The Anchorage Daily News is a daily newspaper in Anchorage, Alaska. With a circulation of about 72,000 daily and 85,000 Sundays, it is by far the most widely read newspaper in Alaska.

The newspaper has about 450 full-time employees in Anchorage, the Matanuska-Susitna Valley, the Kenai Peninsula and the state capital, Juneau.

The beginning

The Anchorage Daily News was born as the weekly Anchorage News, publishing its first issue Jan. 13, 1946. The newspaper became an afternoon daily in May 1948, although it wouldn't publish a Sunday newspaper until June 13, 1965. By then, the Anchorage Daily News had become a morning newspaper, making that switch on April 13, 1964.

Pulitzer Prizes

The newspaper has won the Pulitzer Prize twice in the "Public Service" category, in 1976 and 1989. The 1976 Pulitzer was for its series "Empire: The Alaska Teamsters Story," which disclosed the effect and influence of the Teamsters Union on the state's economy and politics. The 1989 series was "A People in Peril," which documented the high degree of alcoholism, suicide and despair in the Native Alaskan population.

Ownership change

The McClatchy Company has owned the Daily News since 1979, when it bought a controlling interest from Kate Fanning, who had been editor and publisher since the death of her husband, Larry Fanning, in 1971. Kate Fanning continued as the head of the paper until mid-1983.

The Daily News was one of the first two newspapers that the then-122-year-old McClatchy Company had bought outside the state. (The Kennewick, Wash., Tri-City Herald was the other.)

Airing dirty laundry

In 1997, the weekly Anchorage Press newspaper ran a controversial article that alleged the Daily News' quality and newsroom morale had declined substantially since the McClatchy buyout and the Daily News' subsequent victory in its newspaper war with the Anchorage Times , which went out of business in 1992. The Press article's title, "Paper in Peril," was a parody of the name of the Daily News' 1989 Pulitzer-winning series. While the Press' extensive interviews (mostly of unnamed sources) pointed out genuine problems and turmoil in the Daily News' newsroom, many believed the article unfairly maligned McClatchy in general and Daily News Editor in Chief Kent Pollock in particular. Others believed the article unintentionally reflected at least as poorly on the rank-and-file reporters and editors as it did on management.

External links

adn.com, the online edition of the Anchorage Daily News.

"Paper in Peril" by David Holthouse, Anchorage Press, May 15-21, 1997.

References

"Anchorage Daily News history", from the newspaper's Web site.

"Background on the Anchorage Daily News", from the McClatchy Company's Web site.

"Overview of the McClatchy Company", from the company Web site.