The "News-Miner" was founded as the Weekly Fairbanks News in 1903 by George M. Hill and assumed the "News-Miner" name in 1909, under editor William Fentress Thompson, when Zachary Hickman sold his newspaper, "The Miner News", to the "Fairbanks News". Thompson guided the paper through tough economic times as the gold near Fairbanks was mined out. During this period, the "News-Miner" absorbed Fairbanks' other newspapers and became the sole publication in Fairbanks. During the 1920s, the "News-Miner" experimented with aerial delivery to remote mining camps, becoming one of the first newspapers in the world to make regular deliveries by aircraft. After Thompson's death in 1926, former Fairbanks mayor Alfeld Hjalmar Nordale became the paper's editor.