Picking Derby Winners
Ad promos and boosterism overshadow “The Voice of the Capital City”
by Bob Tkacz
Aug. 21-27, 1997 / Vol. 6, Ed. 33
 In the greed-rich atmosphere of modern Alaska, like the rest of America, it is rare that any voice in the public forum speaks more loudly than money. |
A common complaint leveled against newspapers is that they express their editorial views in news accounts. What about a newspaper expressing its stance on a controversial topic through its advertising while avoiding an equally strong statement in an editorial?
What if a paper declared its support for one side in a controversy, not in a strongly worded editorial, but in daily advertisements? What if it helped raise money going directly to the side the ads support, while the editorial page side-stepped direct comment?
Is it wrong? Is it the beginning of the end of the editorial page as seat of a newspaper's community voice? Is it merely an effort to protect the paper's profits from the loss that a clear editorial statement might provoke?
"No," is the Juneau Empire's answer to these questions, despite the ink it has devoted to its advocacy through advertising in the ongoing dispute over this weekend's 51st annual Golden North Salmon Derby, run by the Juneau-based Territorial Sportsmen, Inc.
In what is clearly an early skirmish in this fall's subsistence showdown, the dispute began when the Alaska Native Brotherhood, July 13, declared a boycott of the annual salmon derby in reaction to what it called the Territorial Sportsmen's continued and active opposition to Native issues, including sovereignty, a rural priority for subsistence harvesting and related views.
The ANB also labeled the Sportsmen "racist." That nasty cut — whether true or not — and any portend in this first use of an overtly economic club in the subsistence controversy, aren't what this report is about, but a little background is necessary.
The way the Golden North Derby works, entrants must surrender their catch to the Sportsmen, who sell the fish and use some of the revenue for college scholarships. How much goes to support education, or to sport-related activities like hunter/fisher access projects, rifle safety and the like, is an issue with the ANB.
One of the historic Native group's demands to end the boycott is that all money raised by the derby go to scholarships and none to the Sportsmen's political activities. Those activities include speaking as an organized voice of more traditional, urban — and predominantly white — Alaska sportsmen before the Legislature. The other demand is that a dialogue on the issues of contention between the two groups be opened.
The political landscape
An advertisement in the August 15 Empire, paid for by "Alaska Native Organizations," said of $265,565 in total 1996 derby proceeds, only $24,000 went to scholarships. The ad cites the Sportsmen's year end report to the state Division of Gaming as the source of the figures.
TS President Ron Somerville calls the boycott a "blackmail" of the scholarship fund that will only hurt innocent young scholars. He says the political disputes should be divorced from the derby’s benefit of educational assistance.
Beside the fact that such a division of issues would neutralize the boycott, it's a pretty funny comment from Somerville, who has spent the past three years working as a contract consultant for the Legislature's Republican majority, where blackmail as a response to the wrong political views is more commonly known as "tough budget decisions."
Somerville's work for the Republicans has been to track and advise on state and federal relations in the fish and game sphere, the same job he did as deputy commissioner of fish and game during the Hickel administration. During this year's session he also testified against formal recognition of Native subsistence harvests of halibut in the Bering Sea.
"Scholarship money comes from the sale of fish, minus the cost of cleaning," icing and other expenses, said Somerville, who couldn't provide specific details. "The majority of the money that comes from ticket sales goes to prizes," he added, but was unable to provide a copy of the financial report that is published at the group's annual membership meeting each spring.
Those comments leave lots of room for other uses of derby-related income.
At $30 per derby ticket, for a generally estimated 4,000 entrants, the Sportsmen gross $120,000, not including fish sales. Last Sunday's special Empire supplement on the derby listed 388 prize donors, calling into question how much ticket money is needed for prizes, though the insurance policy to pay-off on the $100,000 grand prize fish can cost up to $5,000.
Then there's the somewhat gray line between derby participation and membership in the Territorial Sportsmen, which, Somerville said, is a $5 cost included in the ticket price. He noted that derby participants can mark on their entry form whether they want to join, but if they don't, it’s unclear if their whole 30 bucks go to the scholarship fund or their ticket costs $25.
Somerville said about 1,600 people signed up to join TS through the purchase of derby tickets, which is $8,000 for non-scholarship activities raised through the derby. It’s also far more members than attend the group’s annual membership meeting and potluck, but not as many as the thousands the group claims as members in legislative testimony.
The boycott really is no more than common, hardball, economic politics: cut off, or reduce, an opponent's source of money and you reduce their effectiveness. The Territorial Sportsmen don't deny that they're politically active. The Alaska Native Brotherhood is mostly on the opposite side of their common issues, and if this is as nasty as the subsistence debate gets in the next few months, Alaska will be getting off real lucky.
Proud support
So in the midst of this otherwise normal story, the Juneau Empire, 10 days after the boycott is announced, began selling what it is calling "Juneau Empire T-shirts." The picture of the "Derby Daze" shirts in the quarter page ad, which has run almost every day since July 25, doesn't show the paper's name anywhere. The ad urges "Buy one even if you're not going to fish," and notes that $1 of the $8.50 price goes to the Territorial Sportsman Scholarship Fund.
On July 30 the Empire began promoting its annual special derby supplement, but unlike very similar spreads for the 1995 and ’96 derbies, this year the ad declares: "Proud to Support The Territorial Sportsmen!"
A lot of the ads from other derby supporters in last Sunday's 16-page special derby section bid "Good Luck!" to derby participants. None declared their support for the Sportsmen, the ANB or otherwise mentioned the boycott.
In contrast to the Empire's vocal advertising support for the Sportsmen, its two editorials, to date, on the matter have been more soft-spoken.
An August 10 editorial supported the mediation effort suggested by Mayor Dennis Egan to solve the dispute. The paper's first editorial comment, in its Sunday, July 20 edition, was boldly headlined, "Boycott of derby unfortunate."
The editorial cautioned against using terms like "racist" in any public debate, but the closest it came to criticizing the boycott itself seemed to be the statement: "To declare a derby boycott over the Sportsmen’s positions is not going to change the outcome of state or federal policy, or for instance, Supreme Court decisions."
The editorial didn't explain why the boycott might not have such effects when it seems precisely intended to help influence public policy, and through last weekend the Empire has never editorially declared the boycott itself to be wrong and never called on the ANB to drop the action.
"We support the derby as a community event. We are not taking sides on who is right and who is wrong," said John Winter, publisher of the Empire since 1995. Well, not in the news or editorial columns maybe, but neither the T-shirt sales, nor the "We support the Territorial Sportsmen" statement were part of the paper's derby efforts in the last two years.
Winter rejected the idea that the fund-raising and support statement constitute taking sides and declined a request to produce any editorial statements that match the ads.
A weak independent stance
Non-Juneauites may not know of the Empire’s long history of ignoring conflicts between its brand of independent journalism and its profits. For example, until it moved to another location last month, Echo Bay Alaska, the mining company that tried to reopen the A-J gold mine, had rented the top floor of the Empire building for its offices for several years, including through the entire, highly divisive, local debate.
Nor is the Empire's editorial page the kind of reading one needs to wear asbestos gloves to handle. It long ago dropped the "Jeers" half of its occasional "Cheers and Jeers" editorial column, and criticism of local institutions, industries and other sacred cows is very rare.
Managing Editor Suzanne Downing, a Juneau-Douglas High School graduate and author of both boycott editorials, felt the paper spoke boldly. "I think we did say the boycott was divisive and it disturbed us," Downing said. "That it wasn't a good thing for the community, I thought that was pretty clear."
Acknowledging the existence of a controversy is a first step in overcoming denial, but Downing, like Winter, and circulation and T-shirt manager Fred Howard, rejected the thought of linkage between their sales and taking sides in the boycott.
"Those are allegations," Downing said of the suggestion that the Empire T-shirt revenue will help replace Sportsmen income lost because of the boycott. "You said it's to replace money that would be lost — I don't know that's true."
Downing could ask Fred Howard, who says T-shirt sale money will go nowhere but to the scholarship fund. Howard also said the idea of T-shirt sales came up last year but the paper couldn't get it together in time. "I was really happy to actualize it this year," Fred said, adding that just because this boycott popped up doesn't mean a good idea should be scrapped.
"It didn't fit into the controversy," he explained. "I don't understand the issues involved," the circulation manager said. "I'm keeping the politics out of this by the money going into the scholarship fund." Whether he can do that by sheer force of will is questionable, as is the real effect of practices like the Empire's.
Empire ad director Crystal Slaughter refused to be interviewed for this report and marketing director Robin Herdman Paul did not return phone calls, perhaps letting their advertising speak for them.
When a paper becomes actively, and, especially in this case, financially involved in a local controversy, even if it claims to be editorially neutral, the question that must be asked is whether the editorial page or the advertising department speaks for the paper.
In the greed-rich atmosphere of modern Alaska, like the rest of America, it is rare that any voice in the public forum speaks more loudly than money. Those who deny the reality of this state of affairs risk their credibility.
