by Kevin Burton
On the morning of my first day as a full-time honest-to-God newspaper reporter, a game of musical chairs broke out.
Musical desks too.
I had been hired by The Frontiersman in Wasilla, Alaska, to replace a local government reporter. I was a second choice. The person they hired first couldn’t hack Alaska.
I was to get the desk closest to the break room and to the layout area, where all the news was made to fit. But the education reporter, who had been sitting there, wanted her chair.
“I’m just happy to have a place to sit!” I said with an exclamation mark (or two) in my voice.
In my last few weeks of college, whenever finding work came up as a topic, I was stupid and naïve about it, saying, “well I only need one job.”
That job, for a legally blind guy with zero professional experience, proved painfully difficult to nail down.
In fact, after being offered by phone and accepting the job with the Frontiersman, I sent out two more resumes, with sets of writing samples. Without any basis except for previous disappointment, I truly expected the job offer to be rescinded.
I spent the first night or two in Alaska at my editor’s house in Wasilla, before I found an apartment in Palmer, where I would cover city and borough (county) government.
That first night, after my long, disorienting Wichita-to-Memphis-to Minneapolis-to-Anchorage flight, one of the local radio stations played one of my favorite Mexican pop songs, and I had one of the strangest, most surreal sensations of my life.
“Wait….where am I?”
These were heady, dizzying times.
So I was more than pleased, delighted, ecstatic, to wait for the music to stop, so to speak, and to sit down at my desk in the newsroom.
And I believe I have already written on Page 7, bits and pieces of my experiences in two-plus years in Alaska.
But recently I have learned that the Frontiersman, where my newsman dream came true, is no more.
“One year shy of its 80th birthday, the Mat-Su Valley Frontiersman is ceasing operations,” wrote Alaska Business Magazine reporter Rindi White.
“A community news staple, the Frontiersman was purchased by nonprofit community news organization, Mat-Su Sentinel.”
“The change essentially spells the demise of the Frontiersman— the May 29 edition was the final printing,” White wrote.
Valley residents, who are big on tradition, are likely unhappy to see The Frontiersman essentially erased. But they are also big on keeping all things local. The upstart’s acquisition at least accomplishes that.
Since 1996, The Frontiersman has been operated by Wick Communications, a mostly Midwestern newspaper group started in 1926 by brothers Milton and James Wick,” White reported.
“Wick Communications leaders announced in January 2025 they were considering selling the Frontiersman, stating, ‘Interested parties who recognize the importance of preserving the voice of the Mat-Su Valley are encouraged to consider this exceptional opportunity,’” White wrote.
“Amy Bushatz, founder and editor of Mat-Su Sentinel, more than fits the bill,” White wrote. “Mat-Su Sentinel is a free community news publication funded by grants and community donations that Bushatz started in June 2024 with the goal of providing ‘connect-the-dots local reporting’ for the growing Mat-Su community.”
“We’re excited for the opportunity to carry the Frontiersman’s legacy forward into a new era of local journalism,” Bushatz said.
It’s no secret that print newspapers are disappearing at a rapid rate.
Between 2005 and 2025 the number of daily newspapers has declined from 7,325 to 4482 according to localnewsinitiative. Non-dailies have dwindled from 1566 to 937.
Even in my days in Alaska, the late, great Anchorage Times went poof overnight. And that after I had just won three Alaska Press Club awards and the Times had started courting me.
Well the Frontiersman didn’t disappear exactly. It was subsumed by The Sentinel. I had signed up for e-mails from the Frontiersman, that’s how I got the news. I began getting e-mails from The Sentinel.
Alas, my green and white Frontiersman hoodie doesn’t fit any more. It hangs in a closet by our front door. There are a lot of things from my old comfortable world that don’t fit any more.
My hoodie declares the Frontiersman to be “Alaska’s best small town newspaper.”
Some of us staffers pointed out that “small town” is a hyphenated adjective, modifying “newspaper,” and should have been hyphenated on the sweatshirt. I believe I have a Frontiersman coffee mug somewhere as well.
Anyway I can’t work up much indignation over the end of the Frontiersman. The way the news business is, the Mat-Su is fortunate to have any newspaper coverage at all.
“Stewarding the newspaper’s history is something Bushatz is treating carefully. For now, the Frontiersman website will remain up as-is, but Bushatz plans to migrate it to a different platform that is not focused on subscriptions. People who visit the site may see current news stories which, when clicked, will redirect them to the Mat-Su Sentinel website,” White wrote.
Asked why the Frontiersman is being absorbed into the Mat-Su Sentinel instead of vice versa, Bushatz says the choice comes down to baggage. The longtime community newspaper was not a small organization; making it fit the mold of a community nonprofit news organization was just not practical.
“We’ve built something that can be nimble from a business perspective; the goal is to keep it that way. The best way I have found to do that is to migrate the Frontiersman as a brand coming into the Sentinel today,” Bushatz said. “I don’t want people to think I’m erasing their history—I feel really responsible for their history.”
I don’t buy that completely. Folding a 79-year-old newspaper into a startup is surely unwieldy in a legal sense. But there is no reason the brand that the public sees could not have continued as The Frontiersman.
What I hope happens is that there will be some publication, maybe an annual or twice-yearly special edition, that can carry the Frontiersman name. That would be a good gesture by Bushatz.
Either way, I’m proud to be a small part of the history of a fine newspaper.
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