This is the end of
a great newspaper

SAYING GOODBYE to our thousands of friends and readers is hard enough, but it's even more painful to say goodbye to a great newspaper, The Anchorage Times.

The print edition of The Times ended production in 1992 when it was sold to the Anchorage Daily News. The Voice of The Times continued for another 15 years as a half-page of conservative opinion carried each day inside the Daily News. Its life was extended another 17 months with an online version of editorials and columns, but funding eventually ran out and the time has come to cease altogether.

From its beginning in the frontier days of 1915, when railroad work crews first came ashore at Ship Creek anchorage (now known as the city of Anchorage) to today's end, The Anchorage Times has worked to be a voice for the advancement of Alaska and the interests of its people. We would like to think it mostly succeeded, but that will be for others to decide.

As for the remaining four editors, we can only say it has been an honor and a pleasure to work with each other and on behalf of those readers . . .

(cont'd from front page) we managed to recruit in the competitive media environment of the day. We estimate there are 20,000 of you out there — that's what our server numbers indicate — and that would ordinarily be a viable business in the media world. But right now things are tough all over, especially in the news business, and keeping the Voice of The Times going is not an option.

Alaska is a great place to live and work, and has been for us for many years. Over its 93-year history, The Times has provided a livelihood for generations of Alaskans, both newcomers and those lucky enough to be born here. Many of The Times' extended family came to the state to fill newspaper jobs and stayed to build their lives in a wide variety of fields.

Some Times alumni started their own businesses, others went into politics, government jobs, industry and various professions. And many ultimately left Alaska. But almost all remember their time in Alaska journalism as a unique phase of their working lives, one filled with stories worth recounting to children, grandchildren and friends.

We have told such stories ourselves and will do it again in the months and years ahead. Thank you all for being there until the end.

William J. Tobin, senior editor
Paul Jenkins, editor
Tom Brennan, editor
Jeremiah Scoby, associate editor