Digital Bob Archive

John W. Frame may have owned as many newspapers in Alaska as William Randolph Hearst did in the rest of the country, but there were some differences. Hearst's papers were dailies, he owned many at one time, and they augmented his fortune. Frame's papers were mostly weeklies, were owned one at a time, and it is unlikely that he got more than a bare livelihood from them. For some four decades, however, John Frame was widely known in the North, and he sparked more than one lively controversy, at least one of which got him into physical combat.

Frame was born in Illinois, earned a law degree in Iowa, practiced law and served in the legislature in Washington, and like so many others, came north with the Klondike Rush. He was in the newspaper business in Dawson, then moved westward to Fortymile and Nome. He came to Juneau late in 1901 and bought the Daily Record-Miner, one of the two daily papers being published here at that time. He ran that paper for three years and also established the Alaska Weekly Transcript.

An early advocate of statehood for Alaska, Frame established a weekly paper, The Forty-ninth Star, at Valdez in 1915 and the following year moved it to the new town that was at first called Knik Anchorage and then just Anchorage. Some of his other newspapers included The Commoner at Valdez; The Daily Herald, The Alaskan and The Truth, all at Cordova; The Weekly Alaskan at Anchorage and The Alaska Examiner at Ketchikan. For some years he edited The Pathfinder, the monthly magazine published by the Pioneers of Alaska.

In the Primary Election of 1924 Frame was elected Republican National Committeeman for Alaska, but the National Committee refused to seat him, possibly because he had, some years earlier, served as chairman of one of the two rival Territorial Democratic Committees.

Whether Frame was all out anti-union or was just opposed to the activities of the Western Federation of Miners at Treadwell in 1907 is difficult to determine now, but he was critical of that union in The Weekly Transcript. This aroused the ire of John Lezinsky, the president of the local, who accosted Frame on a Juneau street one day. In the shouting and shoving match that followed, Lezinsky got a finger in Frame's mouth, and Frame chomped down on it.

According to Stroller White, who was then practicing his trade up in Whitehorse, \"the finger stayed there after the hand had been withdrawn. Frame himself added insult to injury by writing in The Transcript, \"Jack Lezinsky is the bigest talker with the least sand of anyone in our memory, and he bawled fit to kill when his finger got bit. And it was only his little finger, at that.\"