Journalists near and far react to the journalism of ‘Alaska Daily’

What does it take to authentically portray journalism on television? Is it election night pizza? The work of holding power to account? For the new ABC show “Alaska Daily,” it’s drawing from the real-life reporting of local journalists at the Anchorage Daily News. Created by Tom McCarthy, who helmed the Oscar-winning film “Spotlight,” it stars Bellingham-raised actor Hilary Swank as hard-boiled reporter Eileen Fitzgerald, who moves to Alaska from New York after her previous job fell through. She begins working with intrepid local journalist Rosalind “Roz” Friendly, played by Secwépemc actor Grace Dove, on an investigation into the crisis of missing and murdered Indigenous women in the state. It raises the question: How well can television grapple with the day-in and day-out of this important yet tough job? 

Playwright and journalist Vera Marlene Starbard, T’set Kwei (Tlingit/Dena’ina) is a co-writer on the show. A former editor of Anchorage Native News and the current editor of First Alaskans Magazine, she said she’s hoping the show will provide a more authentic portrayal of Alaska Natives that pushes back against harmful stereotypes she argues have been perpetuated in both television and journalism in the past, pointing to one scene where Roz expresses why it’s important to add a paragraph to a story so it doesn’t leave a hateful stereotype expressed by a racist sheriff about Native women unchallenged.

“Having the lie repeated and not contested, sometimes even the journalists don’t even know they’re lies. That was a discussion that went on literally for months and ended up in that small but really important scene that was a journalism argument, a TV argument and a national argument that we’re having at the same time,” Starbard said. “Having people of different races, ethnicities, backgrounds and sexual identities in a newsroom isn’t just about checking a box. It’s about how they give a new perspective. They give a perspective that actually has more truth, that has a fuller truth in it.”

For Rhonda LeValdo (Acoma Pueblo), professor of media communications at Haskell Indian Nations University in Kansas and a journalist for a variety of outlets, she felt like the show made a misstep in who it centered. 

“The whole white savior thing with having a person like Hilary Swank having to make sure this issue is brought to mainstream attention is kind of the bad thing about it,” LeValdo said. “I really wish that Hollywood or any type of mainstream media would let us tell that story instead of having to rely on a non-Native to do that for us.”

John Tetpon (Inupiat) is a retired Anchorage journalist who worked with the Anchorage Daily News team on their 10-day series called People In Peril that was published in 1988 and would go on to win a Pulitzer Prize. In addition to having a whole lot less swearing than the newsrooms he remembers, he also felt that the show bringing in an outside reporter to cover issues facing Alaska Natives missed the mark.   

“Well, it’s another one of those ‘we’ll fly a white expert up here.’ That’s what struck me. We’ve had enough of that, you know? We get it,” Tetpon said. “It’s just so phony.”

The importance of engaging with the way these stories are covered was echoed by Jarrette Werk, Indigenous affairs reporter and photographer for the Oregon-based nonprofit publication Underscore. Having watched three episodes, Werk — a member of the Native American Journalists Association and Report for America corps member and a citizen of Aaniiih and Nakoda Tribes of the Fort Belknap Indian Community — felt the show got a lot right in showing the importance of Native journalists.

“Being a Native journalist going into these different communities, a lot of them agree to work with me because I have an understanding of how Native communities work and what goes on,” Werk said. “Having Native characters, Native writers and Native journalists sharing Native stories is super important because we’re shifting the narrative from a stereotypical narrative that has been shared for forever by non-Native media.”

One of the journalists whose work inspired the show is Alaska Daily News reporter Kyle Hopkins. Not only was Hopkins one of the hardworking local journalists behind the stories that caught the eye of McCarthy in the first place, he has served as a consultant to the show’s writers. What was important to Hopkins and what he felt the show had captured was not just the more exciting conclusions to stories but also the process by which reporters got there. 

“The things that we see on screen, I feel like those are all versions of things I’ve done or my colleagues have done. I think there is a kind of a nod to how the stories come about,” Hopkins said. “In the second episode, one of the reporters is writing about this diner that is being sold and we talked about how there would be, every week or so as part of my general assignment duties, I’d be looking at reports from the planning department who have applied for permits.”

The small yet scrappy newsroom of the show rang true to Brandon Block, an investigative reporter at Seattle-based Crosscut focused on covering how federal recovery money is being used. 

“What resonated with me was that sense of constantly adapting to having less and less resources and still trying to produce something meaningful and useful even with a half or a quarter or a tenth of the resources of what you had before,” Block said.