It's another sad day for Alaska. Truly. After trying to give it a go on the web for more than a year, The Voice of the Times is folding at the end of this month. An unsigned column on the website says that the site could not attract advertising because, "many prospective advertisers consider it politically radioactive due to its identification with Bill Allen, its former publisher and a key figure in the ongoing political scandals in Alaska."

The Voice of the Times was funded by Bill Allen, president of Veco Corp., once Alaska's largest oilfield services company. Allen, who pleaded guilty to bribing Alaska lawmakers, is now the star government witness in U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens' corruption trial in Washington, D.C.

The Voice of the Times was a hold-over from the generally pro-development Anchorage Times. Allen bought the paper in 1989. When the Anchorage Times folded in 1992 after a spirited newspaper war between it and the more liberal Anchorage Daily News, a section of the ADN's editorial page was given to Allen as part of a five year, court-ordered agreement. He called it the Voice of the Times and filled it with politically conservative commentators.

The ADN voluntarily renewed the contract two times. It ceased publishing the columns in May 2007, after the FBI swooped into town.

When I was working for the Anchorage Press, I wrote a few columns about the puzzling nature of the ADN's relationship with the VOT, which touched some nerves. The publisher of the ADN at the time, Mike Sexton, hung up on me when I asked about it, as did the writers at the VOT. Pat Dougherty, ADN's editor, was plenty snippy. A few ADN editorial page editors and writers admitted, off the record, to being embarrassed by what columnist Mike Doogan called "an unholy alliance" between oil-man Allen and the ADN.

I never blamed the VOT guys for not talking. They were only columnists, and didn't feel that they had an obligation to supply the public with anything other than opinions. And, too, they suspected that I didn't mean them well. Which was probably true at the time.

I don't presume to be the most original thinker. I can run with the pack with the best of them. When I moved to Alaska in 2001, people rolled their eyes over the VOT, and so I did, too.

But once, when I expressed dismay over that funny section, my editor at the time, Robert Meyerowitz, who always was an original thinker, said something like, "Do you really want to see them go? Isn't the Daily News a more interesting paper for having them there?"

I realized I didn't really want to see them go, and I felt no joy when they left the pages of the ADN.

What I wanted, I realized, was the ADN to own up to the fact that on their news section they were writing stories about Allen's corruption, and then giving him space in another part of the newspaper to justify that corruption.

(I still think they should do more. In every story or editorial about corruption in Alaska, I think the ADN should include the long-standing relationship the state's largest newspaper had with Bill Allen. And I think the phrase "unindicted co-conspirator" should be used at least once.)

I'd also like them to write about how, in retrospect, the VOT's staunch objections to Sarah Palin were prescient. Way back when, when we were all Sarah-smitten, it was the only media outlet in town sounding the bells. Way back it was questioning her truthfulness, her commitment to ethics. It even had some proof, but none of us in the press listened much, and many used the anti-Palin VOT columns as confirmation that the good old boys were just on the run.

And even though it's going against their party, they're still at it. In an Oct. 2 column, Paul Jenkins wrote, "The two axioms to remember about Palin are these: The rules do not apply to her, and she is an opportunist always looking for buses with lots of room underneath, lots of room for all the political bodies."

But I don't think that anyone else will say it, so I guess I will: Your boss was dirty, and some of your ideas downright nutty, but you guys were right about Palin all along. We were wrong. I was wrong. I'm one of the co-conspirators that created her.

Alaska will be a less interesting-and perhaps a less honest-place without your voice.