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Newspaper Valley Frontiersman (Palmer, Alaska) 1947-1952

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About Valley Frontiersman (Palmer, Alaska) 1947-1952

Alaska’s Valley Frontiersman began on September 17, 1947, as a bi-weekly produced by Viola Daniels. Daniels had previously started the Seldovia Frontiersman in 1946 before selling that newspaper and moving to Palmer. She introduced an editorial column after several issues, titled “Daniels… In The Lion’s Den.” Daniels was a strong supporter of the campaign for Palmer to incorporate as a city and wrote about it in several columns; she even testified at a hearing about the importance of this move.

The Valley Frontiersman struggled with finances and securing a stable printing situation during its first three years. Daniels announced after several months that she would be forced to begin dropping syndicated content to stay in the black, and she briefly suspended publicationwhen an arrangement with an Anchorage print shop fell through. She took on side jobs to make ends meet, and the paperswitched to publishing weekly. It was also suspended for three months from late 1948 to early 1949 because of printing problems, and issues were temporarily printed on The Valley Settler‘s mimeograph machine. Daniels had further trouble with some people in Palmer that she dubbed the “Let’s-Give-The-Paper-Hell club.” They were a group of citizens that she claimed would borrow copies of the paper from the newsstand, read them looking for errors, and then return them to the stand without paying.

The Valley Frontiersman began publishing the Valdez News within its pages in 1950 but stopped after just over a year. Daniels called it quits with the October 13, 1950 issue and became a Palmer correspondent for the Anchorage News. She sold the Valley Frontiersman to Alvin DeJulio. During DeJulio’s ownership, the paper released its first extra edition, reporting on the successful vote for incorporating Palmer as a city. DeJulio died in 1959, and his wife, Billie, ran the paper until 1961, when she sold it to Theodore Schmidtke, whom she later married. Schmidtke expanded the paper into a normal size, added two more columns, and dropped the word “Valley” from the title in 1952, rebranding into The Frontiersman.

Schmidtke died in 1973, and Billie sold the paper to Jerome Sheldon, former editor of Jessen’s Weekly. Noted children’s author Shelley Gill became publisher and editor in 1983, leaving to write children’s stories full time in 1986. During Gill’s tenure, the paper’s circulation increased to 5,000 and won several awards. The Frontiersman also exposed a series of secret meetings by the local borough assembly and pursued a lawsuit that prompted a change in the state’s Open Meetings Act. Duncan Frazier, former managing editor of the Anchorage Times, replaced Shelley Gill in 1986 and moved the paper to Wasilla, where he helped lead a successful editorial campaign to get a police department. In 2005 the paper’s name became the Mat-Su Valley Frontiersman, under which it is still published to this day.

Provided By: Alaska State Library Historical Collections

About this Newspaper

Title

  • Valley Frontiersman (Palmer, Alaska) 1947-1952

Dates of Publication

  • 1947-1952

Created / Published

  • Palmer, Alaska : V. Daniels, -1952.

Headings

  • -  Valdez (Alaska)--Newspapers
  • -  Alaska--Valdez
  • -  United States--Alaska--Palmer

Genre

  • Newspapers

Notes

  • -  Weekly, Sept. 15, 1948-May 8, 1952
  • -  Began on Sept. 17, 1947.
  • -  -v. 5, no. 35 (May 8, 1952).
  • -  Valdez news appears as a column in the issues for February 2, 9 and 16, 1951.
  • -  Available on microfilm from the Library of Congress, Photoduplication Service.
  • -  Includes: Valdez news, Mar. 10, 1950-Jan. 19, 1951.
  • -  Description based on: Vol. 1, no. 2 (Sept. 20, 1947).
  • -  Frontiersman (Palmer, Alaska) 8750-1740 (DLC)sn 84006943 (OCoLC)11081809

Medium

  • volumes

Call Number/Physical Location

  • Newspaper

Library of Congress Control Number

  • sn84020665

OCLC Number

  • 4064714

ISSN Number

  • 2994-3582

Succeeding Titles

Additional Metadata Formats

Availability

Rights & Access

The Library of Congress believes that the newspapers in Chronicling America are in the public domain or have no known copyright restrictions. Newspapers published in the United States more than 95 years ago are in the public domain in their entirety. Any newspapers in Chronicling America that were published less than 95 years ago are also believed to be in the public domain, but may contain some copyrighted third party materials. Researchers using newspapers published less than 95 years ago should be alert for modern content (for example, registered and renewed for copyright and published with notice) that may be copyrighted. Responsibility for making an independent legal assessment of an item and securing any necessary permissions ultimately rests with persons desiring to use the item.

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Cite This Item

Citations are generated automatically from bibliographic data as a convenience, and may not be complete or accurate.

Chicago citation style:

Valley Frontiersman Palmer, Alaska -1952. (Palmer, AK), Jan. 1 1947. https://www.loc.gov/item/sn84020665/.

APA citation style:

(1947, January 1) Valley Frontiersman Palmer, Alaska -1952. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/sn84020665/.

MLA citation style:

Valley Frontiersman Palmer, Alaska -1952. (Palmer, AK) 1 Jan. 1947. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, www.loc.gov/item/sn84020665/.