Great News - Jennifer Gibbins Buys the Cordova Times

Jennifer Gibbons & the Cordova Times building

from the Alaska Dispatch:

The Cordova Times has a new publisher. Jennifer Gibbins, the current editor of the Alaska Newspapers Inc. weekly that serves more than 2,000 people at the mouth of the Copper River, has purchased The Cordova Times from Calista Corp., an Alaska Native corporation that has published it and five other rural Alaska newspapers for nearly 20 years.

Gibbins has served as the paper's editor for the past year and lived in Cordova the past eight years, Calista Corp. said in a press release Tuesday afternoon.

"I am honored and excited by the opportunity to help carry on the tradition of The Cordova Times, which has been a part of the town for over 100 years," Gibbins said in a Calista Corp. prepared statement.

Gibbins will take over the paper in late August, when Calista Corp. plans to shutter all six newspapers, citing increasing costs for traditional newspaper delivery in the state's far-flung rural outposts.

Here's a link to Tony Gorman's story on this for KCHU Valdez and Alaska Public Radio.

This is good news - as opposed to no news, for sure. At the short Anchorage Daily News article on this yesterday, Homer Tribune publisher Jane Pascall notes in the comments:

Congratulations to Jennifer from the Homer Tribune. Jennifer joins three other women who independently-own newspapers in Alaska: Nancy McGuire-Nome Nugget; Jenny Neyman-Redoubt Reporter (Kenai-Soldotna) and Jane Pascall-Homer Tribune. We wish you the very best of success. Don't hesitate to contact us at the Homer Tribune if there is anything we can do to help you succeed.