Fairchild paper joining trend, going digital

Fairchild Air Force Base will stop circulating a weekly newspaper this spring, moving into the digital age by putting its news onto a Web site.

On April 1, the base will end its contract for publishing the Fairchild Connection, leaving it without a printed compilation of news stories, military advice and ads for the first time in 59 years.

The shift to the Internet is part of an initiative for all Air Force bases.

“A handful of bases have already done it. We’re still kind of at the forefront,” said Senior Airman Christie Putz, a member of the Fairchild public affairs staff.

The base already puts its news stories on a page on the Fairchild Web site, at http://public.fairchild.amc.af.mil.

“Our goal is to have daily news,” Putz said. “This allows us to have that flexibility.”

When the first base newspaper was published in 1948, the base wasn’t even called Fairchild, and the paper was called Spokane Bomber Views. Since that time, the newspaper has had six different names, several different publishers and many changes in appearance.

Now, military personnel will have access to the Internet version of the newspaper from computers on the job or in their homes, Putz said. Finding a copy of the weekly newspaper off-base is difficult.

But the Web site will not contain any ads.

The newspaper is published by the Cheney Free Press, which also publishes the Spokane Valley News Herald, Davenport Times and Senior Times, and has had the contract since 1997.

Under the contract, Fairchild’s public affairs office provides the news content and layouts, while the Free Press sells the ads, prints the paper and delivers it by mail to houses on base and different locations where it can be picked up for free, publisher Bill Ifft said. The Fairchild Connection has a weekly press run of 7,000 papers.

“We made some money on (the contract). It’s not huge,” said Ifft, who estimated the Free Press grossed about $200,000 on the contract last year.

Ifft said he’s still discussing the possibility of publishing a weekly paper with display and classified ads that would be circulated on base. “There are some opportunities there for us,” he said.

Spokane Bomber Views debuted on April 2, 1948 on Spokane Air Force Base, which was renamed for Gen. Muir Fairchild in 1950.

The newspaper was renamed the Fairchild Times in May 1954, Putz said. Spokesman-Review records indicate it kept that name until 1986, when the longtime publisher at the Davenport Times lost the contract to a former base public affairs official, who started a new paper called the Fairchild Crown. The base paper was renamed the Strikehawk in 1992, and the Global Warrior in 1994, shortly after Fairchild lost its B-52 bombers and became the nation’s largest home to KC-135 tankers.

At different times, the nameplate on the front page has featured a sketch of Mount Spokane, evergreens on a hillside, a bomber swooping off the map of Washington state or a KC-135 tanker trailing the colors of the Seattle Seahawks football team.

For a time, it seemed the name would change at the behest of a new wing commander or public affairs chief, Ifft said.

It was renamed the Fairchild Connection in 1997, a name that has stuck since Ifft and the Free Press have had the contract.

Right now the Web site simply says Fairchild Air Force Base at the top. Lt. Tristan Hinderliter of the base public affairs office said that’s likely to change, but they haven’t yet settled on a name.