In 2019, Larry Persily, owner of the Skagway News, announced that he would give away his local Alaskan publication to a person or a pair demonstrating journalistic skill, self-motivation, grit, and—above all—affectionate dedication to the quirks and quiddities of rural small-town reporting. National news outlets picked up the story as a sort of lark, emphasizing the remote and small-town nature of Skagway, the rarity of the giveaway, and then, in a few short lines, the challenges of sustaining critical local news coverage. In such stories, Persily was a Willy Wonka figure, courting a successor.
Cruise ship docked in Skagway, Alaska.Among the applicants were Melinda Munson and Gretchen Wehmhoff,teachers in the Anchorage area who cowrote a blog for Alaskan families. Munson and Wehmhoff envisioned a dream job not unlike that conjured in headlines: the freedom to write and the promise of a place in a tight-knit community.Over the course of months, Munson and Wehmhoff had several intense phone interviews with Persily; for some, they met in a room in the school building with the lights off, to avoid drawing the attention of their principal.
When they learned they were among Persily’s top candidates, Munson and Wehmhoff drove eight hundred miles from Chugiak to Skagway to visit the place they hoped to call home. They were the only candidates to make such a trip; in January 2020, Persily offered them the paper.
now reading:
Investigative Issues: They Won the Alaska Newspaper Giveaway. Then the Pandemic Arrived.
