UPDATED: ADN Adds "Conservative" Columnist in Desperate Attempt to Save Readership

The Anchorage Daily News Inside Opinion Blog today announced that they were adding another "vigorous conservative voice" to their editorial page, starting this weekend. Unfortunately the conservative voice they are adding, Paul Jenkins, is a Dan Fagan clone.

Jenkins used to write for The Voice of the Times, a descendant of the now-defunct Anchorage Times. A little history - the Anchorage Times was a conservative-leaning paper that went out of business in 1992. It had a proud history - its longtime owner/editor, Robert Atwood (who served in the position for an incredible 55 years, from 1935 to 1990) was the chairman of the Alaska Statehood Committee and one of Alaska's Founding Fathers. When he retired in 1990 he sold the paper to the VECO Corporation, a name you may recognize from the Ted Stevens scandal.

The Times failed in 1992, probably because they remained an afternoon paper while the newer ADN published a morning edition. However, they had an agreement with the ADN for inclusion of a half-page editorial section called The Voice of the Times as a counterpoint; this lasted until 2007 when VECO CEO Bill Allen was taken down for bribery. The Voice tried to continue as a blog, but even that failed in October of last year.

Anyway, enough of the history lesson...from what I can find of Paul Jenkins' writings, he's a conservative along the lines of Dan Fagan - i.e. no friend of the Governor. This article, in which he calls her a "redneck socialist", is pretty typical. As a matter of fact, he reminds me greatly of Mr. Jerry Taylor in his tone and opinions. The bottom line is that, as a writer for the Voice, Jenkins took his paychecks from VECO, a corrupt oil-services company.

Governor Palin has apparently taken him on before. In a short period of digging around, I found this purported letter from Palin to Jenkins during the gubernatorial campaign, challenging him for calling her a "snitch" and a "lightweight".

The ADN has only hired on this "conservative" so they can bring Governor Palin under fire from both the left and the right. My only consolation is that the parent company of the ADN, McClatchy, is fading fast...visit the great blog McClatchy Watch and scroll down through the first few posts.

UPDATE by Ramrocks:

Jenkins is a long-time enemy of the Guv. He was mentioned in Kaylene Johnson's biography of Palin:

A handful of emails and a note written by her secretary thanking a campaign contributor were lapses in Sarah’s effort to keep her [lieutenant governor] campaign separate from [Wasilla] city hall. Years later, Voice of the Times columnists Paul Jenkins dug into Wasilla city records to find the emails. Jenkins suggested Sarah had been hypocritical, comparing her lapses to conflict-of-interest scandals that later rocked the Republican Party. (The Voice of the Times appeared in space purchased from the Anchorage Daily News by VECO, an oilfield-services company. The arrangement ended after VECO’s CEO, Bill Allen, pled guilty to bribing state legislators in exchange for votes favoring the oil industry.)

So let me get this straight: the Anchorage Daily News sold column space in their newspaper to a company with a vested interest in defeating one candidate so that they could use their column to dredge up stories to defeat that candidate. That's all you need to know about Jenkins and the ADN, folks.

UPDATE II by Ramrocks:

That letter from Palin to Jenkins was an awesome find. My favorite part:

I'm the only Republican candidate who stood up to Ruedrich and Murkowski when many other Alaskans observed obvious unethical actions and stupendous efforts to take our state in the wrong direction. I did so at personal cost, including leaving a $124,000-year top-level state job, long before deciding to run for Governor, not when it was just politically expedient as we now see with other candidates.

[...]

Sen. Ben Stevens recently berated me for speaking out and speaking up, oddly proclaiming I wasn't just running against Binkley, but was running against himself, GOP boss Randy Ruedrich and Murkowski. It sounded like a good ol' boy challenge, much like your editorial did.

Awesome! Just awesome. Primo 'Cuda attack.