If you still have your 2017 AP&T phone book, the yellow one with the picture of the bear cub munching a hunk of salmon on the cover, hang on to it. The new phone book is a mess, and next year’s may not be better.
(Also, new books weren’t mailed to customers this year. You must pick yours up at the AP&T office on Main Street.)
Phone books are going away. So say the phone companies. After that, you’ll be on your own with your friend Google to try to find the number of that nice guy who stopped and helped you fix your car’s flat tire.
This is the way the world is going and it’s not helpful. Let’s forget for now the dilemma that there is no directory anywhere for cell phone numbers. That’s a column for another day.
As a candidate for the Alaska Legislature, I’ve been traveling to Juneau, Skagway and Gustavus. The first thing I needed was a phone directory to reach people for whom I had only a name. I carry a cell phone these days, but it’s time-consuming to use and keeping the battery charged is a constant issue.
In Juneau, phone books are scarce.
At one time, phone books could be found at phone booths, but deregulation of telephone utilities 20 years ago meant phone companies no longer were required to provide the inexpensive call a utility customer could make from a booth. Adios, phone booths.
When I checked in at the GCI office in Juneau, a young woman there told me the phone utility stopped publishing a print directory four or five years ago.
I asked retiring CBJ clerk Laurie Sica, and she said her phone book was already spoken for: She willed it to the clerk who is replacing her. Longtime resident Mary Lou Spartz took pity on me and sent me her GCI book, printed in 2014. Spartz said she used it and two other more recent versions to cobble together what was once a staple of public information.
What’s left in Juneau is a commercial, mini-version of the phone book called “The Local Pages,” printed by an outfit in Salt Lake City. Its white pages section is an interesting mishmash. You won’t find residential numbers for Haines or Skagway, but amid the Juneau residential listings are “yellowed” commercial listings for businesses in Seward and Nome and California and Washington.
Its yellow pages include listings for the Kodiak Chamber of commerce, oral surgeons in Anchorage and a painting company in Fairbanks. The title on the book’s cover is “Juneau and Surrounding Areas.” You figure it out.
I spoke recently with Mark McCready, the public relations man for Alaska Power and Telephone at company headquarters in Port Townsend, Wash. Mark’s a good guy, as good as they come in his line of work – responsive, friendly and informative. Mark said a recent survey of AP&T customers found 60 percent still wanted a phone book, so AP&T is still printing one, but he figures the end of the phone book is 2 to 5 years out.
McCready said it’s “financially unviable” to continue printing the traditional phone book, so AP&T and the company that prints the book looked for ways to cut costs. To do it, they took out of the Haines book listings for towns not served by AP&T, including Juneau, Sitka and Ketchikan, and mashed all the utility’s residential listings together. For example, the listing before the listing for “Tom Morphet” is for “V Morozov” of Delta Junction. (You’ll also find residential listings for your friends in Tetlin and Chisana.)
Listings of Haines Borough numbers are in a separate “government” section of the book, alphabetically following the listing for the Hagevig Regional Fire Training Center in Juneau. Similarly, phone numbers for Haines businesses are found in the “business and professional listings” section of the white pages, combined with other communities, so “Alaska Fjordlines” comes directly after “Alaska Fibre” of Petersburg.
McCready said the “combined book” has not been popular. Customers also complained that the size lettering used in the new book requires use of a magnifying glass. “The whole point was to cut down the size and create a smaller book,” McCready explained. “Ultimately our goal was to make the book more cost effective, and how do you do that… We don’t want it to be a money-losing proposition.”
McCready suggested print might be bigger in next year’s book, but the Juneau listings won’t be returning. “If you want to find someone in Juneau, you can always go online.”
I tried this method. I used last year’s Haines phone book and found a Juneau residential listing for a friend of mine I rarely call, all in less than a minute. Then I Googled my friend’s name along with “Juneau, Alaska.” I found my friend at whitepages.com, eighth on a list of people with the same name.
So yes, it works, though it’s not quite as fast or convenient as using a book, and it requires a computer or computerized phone. And the book is easier on the eyes. The old-fashioned book is, in several important ways, friendlier and easier to use than its high-tech replacement.
But it costs the phone company money. So it’s not likely to last.
A search-engine version of AP&T’s book is online at aptphonebook.com. It also does not include listings for Juneau, Sitka or Ketchikan. And the word is that soon even the slimmed-down version of the phone book will be gone.
We’ll see. While a journalism student in the early 1980s, I was told that by the time I was busy in my career, print newspapers would be history. They’re still around, and while not as profitable as they once were, they’re as important as ever. Many people still prefer to read stories in print and readers notice the ads placed there more than they do ads online.
Make no mistake. The end of the phone book – like the end of gas station attendants who once pumped your gas – is not for your convenience. It’s to save a business money. Whether the savings are being passed on to you, the consumer, in terms of improved service is up to you to decide.