All Mark Trahant wanted to do was to provide a high-quality newspaper for Navajos. The Navajo Times started in 1961 as a monthly newsletter for students attending schools off the reservation; later, it evolved into a weekly publication. Trahant, a member of the Shoshone-Bannock tribe in Idaho, took it over in 1983 and saw great things for the Times, turning it into a daily newspaper for almost 200,000 Navajos scattered over hundreds of miles. No longer was the publication a mere public relations vehicle for the reservation. It was now an actual newspaper.

And Trahant loved his work as a journalist. When asked what he did, he’d reply, “Ask questions and try to seek an understanding. And then figure out a way to tell it as a story. . . . It can be a lot more fun than a job. Who else gets to run around and see things firsthand and ask questions?”

Trahant got the financial books in order; he changed the circulation routes; he brought in new equipment; he hired Navajo reporters; he reached out to the Navajo community; he started a column written at a second-grade level to help people practice reading; he sponsored the first televised debate for the Navajo tribal chairmanship.

And he wrote editorials.

It was the editorial writing that perhaps sealed his—and the paper’s—doom. Trahant and the Times backed one person in the tribal election, but the other person won. Soon after the election, the new tribal chair fired everyone on the staff and put the paper in limbo; this happened so quickly that police escorted staff outside, locked the doors, turned off the computers, and pulled phones from the walls before anyone had an opportunity to report on it. The Times did come back, but in its former style: no Indian staff, stories that were essentially press releases, and no editorial page.

“I always expected to get fired,” said Trahant, “but I never expected the paper to be closed, too. . . . We all stuck to our principles and convictions and never once compromised. And, in the end, that probably was our doom.”

For awhile, though, thanks to Trahant and his staff, Navajos had the experience of a publication that was written by them, with them, and for them. The Times’ articles focused on Indian life—on Navajos, their struggles, their accomplishments and their disputes. Evidently, the new powers-that-be couldn’t handle that.

Does Trahant have regrets? “It was the right thing to do,” he says. \"It was that simple. I believe in the end, the truth will win, and when you’ve made that commitment to your principles, there’s no backing out.”

Update:

Mark Trahant's ongoing career as a journalist is a distinguished one; columnist at the Seattle Times; publisher of the Moscow-Pullman Daily News; editor at the Seattle Post Intelligencer; editor in residence at the University of Idaho; executive news editor at the Salt Lake Tribune; reporter at the Arizona Republic; chairman and chief executive officer at the Robert C. Maynard Institute for Journalism; Education visiting professional scholar at the Freedom Forum's First Amendment Center at Vanderbilt University; chair of journalism at the University of Alaska-Anchorage; president of the Native American Journalists Association; author of several books on journalism; blogger for Indian Country News.