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The Seed of Authentic Alaska: The Nationally Acclaimed Chukchi News and Information Service
 The anthology Authentic Alaska: Voices of Its Native Writers was published in 1998 after a decade of publishing rural and Alaska Native residents in newspapers and magazines across Alaska through a high-profile writing venture called Chukchi News and Information Service.
Chukchi News and Information Service, a ground-breaking cultural journalism project founded in 1988, operates out of Chukchi College, a University of Alaska branch campus in Kotzebue. Chukchi College serves students statewide by way of exporting and importing distance-delivered university courses and programs throughout Alaska. Kotzebue is an Inupiat Eskimo settlement located on a narrow gravel spit that stabs the Chukchi Sea some 26 miles above the Arctic Circle in Northwest Alaska.
Chukchi News and Information Service publishes primarily rural and Alaska Native student writers. For more than two decades, hundreds of rural UA students have published their writings in the Alaska press, including in the Anchorage Daily News, Tundra Times, Tundra Drums, Arctic Sounder, Nome Nugget, and the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner.
Through this journalism project, tens of thousands of Alaskans, including urban Alaskans, have been offered insights into rural Alaska through the mainstream press, courtesy of your "average" everyday rural citizen-writer. Finally, "ordinary" rural and Native people have been writing regularly about their own lives, their own issues, their own trials, tribulations and solutions—and from an authentic, rural Alaska point of view.
From l. to r.: Hannah Paniyavluk Loon, Susan B. Andrews, Mrs. Ethel Kennedy, John Creed, and Blanche Jones Criss at the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Awards ceremony at the Kennedy home, Hickory Hill, in McLean, Virginia. May 15, 1991. |
Chukchi News and Information Service began attracting national attention early on. In 1991, for example, the project captured one of the most prestigious awards in America's journalism industry: a Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award for Outstanding Coverage of the Problems of the Disadvantaged. http://www.rfkmemorial.org In the media industry, RFK Journalism Awards are known as "The Poor People’s Pulitzers."
The RFK Journalism Award judges recognized Chukchi News and Information Service in 1991 for broadening the range of participants in America's mainstream press with a voice too often ignored or unheard, and this time from the remote reaches of rural Alaska. (Other 1991 winners included Diane Sawyer of ABC/Nightline; Peter Jennings of ABC News; WGBH/Frontline; the Boston Globe; Miami Herald; and Newsday. In 1995, Chukchi News and Information Service also won Honorable Mention recognition from the RFK Memorial.)
Additionally, Chukchi News and Information Service has captured top honors in other journalism contests, including a Clarion Award from Women in Communications, Inc., a Certificate of Recognition from the National Council of Christians and Jews, and the Alaska Press Club’s Public Service Award.
As the Internet continues to revolutionize the media landscape in Alaska, nationally and worldwide, Chukchi News and Information Service in recent years has expanded into Alaska-based website publication, including AlaskaDispatch.com and AlaskaReport.com.
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Susan B. Andrews and John Creed are writers, editors and educators. Since the late 1980s, Professors Andrews and Creed have taught humanities and journalism at Kotzebue-based Chukchi College, a branch of the University of Alaska. Kotzebue lies about 26 miles above the Arctic Circle in northwest Alaska and some 175 miles from the eastern tip of Russia. Their anthology of Alaska Native student writers, Authentic Alaska: Voices of Its Native Writers, is part of an ongoing cultural journalism project. Former full-time journalists, since joining the UA faculty they have authored non-fiction articles, columns, and book reviews for newspapers, magazines, websites, blogs, and scholarly journals. They also publish photographs and fiction. Read more... |
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