For Nome, population 3,984, one newspaper might be enough. But residents of this Western Alaska gold rush city -- home of the Bering Sea Ice Golf Classic and the Labor Day Bathtub Race and the finish line for the 1,000-mile Iditarod sled-dog race -- pride themselves on being different. As two-newspaper towns disappear elsewhere, Nome is in the midst of a big-time war of the weeklies.

The battle began in March, when photographer Rob Stapleton quit The Nome Nugget -- the state's oldest newspaper -- over "philosophical differences and personality conflicts." Stapleton wanted to tinker with the look of the scrappy weekly, but editor Nancy McGuire didn't take to change readily.

 After all, it took her nine years to get around to having the tilted Nugget building, sinking because of permafrost, brought level with the street. Nomites joked that the building leaned to the left like its liberal owner.

 McGuire has owned the Nugget since 1982. She is a stout fifty-year-old woman who wears her long gray hair in a ponytail and runs her office like a commune. A full-time staff of ten works alongside three dogs to the sound of Irish folk music. Donuts and fresh-ground coffee greet miners, state workers, and subsistence hunters who pop in off dusty Front Street to chat.

 In February, McGuire got a call from Chris Casati, publisher and editor in chief of Alaska Newspapers Inc., a seven-paper Anchorage-based chain long interested in buying the ninety-six-year-old Nugget. McGuire turned ANI down. She now thinks that Stapleton overheard the conversation and began making his own plans.

 Stapleton, for his part, says he heard a story on the radio about ANI losing its advertising with Alaska Commercial Company (AC, a major supermarket chain), and began to think about other sources for ad revenue -- and a new audience.

 Nome is an airport hub for the Native villages, but they weren't getting their fair share of coverage, says Stapleton. He thought the villages would respond to more attention. He also expected a positive response to that idea from ANI, 51 percent of which is owned by the Calista Corporation, a native-owned corporation, and 49 percent by Edgar Blatchford, a businessman who's half Native. Moreover, Nome is 52 percent Native, and the surrounding villages are almost entirely occupied by Native Alaskans.

Stapleton called Casati and wrote up a proposal to establish a Nome bureau for ANI. But after Casati visited Nome and met with Stapleton and some Native leaders, ANI decided to launch the eighth paper in its chain -- the Bering Strait Record -- with a staff of two, Stapleton and an advertising director.

 The Nugget, though it does cover the villages, considers itself Nome's hometown paper, not a regional paper. The town's population was 30,000, mostly white gold miners, when the Nugget was founded. Its current 6,000 readers include former Nomites in Fairbanks, Anchorage, and the Lower 48.

 The Bering Strait Record, meanwhile, in its third month of publication already claims a circulation of 4,700. Its motto: "News from the Edge of Tomorrow," since Nome is only about 135 miles from the international dateline.

Stapleton -- the paper's sole photographer, reporter, managing editor, and distributor -- works down the street from the Nugget. His paper offers the color photos and slick graphics he felt the Nugget was neglecting. It also offers a clear Native emphasis. For example, a cooking column by a local Inupiat woman offers recipes for salmon and berries for summer, and seal and walrus variations for winter.

Of McGuire's fifteen full- and part-time employees, more than half are Native. "We don't see people as Native or non-Native," she says. "We see them as people." Record supporters, she says, are those "who've had their ox gored once or twice" by the Nugget. Overall, McGuire regards the Record as another of the "clones" spawned off by a faceless corporation from far-off Anchorage.

 But if Stapleton is a clone, he was cloned from a unique model. A six-foot-five-inch adventurer, mountain climber, and veteran Alaskan photographer, Stapleton looks the part of a combat warrior. And indeed some of the Nome newspaper battles have been rough.

Piles of newspapers disappeared. Stapleton reported McGuire to OSHA for not having a fan in the dark room. McGuire reported to federal officials that the Record's ad representative was doing business out of government-subsidized housing, which she thought was against the rules, although it wasn't.

 Meanwhile, competition may have moved the Nugget to make some changes. McGuire has added digital cameras, a Native correspondent on St. Lawrence Island, and even a Web page, though she says those changes were planned before Stapleton quit.

 Stapleton, who can't keep up with McGuire's longer features because he has no writing staff, uses AP wire copy to fill the white space. "People come up to me and say, 'Rob, you've really made a lot of changes at the Nugget.' At first I thought they were confused. But, you know, they're right."

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