FAIRBANKS — A man with a long history with Alaska newspapers is the new publisher of the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner.
Fuller Cowell was introduced as the newspaper’s top executive on Tuesday, shortly after the sale of the newspaper from William Dean Singleton to the Helen E. Snedden Foundation closed, the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner reported.
Helen Snedden’s husband, newspaper owner Charles Snedden, died in 1989 and his heirs sold the News-Miner to Singleton in 1992.
Helen Snedden died in 2012.
The trustee for the foundation, Virginia Farmier, introduced Cowell to employees Tuesday afternoon. He replaces Marti Buscaglia.
The 63-year-old Cowell began as a newspaper carrier on Fort Wainwright when he was 9. He later became an apprentice pressman at the News-Miner, where he worked until 1973.
He and his wife, Christmas, then owned and operated weekly newspapers in Valdez and Cordova. He later became a newspaper consultant and worked as a commercial fisherman. Cowell became a newspaper executive with the McClatchy Newspaper chain, and served as publisher of the former Anchorage Daily News from 1991 to 1999.
“I see the newspaper publisher’s job as really stewardship of the newspaper, which in reality belongs to the community,” Cowell said. “It’s very important to the community and we want to do all we can to make it as good a newspaper as possible.”
Cowell was born in Fort Knox, Kentucky, but grew up in the Fairbanks area after his father retired from the Army.
He holds a bachelor’s of business administration degree from National University in Sacramento, California, graduating Summa Cum Laude.
He said News-Miner readers won’t see major changes overnight; instead, “hundreds if not thousands of little things” will change over time.
“Readers are important,” he said. “We want to hear from them what they want to see different.”
Singleton attended the employee meeting Tuesday, and reflected on his 24 years of ownership of the newspaper. The News-Miner was the last newspaper he and his late business partner, Richard Scudder, owned. Singleton and Scudder founded Media General which owned papers across the country. The two owned the News-Miner through family trusts.
“We learned in our 24 years that Alaska is a very special place, a very different place,” Singleton said. “It’s not like every other place in the country. We were told that from the beginning and as time went on, we learned that that’s true.”
Singleton added: “There can be nothing more fitting as I sell my last newspaper, and I couldn’t be prouder, than to have it go back to the Sneddens.”
