WITH HIRING OF NEW COLUMNIST, FAIRBANKS NEWS-MINER ENDS AN ERA

By JOE LaROCCA

With the rehiring of former reporter and columnist Kris Kapps of Denali, to replace longtime columnist Dermot Cole, the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner has symbolically severed its last tie to meaningful coverage of energy and related issues linked to Alaska's world class North Slope oil and gas reserves in which it once played a dominant role harking back to their discovery back in the late 1960s.

Ms. Kapps worked for the News-Miner in Fairbanks until some ten years ago, when she moved to Denali, from where she has since  produced a weekly feature column on Denali for the News-Miner as a free lance writer.

A keen observer and fine writer, Ms..Kapps was recently rehired by the News-Miner to write daily columns, including one each week on Denali and another featuring mainly photographs of notable persons and events covering both venues. She fills the vacuum left when Mr. Cole departed the  paper recently after more than 30 years to become a reporter and writer for the Anchorage-based Alaska Dispatch.

Her forte as a journalist has been the gamut of social and artistic movements focusing on the community's people and the events in which they participate. Her writing is distinguished by its compassion for her subjects.

While Cole also wrote prolifically and sensitively about community life and people in the Interior, there was a harder, edgier dimension to his coverage linked to public policy governing Alaska's hydrocarbon resources, or more succintly, the politics of oil, notably the politics of the left.

An unabashed liberal, Cole was frequently and severely criticized for his well-researched  views which favored government control over Alaska's natural resources. He provided a continuum in this regard that historically characterized the News Miner's coverage of oil and gas policy since the discovery of oil at Prudhoe Bay, often at odds with both newspaper editorial policy as well as the sentiments of many of the newspaper's readers. 

However, his political views  enjoyed the moral support of the most of the University of Alaska's Fairbanks intellectual and academic elites within the community. But with his departure, that half-century continuum abruptly ended. No one on the editorial staff of the News-Miner shares Cole's deep commitment, philosphical bent, writing prowess or in-depth knowledge of energy matters, both local and statewide, not to mention his invaluable sources and contacts.

Ms. Kapps will undoubtedly be a huge asset to the News-Miner's editorial columns.  But neither she nor anyone else on the staff can begin to bridge the gap in energy matters coverage left by Cole's departure. This is an omission top management, which reportedly tried to persuade Cole to stay there, won't bewail, however, often uncomfortable as it was with Cole's liberal socio-political and economic stance. He's the indispenible person with which the News-Miner found it expedient to dispense.