The Mat-Su Sentinel, a new, nonprofit newsroom based in Palmer, began publishing online this month with a mission to contribute local reporting to the region.
Founder, editor and reporter Amy Bushatz has worked in news for more than two decades, including as the executive editor for Military.com and as a part-time reporter for the Anchorage Daily News. She said she aims to fill a local news void in the Matanuska-Susitna Borough that she identified after moving there with her family in 2016.
“I realized that what we didn’t have here was consistent, clear, connect-the-dots reporting focused on local government,” she said. “We need facts to make decisions around our government. We need facts to be able to have relationships with people with whom we disagree. When there are no facts, what we have are polarization and rumors filling the void.”
The Matanuska-Susitna Borough is the fastest growing part of the state. Bushatz said she wants the Mat Su Sentinel to keep track of how the local government expands, with coverage of elections and major infrastructure plans and projects.
She said local journalism promotes civic health, and pointed to the borough’s 9% voter turnout in 2023 city elections and a correlation between a decreasing number of local news sources and a downward trend in voter turnout in local elections as reasons for the new venture.
According to its website, the Mat-Su Sentinel is a nonpartisan news source that bases its editorial principles on the Code of Ethics of the Society of Professional Journalists.
The newsroom is currently funded by individual donors, Bushatz said, while she seeks grants to expand. She said individual donations range from $5 monthly subscriptions to some one-time donations of more than $100 and have so far amounted to about $4,000 total. The Mat-Su Sentinel will publish the name of any funders who contribute more than $5,000 to the web site, so readers know where big donations come from. So far, no such funders are listed.
Bushatz does not yet pay herself — her husband in the Alaska Army National Guard currently “brings home the bacon,” she said — but she aims to do that and hire a couple of reporters who can specialize in different geographic areas of the borough.
“It’s not going to come as a raging surprise to anyone that Palmer and Wasilla tend to be very different places,” she said with a laugh.
The nonprofit news model is growing as the rise of online news sources has shaken traditional for-profit newspaper structures. The Alaska Beacon is also a web-based nonprofit news source. Bushatz said it’s a “great time” to be a nonprofit newsroom and she plans to apply for grants from donors like the Press Forward initiative. She said she is eyeing grant opportunities from democracy organizations as well as Alaska community health grants.
“Community health can look like civic health,” she said.
There are a couple news stories up on the Mat-Su Sentinel website so far, as well as introductory remarks from the editor. Bushatz said readers can anticipate a weekly newsletter.
