Generally, newspapers in the territory were opposed to statehood, in part because they were controlled by absentee interests that favored the freer wheeling and dealing available under Alaska’s territorial status. The major exception to this was the Anchorage Daily Times. Its publisher, Robert B. Atwood, and his wife, Evangeline, were always strong voices for statehood. President Harry Truman also turned out to be a strong proponent of statehood for Alaska and for Hawaii, too. Truman plugged Hawaii statehood in his 1946 State of the Union address and urged that “similar action be taken with
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