Our Impact
We invest in Alaska’s media landscape by funding independent journalists and collaborative reporting efforts. Our grants support both individual projects and larger media collaborations. Additionally, we strengthen the future of journalism in the state by funding training programs through the Alaska Press Club and the University of Alaska Anchorage Department of Journalism and Public Communications.
Program Updates
Funded Projects
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![KTOO Reporter Alix Soliman reports from the side of Larson Glacier near Juneau. Photo courtesy KTOO]()
"Outburst" Podcast - KTOO
Alix Soliman, KTOO
KTOO was granted funds in ACEJ’s Fall 2024 opening for a series and podcast on the Juneau area’s vulnerability to glacial outburst floods, which have increased in frequency and severity as temperatures have warmed. The public media station also disaster preparation sessions with local emergency responders and residents ahead of 2025’s record-breaking floods. -
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Youth Arts & Culture Series - Alaska Teen Media Institute
The Alaska Teen Media Institute, a program of Spirit of Youth, was granted funds in our 2024 Arts Reporting Initiative to recruit local high school students to produce a series focused on youth arts and culture. Youth Producers interviewed local musicians, artists and actors, producing podcasts, news reports, and a newsletter on the arts and culture scene for young people in Alaska, including where teens can find “all ages” shows.
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![Power poles in Newtok, Alaska lean at a precarious angle. Photo by Emily Schwing/KYUK]()
"Gone to Pieces" KYUK 5-Part series
Emily Schwing, KYUK/ProPublica/Washington Post
A five-part series on the challenge-riddled move of the community of Newtok to Mertarvik. This project was funded in part by a $10,000 grant from ACEJ's Impact Initiative Reporting project in Fall 2023.
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![A map infographic shows two mineral deposit claims up the Tubutulik River from Elim, Alaska. (Paul Horn/ Inside Climate News)]()
"Shining a Light on Alaska's Green Energy Mineral Rush" Pt. 2
Max Graham, Northern Journal/Inside Climate News
“A National Quest for Uranium Comes to Remote Western Alaska, Raising Fears in a Nearby Village” is the second part in a project produced by Inside Climate News and Northern Journal that received funding from ACEJ in our Fall 2024 In-Depth reporting round.
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![Reporter Ashlyn O'Hara interviews Louis Maurer of Bear Creek Winery. Photo Courtesy KDLL]()
"What a Relief -- Examining the Impact of COVID Funds on the Kenai Peninsula
Ashlyn O’Hara, KDLL
Five years after COVID-19 struck, KDLL public radio reporter Ashlyn O’Hara examined how more than $150 million in federal COVID-19 relief funds had been used in the communities on the Kenai Peninsula. She spoke with businesses, local and borough governments, the school district, nonprofits and more. ACEJ funded this reporting in its 2024 Alaska Impact Reporting Initiative.
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![Rows of oysters line the walls and crushed oyster shells litter the floor as part of an exhibition at the International Gallery of Contemporary Art in Anchorage.]()
"Bringing Visual Arts into Focus" Pt. 3
Victoria Barber & Kerry Tasker, freelancers
This third story in a series by grantees Victoria Barber and Kerry Tasker as part of our Arts Reporting grants.
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![Mining conference attendees examine specimens. (Jesse Winter for Northern Journal and Inside Climate News)]()
"Shining a Light on Alaska's Green Energy Mineral Rush" Pt. 1
Max Graham, Northern Journal/Inside Climate News
“In Canada’s ‘Silicon Valley’ of Mining, Speculators Power a Hunt for Alaska’s Minerals” is the first in a three-part project reported in partnership with Inside Climate News and Northern Journal. The project received an $8,750 grant from the Alaska Center for Excellence in Journalism.
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![The artwork of Bill Sabo on display at Georgia Blue gallery.]()
"Bringing Visual Arts into Focus" Pt. 2
Victoria Barber & Kerry Tasker, freelancers
Part of previously featured Arts Reporting grant to Victoria Barber and Kerry Tasker for a series of arts coverage in print, online and on social media, throughout 2025. This second piece features the art of the late Bill Sabo, former UAA art instructor, who died in 2024.
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“Bringing Visual Arts into Focus”
Victoria Barber & Kerry Tasker, Freelancers
$5,500 Arts Reporting Grant to Victoria Barber and Kerry Tasker for a series of arts coverage in print, online and on social media, throughout 2025.
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“Josie’s Story: From 19th-century Sitka to her escape from the Holocaust”
Tom Kizzia, Anchorage Daily News
$5,000 Arts Reporting grant to Tom Kizzia for an eight-part series in the Anchorage Daily News about the first settler girl born in the U.S. territory of Alaska. Her U.S. citizenship would be a live-saver decades later, when, as an elderly Jewish widow, the Nazis took over her parents’ homeland of Germany, where she had returned to live. The series examines Josephine Rudolph’s early life, and the development of Alaska as an early U.S. territory, through the days of the Second World War.
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Eldred Rock Lighthouse Restoration Documentary
Eldred Rock Lighthouse Preservation Association was awarded a grant through ACEJ’s 2023 Arts Reporting Initiative program to produce a short documentary on the efforts to restore a historic lighthouse in Southeast Alaska. The resulting documentary video is being shown on Alaska Marine Highway Service ferries.
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“The Most Unique School District in America”
KDLL, Alaska Public Media and Anchorage Daily News
$9,100 grant to KDLL for a five-part series on the Kenai Peninsula Borough School District, which includes tiny schools in sovereign villages accessible only by air, schools in Russian Old Believer communities with their own school schedule based on the community’s observances, and more traditional, suburban schools. This project was broadcast on KDLL in Kenai, Alaska, and rebroadcast on Alaska News Nightly, through Alaska Public Media, which reaches a statewide audience. Its written stories were published in the Anchorage Daily News.
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“Strengthening our community through Arts and Culture”
Fairbanks Daily News-Miner
$5,000 grant for the weekly publication of Latitude 65, the News-Miner’s arts and culture magazine, and coverage of the arts in its daily issues.
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"Neighbors: Stories from Anchorage's Pandemic Years"
Anchorage Museum & Anchorage Daily News
$40,000 grant for the multimedia and community sharing project “Neighbors: Stories from Anchorage’s Pandemic Years,” a collaboration between the Anchorage Museum and the Anchorage Daily News to collect and reflect the experiences of Anchorage residents during the first two years of the COVID-19 pandemic.
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"ANCSA at Fifty"
Indian Country Today, Alaska Public Media, Anchorage Daily News
$60,000 grant for coverage of the fiftieth anniversary of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act. Winner of the Regional Edward R. Murrow Award.
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“Seeking Protection, Wanting Justice: Disparities in Sexual Assault Crimes in Nome”
KNOM radio
$13,000 grant for coverage exploring the community dynamics around sexual assault in Nome and efforts to heal long-standing unequal treatment
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“Mental Health Mosaics: Colonization and Mental Health”
Anne Hillman/Alaska Public Media, OUTNORTH
$15,000 for reporting on mental health issues and community engagement.
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“COVID-19 in the Bering Strait/Norton Sound Region”
Nome Nugget
$21,548 for community-based COVID-19 reporting.
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The economic impacts of climate change on rural Alaska Native communities
Meghan Fate Sullivan / Indian Country Today
$5,000 grant for reporting on resilience and adaptation to climate change in rural Alaska.
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Sol de Medianoche
$22,000 to Sol De Medianoche to increase publication of Alaska’s only Spanish language newspaper from semi-monthly to monthly.
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“Climate Change and the Bering Strait”
Yereth Rosen/Arctic Today
$1,720 grant for reporting on how the changing climate and oceans are affecting life and work in and around Nome as a key strategic point on the Bering Strait.
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"Pulse Magazine: Health Care for Alaskans"
Fairbanks Daily News Miner
15,000 for the expansion of health care coverage
Other Ways We Support Alaska Journalism
Training & Professional Development
We began funding training in 2020. In partnership with the Alaska Press Club and the University of Alaska-Anchorage Department of Journalism and Public Communications, we sponsor training and internship activities for Alaska journalists and journalism students to augment the annual Alaska Press Club Conference. Since 2022, we have sponsored a Legislative Reporter Exchange in which a small newsroom reporter spends a month covering the Alaska Legislative session in Juneau. A University of Alaska journalism student works at the home station during the same time period. The Legislative Reporter Exchange has continued as an annual program.
COVID-19 and Rapid Response News Organization Grants
In an effort to support Alaska news coverage during the coronavirus pandemic, ACE-J awarded $70,000 in grants to 21 newspapers, radio and television stations statewide to help strengthen their ability to serve the public while operating safely. The grants helped to fund laptops, video, audio and other digital equipment so that news organizations could continue to inform the public while reporters and editors worked remotely and in the field.
Grants were awarded to Anchorage Press, Chilkat Valley News, Ketchikan Daily News, Mat-Su Valley Frontiersman, Nome Nugget, Petersburg Pilot, Sitka Sentinel, Skagway News and Wrangell Sentinel newspapers; radio stations KYUK in Bethel, KUAC in Fairbanks, KHNS in Haines, KBBI in Homer, KRBD in Ketchikan, Koahnic Broadcasting and KNBA, KTOO in Juneau, KFSK in Petersburg, KCAW in Sitka, KUCB In Unalaska and KSTK in Wrangell; and KTUU-TV in Anchorage.
Legislative Reporter Exchange
The Alaska Center for Excellence in Journalism’s Legislative Reporter Exchange Program sends an Alaska journalist to cover the state Legislature in Juneau, mentored by a veteran Capitol reporter, while a University of Alaska journalism student fills in at their newsroom.
Apply for a Grant
We offer grants of up to $25,000 to individual journalists and collaborative efforts between all forms of media in Alaska. Additionally, we offer larger grants to major collaborative media projects.
We support training for Alaska journalists through the Alaska Press Club and the University of Alaska-Anchorage Department of Journalism and Public Communications.