Free to a good home: 1 newspaper

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) - Free to a good home: One newspaper.

Not a single edition of a paper but the entire newspaper.Publisher Larry Persily is willing to give away The Skagway News to the right person or couple who are willing to move to Skagway, Alaska, a cruise ship town that once boasted four newspapers during the height of the Klondike Gold Rush days.

"The only way this paper has a long-term future, and anything that I've ever seen that works with small town weeklies or bi-weeklies is where the small town editor owns, lives and are in the community," he said. "And that's what this needs."

Persily has been editing the newspaper he purchased in April remotely from Anchorage, which is 500 miles west of Skagway, near the top of the Alaska Panhandle.

It's a two-person shop, with an editor and a business person on site. The editor gave notice, prompting Persily, a Chicago transplant who has a long history in Alaska journalism, to look for another solution.

He declined to say what he paid for the newspaper, but he said it was more than a fully decked-out SUV but less than six figures.

The paper has a circulation of about 500, pretty good for a town with a population of less than 1,000 people, but the population swells with young people in the summer working tourism jobs.

The newspaper also benefits greatly from tourist trade.

With the help of a robust and advertising-filled visitors guide that is handed out to the 1 million or so cruise ship passengers that visit Skagway every summer, the newspaper can pay the owners a salary, but they probably also can't cover a mortgage.