Christmas lights had been strung across Nome, Alaska in between the time I touched down in early November to when I returned this week.  In that window, I pondered a random offer: whether or not to  accept an invitation to help out the short-staffed team at The Nome Nugget, the city's time-honored local newspaper.   The more appropriate question was 'how could I resist?' 

So here I am, at the so-called "Gateway to the Arctic"typing away another newsletter, this time from the belly of "Alaska's Oldest Newspaper." I'm honored.  I've been a fan of the Nugget ever since I began reporting in Alaska back in 2007.  Then as now, I'm drawn to the paper for its local flavor. But these days, I find I'm reading even more deeply because of what gets covered here; it actually affects us everywhere—the future of our shared planet. 

To be sure, the headlines in the Nugget aren't screaming "climate crisis" week after week, but that's what lives at the heart of its news cycle. It's impossible to avoid.  Nome is striving to become a major port city on the Bering Sea's Norton Sound while the planet heats up twice as fast here than anywhere else in the country. 

Last week, the Page One story was a smart read about another year of diminishing fish runs in the region. This week, I've been assigned a story linked to the rapidly warming Bering Strait.  Heated politics are steadily mounting around this opening waterway both internationally and locally.  In Nome, some of the most fiery debates about it erupt in what some might consider the most boring of venues: the Nome Port Commission meetings.  

Earlier this month, The Nome Nugget sent its sole reporter to cover a multi-day Harbormasters Conference held in downtown Anchorage. The paper devoted three pages to the revelations made there about one of most divisive issues in town, the expansion of Nome's port. City officials are fast-tracking the congressionally-approved project  which hopes to attract cruise ships, a heftier gravel industry, and even a military facility.  But Indigenous residents have raised concerns.  In a statement last year, a coalition of regional tribal leaders outlined eleven recommendations addressing the project.  One line item smacked me right between the eyes, "Recommendation #7: Do Not Create Additional Challenges for Nome Residents."  My heart sank. 

I didn't need to read further to understand how the cycle of colonization continues to hammer Indigenous lives in Nome and across Alaska, and almost directly linked to the exploitation of their homelands.  In turn, most journalists have failed to understand the connection between the two.  A recent example is the Harbormaster's Conference.  By my own assessment, Alaska's strongest newspaper, the Pulitzer Prize-winning Anchorage Daily News, didn't even cover the event.  When I mentioned this to my new editor, she hardly looked up from her work in replying,"Of course." 

Since Diane Haecker took over the Nugget five years ago, she said she's fielded more queries from journalists who've "parachuted into town" to report on what often gets portrayed as a one-sided problem: Indigenous inequality and all the substance abuse and violence that lives on the side of such hardship.  Left out of these pieces is any consideration for how Alaska's unwavering appetite to drill, mine, and expand on existing extractive projects is contributing to the everyday unsettling.  In this regard then, climate change is in every way intertwined in these narratives.

Browsing these stacks, Haecker reached for one book chronicling the year 1934.  She flipped to the month of September and pointed to a page lined with the most basic typewriter font.  It was the first edition the Nugget produced a week after a raging fire had razed the entire city of Nome, including the paper's headquarters. "In all that loss, they still covered the news," she said.  We both just kinda stood there in awe. 

New research from media critic Margaret Sullivan shows that from 2004 to 2015, 1,800 print newspaper outlets closed in America.  Such statistics are why The Nome Nugget is more than a local newspaper but part of the larger climate narrative - an essential one.  The atmosphere it creates is one of accountability but it also upholds the basic fact that in any community, big or small, there is no shortage of news, and at a time when such headlines are vital.

• Here's Sullivan's book with the data about one of the most troubling media stories of our time, Ghosting the News: Local Journalism and the Crisis of American Journalism, added to the Indigenously Bookshelf. 
• For a shorter, more concentrated read about journalism and "What's Become of the Arctic," there's this fine essay from CJR
• And for some historical context about Nome (and no, not about the gold rush), meet Alberta Schenck, the teenage badass who took a stand against Jim Crow way before you ever heard of Rosa Parks
• To drive home the point that Iñupiat women come from a line of brilliance and strength, here's the incredibly inspiring story of Ada Blackjack who outlived a stranded team of white explorers in the Bering Sea and has the selfies to prove it
• For more about Ada, there's a whole book about her life

As we wind down this holiday weekend of gratitude, I want to greet and say thank you to a new wave of readers who've come to the newsletter. Welcome!  And to those of you who've been here for a while, thanks for returning here each week. So honored to have your time and attention. To show my appreciation, I'm giving away a little something from Nome to anyone who wants to receive my small gift.  Details are down below. Dawaa'e, thank you all for being here. 

“Thank you for your continued reporting.  I look forward to every newsletter.”

Daniel, Spokane, WA