Indian Country Bureau Heads West Native American Newspaper Moving Bureau From Spokane To Puget Sound

After one year and three managing editors, Indian Country Today’s Northwest bureau has left Spokane.

The office, one of two bureaus operated by the country’s largest Indian-owned newspaper, moved Friday to Lacey, Wash., near Olympia.

“We could best serve the tribes of the Northwest by being closer to the capital,” publisher Tim Giago said during a phone interview from the paper’s main office in Rapid City, S.D.

One of the paper’s largest stockholders - the Quinault Indian Nation in Taholah, Wash., - is located on the west side of the state, he said. Seventy percent of the bureau’s advertising also comes from Western Washington.

“It’s not like we’re abandoning (the Spokane area),” said Giago, an Oglala Lakota Indian and prize-winning journalist. “It’s a business decision. … I’m a for-profit business. The paper needs to be in a place where it’s supported.”

It’s been a rough year for the Northwest bureau, a small office in the Spokane Valley with a paid staff of eight to 11 people.

The bureau has seen three managing editors - the last of whom was fired after only two weeks. The office hasn’t had a manager in the past five months.

Employees also came and went. The bureau has hired about 20 different people to fill positions.

Understaffing and the high turnover rate made it difficult to put out the newspaper, said Jennifer Parham, who worked as a staff writer for five months.

“It was fun to be a reporter working within the Native American community,” Parham said. “But there was a lot of inside politics. It diminished some of the excitement.”

Former staffers also complained about Giago’s management style.

“He’s very skilled and very good at what he does but people weren’t getting their paychecks,” said Holly Swanson, a former page designer at the paper who got paid $6 an hour. “He was firing editors right and left. He was an incredibly loose cannon when it came to his employees.”

A nationally syndicated columnist, Giago started Indian Country Today 17 years ago on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. Known as Lakota Times, it had a local weekly circulation of only 3,000. Seven years ago, it changed its name, went national and now has a circulation of 125,000.

The new location won’t hurt the paper’s coverage of the area’s Plateau Indians, which includes the Spokanes and Coeur d’Alenes, Giago insisted. He plans to keep an advertising representative in Spokane, as well as a correspondent.

He’ll also oversee the hiring of new native employees at the Lacey bureau, he said. Until the Spokane bureau opened, all of Indian Country Today’s employees were Indian. Some of the Spokane staffers were nonnative.

“(The Spokane bureau) was a learning experience,” Giago said. “You don’t know about a region until you move in and experiment with it.”

Giago has done his share of experimenting. Four years ago, Indian Country Today started a southwest bureau in Scottsdale, Ariz. After a lackluster year, Giago moved the office to Albuquerque, N.M., where it has remained.

Not everyone’s happy with the latest change.

Local tribes will miss the bureau, Parham said. Many felt Spokane was a strategic, central location.

“It takes a good year to build,” said Marcy Morris, a Coeur d’Alene Indian and the paper’s associate publisher. “Being next to the capital is a good opportunity but I’m sad to see it move.”

, DataTimes