Wasilla, Alaska, Sarah Palin’s hometown, comes under the media microscope
By David Hatfield
Wick Communications News Service
A month ago, the political news in Alaska’s Matanuska-Susitna - or Mat-Su - Valley mostly focused on the five-person race for mayor of Wasilla and the challenges of building an infrastructure to meet the area’s growing population needs. Then John McCain picked Gov. Sarah Palin to be his vice presidential running mate.
All of a sudden, the happenings of her hometown Wasilla were not only of national concern but attracted international attention, as well. News media descended on the city of about 7,500 about 40 miles northeast of Anchorage to try to find out anything and everything they could about the 44-year-old Palin, who had been Wasilla’s mayor and served on the city council.
And when they arrived in town, many reporters headed to the offices of the newspaper, the Mat-Su Valley Frontiersman, the 6,000-circulation newspaper that serves Wasilla, neighboring Palmer and the rest of the valley. The Frontiersman is one of 32 newspapers and 23 specialty publications in 13 states owned by Wick Communications Co., based in Sierra Vista, Arizona.
One gauge of the impact of Palin’s coming on to the world stage can be seen in the Frontiersman‘s web site traffic. Publisher Kari Sleight said the web site was averaging just under 20,000 page views per day this summer, which more than doubled immediately after the announcement and went as high as 90,000.
The attention is something Wasilla and the Frontiersman are coming to grips with.
“I have an interview candidate for circulation director and I almost couldn’t find a place for her to stay,” said Sleight.
In the 11 years Sleight has been the newspaper’s publisher, she has come to know Palin. She remembers the morning of Aug. 29 when a mutual friend forwarded a text message from Palin telling them to watch the news.
Sleight said she was surprised by the announcement.
“I talked to Sarah when her name first surfaced,” Sleight said. “She kind of dismissed it saying she felt she would be a one-in-a-million shot.”
But once the word got out that morning, the phone calls started coming. The first was at 6:45 a.m., Alaska time, from a talkradio personality in Canada. Sleight turned that call over to her editor. Then came a call from a radio program in London. Then came national news media from the U.S.; Fox News, NBC, CBS, ABC and the major publications.
Being that it was Labor Day weekend, the Frontiersman’s offices were closed Saturday, Sunday and Monday but reporters and others hovered outside, poking their heads in windows and doors when they could and even yelling out a time or two.
“There were all these strange people outside,” Sleight said. “They all wanted to talk to us and get access to our archives.”
Not all of the Frontiersman’s archives are available online so when the office opened the day after Labor Day “it was just one long parade of reporters with five or six sitting at one time going through our bound volumes,” Sleight said.
Six reporters is the alloted staff of reporters for the Frontiersman. Sleight says she’s two short of that right now.
Besides the international attention, Sleight says she’s noticed media representatives have generally shown up with an agenda.
“They want to dig up dirt,” she said. “The National Enquirer has five people on the ground here.”
She also recalls the time an NBC reporter, after digging into Palin’s six years as mayor and four years on the city council pointedly asked “Was Sarah Palin perfect?”
Sleight says that’s absolutely not the case. The Frontiersman had taken Palin to task for mistakes she made as mayor and wouldn’t be afraid to do it again, she said.
“But one thing you can say for Sarah is that she learns from her mistakes and she doesn’t make them again,” Sleight said.
Watching how the news media handles issues she knows intimately both surprises and frustrates Sleight.
For instance, that first weekend when it was revealed that Palin’s 17-year-old daughter Bristol was pregnant, the Frontiersman as did other media but elected not to put it on the front page or use the name of the baby’s father, Levi Johnston. Since both Bristol and the boy were active in sports, the newspaper even had photos of both of them, but chose not to use them.
“We know the people who live here and we see them every day and will continue to live with them in the future,” Sleight said.
Sleight also remembers a reporter for the Los Angeles Times “who had to have called me at least a half-a-dozen times” trying to confirm rumors about Palin’s oldest son, Track. Every rumor the reporter had asked about was untrue, as far as Sleight knew.
When asked if Sarah Palin has the necessary experience to be vice president, Sleight doesn’t hesitate to answer in the affirmative.
“They said the same things, that she was inexperienced, when she ran for governor,” Sleight said. “The opposition ran a TV ad asking ‘Is the minimal experience of a mayor of a small town enough to run the workings of a state government as complex as Alaska’s? She proved them wrong.”
In the time she has been Alaska’s governor - she was sworn-in Dec. 4, 2006 - Palin has accomplished some things her two predecessors had worked on but not been able to do in their entire terms, such as construction of a natural gas pipeline from the North Slope, Sleight says. Palin has also championed ethics in government and focused on tax cuts.
And she’s not likely to get thrown off her focus easily, according to Sleight. When state legislators in a special session sought to introduce an anti-abortion measure - something Palin would normally support - she chastised them saying the special session was called to deal with tax issues and the taxpayers weren’t paying them to deal with other matters.
And, although it may be a small city, Wasilla does have its own complexities, Sleight argues. She notes that her detractors say she raised the city’s sales tax while she was mayor.
Yes it’s true, the sales tax was increased but it was approved by voters. Sleight explains the city wanted to build a sports complex that could be used by the 90,000 population of the entire Mat-Su Valley. Since most of those people come to Wasilla to do their shopping, Palin argued the sales tax was a more equitable way to spread out the costs.
On another front, Sleight says Wasilla’s property taxes decreased while Palin was mayor.
So the big question is, as the newspaper that probably knows Sarah Palin best, will the Frontiersman endorse the McCain-Palin candidacy?
Sleight isn’t sure. The newspaper has stayed away from endorsements, except she said, it was one of the few newspapers in Alaska to endorse Palin for governor.