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Key links:
Primary website:
alaskadispatch.com
Primary Twitter:
@alaskadispatch

Editor’s Note: Encyclo has not been regularly updated since August 2014, so information posted here is likely to be out of date and may be no longer accurate. It’s best used as a snapshot of the media landscape at that point in time.

Alaska Dispatch a for-profit online newsmagazine that covers state and local issues in Alaska. It also owns the Anchorage Daily News.

The site was founded by Tony Hopfinger and Amanda Coyne in 2008. Alice Rogoff, former CFO of U.S. News & World Report, became its majority owner in 2009. The site has an editorial staff of about 12, along with a sales staff of three.

Alaska Dispatch announced it would buy the Anchorage Daily News, Alaska’s largest newspaper, from McClatchy in April 2014 for $34 million. Most of that price was for the paper’s office building, which Rogoff said she planned to sell soon after the deal was closed. Rogoff became the Daily News’ publisher, and Hopfinger took over as editor of the newly merged newsroom. Most of the top newsroom spots were filled by Dispatch journalists, while many of the business-side positions remained with the Daily News.

The site publishes numerous articles from contributors, giving some of them handheld cameras to record videos. It also runs a citizen-driven site called Tundra Telegraph. Rogoff had said the goal was for the Dispatch to be profitable by 2011, driven largely by an aggressive advertising strategy, but the Dispatch operated at a loss through 2014.

Peers, allies, & competitors:
Recent Nieman Lab coverage:
April 10, 2014 / Ken Doctor
The newsonomics of 50/50 and the unchaining of the U.S. press — Asked last week whether he was buying the Star Tribune for business or altruistic reasons, Glen Taylor said a lot in a two-word answer: “50/50.” News observers have parsed and poked at every recent big buy ov...
Oct. 18, 2010 / Laura McGann
Online journalist cuffed in Alaska explains his biz model — When I talked with the editor of a startup news site in Alaska, Tony Hopfinger, last week, he told me his business model is based on cultivating an audience inside the Frontier State, while still writing stories with a n...

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Primary author: Mark Coddington. Main text last updated: May 15, 2014.
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I-News, the Rocky Mountain Investigative News Network, is an investigative news organization initially founded as a private nonprofit but now part of the Denver-based public TV network Rocky Mountain PBS. The network was founded in 2009 by Laura Frank, a former reporter for the defunct Rocky Mountain News. It had five full-time staff members as of 2013….

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