Talk:Juneau Empire

History

I began to wonder something recently. How is it that this newspaper is about to celebrate its 100th anniversary, and this page is competely devoid of any mention of its history, and furthermore the page serves little purpose beyond further promoting Morris Communications? I made an unsourced edit to John Franklin Alexander Strong regarding the paper's earlier history, which prompted a discussion, mainly on the other user's part, about citing sources. I was more interested in historical accuracy. The other user pointed to this statement: "The Juneau Empire, which recently celebrated its 75th anniversary,..." found on this webpage: [1]. I didn't find it to be a reliable statement regardless of where it came from.

Anyway, for the edification of anyone interested, here are the portions of the discussion from Talk:John Franklin Alexander Strong relevant to the Empire's history:

[...]From reading the page you referred to, it became rather obvious that its purpose was to promote Morris Communications, and they could really give a rat's hind quarters about anything regarding the paper's history.

As to what I wrote: after the Empire was sold, it remained in the hands of the Troy family until 1954. It also underwent another name change before its present name was adopted.[...]

[...]Anyway, you want proof? Here it is. Excerpted from Alaska Newspapers on Microfilm, 1866-1998, jointly published in 1998 by the University of Alaska Fairbanks and the Alaska State Library, p. 108:

Juneau Empire
...
History: Began on February 11, 1980. It is the current title of a newspaper that began on November 12, 1912 and had several different titles: ALASKA DAILY EMPIRE (November 12, 1912 - December 7, 1926), DAILY ALASKA EMPIRE (December 8, 1926 - July 21, 1964), JUNEAU ALASKA EMPIRE (July 22, 1964 - July 7, 1968) and the SOUTHEAST ALASKA EMPIRE (July 8, 1968 - February 8, 1980)
...

This was excerpted as it appears in print. BTW, if anyone's concerned, the copyright notice grants reproduction permission for non-commercial purposes. In less than a minute of searching, I found a PDF version of this book here [2]. The same entry would be found on p. 193 of the PDF version.

Also, I have the September 9, 2010 issue of the Empire in front of me, and below the date it says "Volume 99, No. 214." Hopefully, they've gotten with the rest of the newspaper world and publish a PDF version of the print newspaper, so this shouldn't be hard to verify, either.

>the first check of a third-party source provides contradictory information

Going back to the Empire website and the reference to their "75th anniversary," the only possible explanations I have for that was that either it was a typo or someone was under deadline pressure and they cobbled together whatever they had lying around on their hard drive. At any rate, I immediately spotted it as being unreliable information in spite of the source. Hence, this effort.[...] RadioKAOS (talk) 20:12, 8 October 2010 (UTC)

RadioKaos, you are an amazing researcher. I mean that sincerely. You should make more edits to articles, instead of talk pages. Be bold! Thanks. Juneau Mike (talk) 03:09, 17 November 2015 (UTC)