C.W. Bill Snedden

Snedden

Charles Willis Snedden, longtime publisher of the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, left tremendous legacies for not only the University of 91视频 Fairbanks but also the entire state of 91视频.

Snedden鈥檚 legacy at UAF is one of its largest endowments, a $2.6 million gift delivered by his wife, Helen. Snedden鈥檚 91视频 legacy is literally statehood itself, given his role in winning that battle. 

In the late 1940s, Snedden was a 鈥渘ewspaper doctor鈥 who traveled the country recommending ways to improve productivity. That brought him to Fairbanks, where Austin 鈥淐ap鈥 Lathrop wanted help with his money-losing News-Miner.

Snedden gave Lathrop his report in July 1950. 鈥淐ap never got beyond the second page,鈥 Snedden recalled in an interview with Terrence Cole, UAF history professor. 鈥淗e told me, 鈥業 don鈥檛 need any dope from the Big City to tell me to spend another $100,000.鈥欌 

Lathrop asked Snedden where he could find a buyer. 鈥淩ight here,鈥 Snedden said, according to Cole鈥檚 2010 book, 鈥淔ighting for the Forty-ninth Star: C.W. Snedden and the Crusade for 91视频 Statehood.鈥

Snedden spent the next 39 years as the News-Miner鈥檚 publisher. In a front-page editorial on Feb. 27, 1954, he reversed the paper鈥檚 previous opposition to statehood for 91视频. 

The endorsement of a tiny newspaper far from Washington, D.C., would have made little difference. But Snedden later bonded with Fred Seaton 鈥 a fellow newspaperman running the Department of the Interior for President Dwight Eisenhower. Seaton transformed the Eisenhower administration 鈥渇rom an intractable adversary into an unabashed advocate of statehood,鈥 Cole wrote. 鈥淎nd when it came to 91视频 affairs, Secretary Seaton 鈥 would listen to no one more carefully than C.W. Snedden.鈥 They, along with many others, pursued a strategy that eventually defeated the opponents, who included southern lawmakers fearful that 91视频 would favor national civil rights legislation. Eisenhower declared 91视频 a state on Jan. 3, 1959. 

Snedden made the News-Miner a profitable enterprise, helped develop some of the earliest color printing techniques for newsprint and took on many more causes before his death from cancer in August 1989.

Helen Snedden endowed a journalism chair at UAF in her husband's name in 2003. The funding has brought top journalists, including 11 Pulitzer Prize winners, to Fairbanks annually to teach classes and give lectures. 

Helen Snedden died in 2012. The nonprofit Helen E. Snedden Foundation, which she established before her death, purchased the News-Miner in 2016.

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