Starting the Same Paper Twice   

When Tim Giago started the Lakota Times on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota in 1981, he didn't expect to be starting up almost the exact same newspaper again nearly 20 years later.

Giago sold his old paper, which he had renamed Indian Country Today, to Standing Stone Media Inc., a company owned by the Oneida Indian Nation of New York, in 1998. He had wanted to retire. But then he started hearing from people in his area who missed the old paper and its unique coverage of reservation issues.

"I made a mistake, I think, in selling it," says Giago, 65, who is Lakota and is the founder and first president of the Native American Journalists Association. "So I decided to start another one."

His new paper, the Lakota Journal, was born in February 2000 and began regular coverage of the tribes of South Dakota. Like its predecessor, it's a weekly broadsheet and costs $1. It's published every Monday.

His Indian Country Today had grown from its regional roots into a national paper, thus the name change. But Giago hopes to keep the new paper focused on coverage of the tribes in the Northern Plains region. Those tribes need a voice, he says, because their traditions and heritage are not often covered by other newspapers.

In fact, Native Americans are not covered much at all, says Allen H. Neuharth, former chairman of the Freedom Forum and founder of USA Today. "Native Americans may be the most underrepresented and undercovered minority in the country," he says. Of Giago's efforts to increase such coverage, Neuharth says: "Any such venture is deserving of support."

Meanwhile, Indian Country Today continues to serve the tribes of South Dakota while covering national issues that affect Native Americans. Eight reporters at the paper are dedicated to regional coverage, including two who cover the Lakotas, says Tim Johnson, the paper's executive editor and publisher. The paper also publishes a "Lakota Times" section in each issue. He says that Indian Country Today, with a circulation of 12,000 to 13,000, is not threatened by the Lakota Journal, circulation 9,500.

Giago is simply enjoying the fruits of his second startup. "It's a wonderful feeling," he says. "It's fun, working with my own people."