How an Alaska news nonprofit bought the local newspaper it was founded to compete with

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It’s been a big couple of years for Amy Bushatz. A former executive editor of Military.com, her husband’s military career had taken their family to the Matanuska-Susitna Valley of Alaska — northern suburbs of Anchorage that make up the state’s fastest growing region. (Perhaps best known in the Lower 48 as the starting point for Sarah Palin’s political career.) Seeing a void in the local news landscape, in 2024 she launched the Mat-Su Sentinel, a nonprofit news site aimed at providing “consistent, clear, connect-the-dots reporting focused on local government” — something she didn’t think the local newspaper, the Mat-Su Valley Frontiersman, was offering enough of.

After only 14 months, the Sentinel won the New LION Business of the Year Award from LION Publishers, the trade group for local independent online news outlets. A judge described the Sentinel as “one of the most complete early-stage news businesses I’ve seen. They built an infrastructure: thoughtful growth planning well in advance of launch, a diversified funding base, award-winning journalism, and clear systems that show they’re setting this up to last. They’ve made smart, strategic use of training programs and partner tools, and it’s clear they’re applying what they learn — whether that’s Facebook lead gen, donation flows, or operational efficiency.”

Fast-forward nine more months, and the Sentinel did something even more remarkable: It bought that nearly-80-year-old incumbent paper, the Frontiersman, returning it to local ownership.

Buying the local daily is the sort of thing many local news entrepreneurs daydream about. So how did Bushatz pull it off? LION’s Hayley Milloy asked for details, and their interview is worth reading in full. A few highlights:

Rather than viewing the Frontiersman as a competitor, I saw it as an important community asset. The question became: could we bring that legacy into a sustainable local nonprofit model and create something stronger than either organization could be on its own? We worked to find funding, sent in an offer, and the rest is history.

We put an initial offer last year, but the company was not ready to sell to us at the time, and those conversations were put on hold. The actual acquisition moved very, very quickly. From our most recent offer to closing was just over three weeks.

Yes, it was as exhausting as it sounds.

What has been especially meaningful is hearing from longtime readers who care deeply about the Frontiersman’s history and are excited to see that history remain rooted in Mat-Su. They’re also very worried about the archives and history of our region held by the Frontiersman, and I am proud to tell them that saving that and making it accessible to everyone is really, really important to me.

As part of the acquisition, the Frontiersman will no longer appear in print and has become part of the Sentinel’s online operation.

Photo of Pioneer Peak, in the Matanuska-Susitna Valley of Alaska, via Adobe Stock.

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