contact Matthew Bossons at matthew.bossons@yukon-news.com