50 Years Ago: Times the most read newspaper on the Nation

The Navajo Times reported 50 years ago this week that the Navajo Revolving Credit Program had expanded it services to Tuba City, Shiprock and Crownpoint with plans over the next two years to set up sub offices in Chinle and Fort Defiance.

Up to now the program, which was started in the late 1950s, only had offices in Window Rock and anyone who wanted to make a loan had to travel there, sometimes three or four times, in order to get their loan. The premise of the program was simple – tribal members who need up to $2,500 for anything from buying or taking care of their livestock, grazing permits, housing or home improvements, could file an application with the tribe.

The Navajo Times indicated that the program was a great success, providing tribal members who had bad credit with the opportunity to get a loan at low rates. What the Times didn’t report on, however, was that the program was having a hard time getting a sizable number of the people who got loans to repay the money back or to pay it on time.

The program basically had no authority to make people pay it back except to threaten them with a lawsuit or to plead with them to pay the money back so it could be loaned out to others.

This was a chronic problem of the program for many years and it was one that in the 70s, the paper would eventually start reporting on.

In its letters to the editor that week, John W. Hablitzel, principal of the school in Red Lake, wrote in to thank the Navajo Times for printing the school’s news releases.

And he pointed out something that people at the Navajo Times knew but had never reported – the paper was the most read paper on the Navajo Reservation and the only paper that got to most of the chapters on the reservation.

The paper, which was selling for 10 cents a copy, had a circulation of between 4,000 and 5,000 each week but claimed a readership of 30,000, saying each paper was read by an average of eight people.

In the Red Lake community, Hablitzel said, almost everyone seemed to know everything that was in the paper, even though a large number of people in the community were not able to read.

“We were amazed,” he said, “to discover how these people absorb the material which is printed in the Times. Even though many do not read, they somehow manage to find out what is printed in their paper.”

The Times had done research on this subject in its early years, partly because they were curious how people reacted to the paper and partly to show prospective advertisers what kind of readership their ads had.

What the Times discovered was that in many family households, reading the paper every Thursday was a family affair, with elders relying on their children who were able to read to tell them what was in the paper. And this included the ads.

The paper at that time placed a lot of photos in the paper, giving the elders something to look at. But most of the photos were people just looking at the camera. If you looked at the quality of the printing, you would soon see that many of the photos were so dark it was hard to determine what the people really looked like.

Still, Thursday became Navajo Times day on the reservation with families traveling miles to their nearest store to pick it up and find out what was going on within their government.

And finally, although the next tribal election for Navajo chairman is still a good two years away, the Navajo Times is beginning to push the tribe’s current chairman, Raymond Nakai, as the favorite in the next election.

The paper reported that Nakai attended a meeting in Cove over the weekend and although he was continuing to have problems with members of the Old Guard in the Navajo Tribal Council, he was beloved by the Navajo people.

Frank Yazzie, who must have been a member of the Cove Chapter, was quoted as saying: “He’s the man to beat. (I) can’t see anyone coming close to defeating Nakai.”

He added that almost all of the 300 people who attended the chapter meeting expressed their support of Nakai and when asked if there was anyone who could come close to beating Nakai, not one name was mentioned.

From a future standpoint, this was interesting in the number who turned out for chapter meeting. Attendance of 200 or more was common during those days even in the smaller chapters because tribal members were hungry for new or even gossip.

So chapter meetings would go on for hours, especially in the warmer months, giving families a chance to socialize and catch up on what their neighbors were doing.

In contrast to today’s situation, which the Times has reported on, many chapters are having problems getting the 25 member quorum needed to make the meeting official and some have held referendums to get the quorum reduced to 15.

As for the remarks praising Nakai, this would be one of the problems the paper would have for the next two years as members of the Old Guard suspected that the paper was being pressured by Nakai or his staff members to do everything it could to get Nakai re-elected.

Marshall Tome, who was still on as editor, would later say that as election time got closer, he would have more and more problems from various segments of the Navajo population who claimed that the paper was being used by Nakai or some other faction on the reservation.

It became so bad that Tome would eventually have to write in his column that all of these stories that the paper was controlled by Nakai was false. He would then point out that the paper also printed negative comments about Nakai as well.

But, he admitted, very few people seemed to believe that which would be a problem for the paper throughout the 1960s.

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