WASILLA - The good people of the Upper Susitna Valley are hungry for an outlet, if the personal ads in the Alaska Pioneer Press are any indication: "30-year-old Talkeetna resident seeks attractive female drinking buddy for innocent debauchery and more."

"Single white female seeking strong decisive man to shovel the roof and get that annoying engine light to go off. Must like dogs and have a good paying job."

"Single white female looking for several partners to farkle with. Must be flexible with good sense of humor and be into taking risks - EDITOR'S NOTE: Calm down, 'farkle' is a dice game."

All the personals are legit, promises Pioneer Press reporter, photographer, editor and publisher John Moses.

"I swear to God they came in," said Moses. "They've been probably the most popular part of the paper."

The first issue of the free, monthly Pioneer Press debuted the last week in February on racks at shops and businesses around the Upper Susitna Valley, with a few in Wasilla and Anchorage.

Vol. 1, No. 1 - "A new dawn. A new paper!" - led with a story about Alaska Railroad Corp. plans around Talkeetna. Inside pages hold a few ads and a sprinkling of business, outdoors, political and crime news, the last an item on the Anchorage sentencing of the accused murderer of Bethany Correira, a former Talkeetna resident killed in 2003.

Grete Lewis Perkins filed a heart-wrenching column about her son's very recent death of liver disease at the age of 41.

"There was still a little boy in that man's body, all the way up until he died. He never lost it," Perkins wrote about her son, Chip, nicknamed "Mo" for his slow-as-molasses manner.

For years, Perkins wrote for the Talkeetna Times, but the paper changed hands. She's glad to have a new place to submit her work.

"He called me," she said. "If somebody calls you and says, 'I want you to write for me,' that's really nice. I really needed it. I was just at an all-time low."

Perkins told Moses she would have to write about Chip's death. She couldn't think about anything else.

"He said, 'That's fine ... however many words it takes."

DESKTOP NEWSROOM

Moses puts the paper together in his newsroom: a Gateway computer on his desk at home, where he can watch fat snowflakes fall on the village airstrip. He handles writing and production; his wife, Gale Moses, does advertising and marketing.

A parallel - and more timely - Web site encourages readers to contribute stories, calendar items, or other tidbits from life in the unique communities of the area: Talkeetna, Willow, Trapper Creek, Caswell, and Sunshine. Other links include a fun-and-games site with, among other things, Moronic Checkers, Hemingway versus Charo.

"I think we can have a nice online community here," Moses said. "There are a lot of clubs without Web sites. People get in the habit of looking for the calendars. I'm more than happy to post them."

Talkeetna already has one free paper, the Talkeetna Times. The Mat-Su Valley Frontiersman and Daily News also cover the Su Valley.

Moses is part of a new trend, apparently. While many daily newspapers struggle with declining circulation and advertising revenues, small, very local community papers like the Pioneer Press are gaining, according to a group that tracks such things.

"We get those calls quite often - probably once a month, somebody is starting a new newspaper," said Brian Steffens, executive director of the National Newspaper Association, a community newspaper trade group based in Missouri.

Community papers are easy and relatively cheap, Steffens said. All it takes is a computer, some software, a server and a place to do the printing. Even some newspaper chains are opening "hyperlocal" papers to focus on down-home details: library fundraisers, elementary school sports, church socials.

"They just get deeper, what ties people to a paper," he said.

A TEEN DREAM

Moses, 45, and a self-proclaimed "journalism junkie," said he has wanted his own newspaper since he was 18.

He and Gale moved to Talkeetna in 2006 from California to help run her mother's bed and breakfast, Talkeetna Landings B & B. John spent 10 years as editor of a small daily in the San Francisco Bay area. Once in Alaska, Moses did some freelancing for Pacific Fishing magazine and wrote for the Frontiersman and, briefly, the Talkeetna Times.

He lit out on his own to cover more local news. "I feel this is an underserved area," he said. "People are very hungry to know what's going on."