Nathaniel Herz, Alaska Public Media
Nathaniel Herz is an Anchorage-based journalist. He's been a reporter in Alaska for a decade, and is currently reporting for Alaska Public Media. Find more of his work by subscribing to his newsletter, Northern Journal, at natherz.substack.com. Reach him at natherz@gmail.com.
Ravn is bankrupt and selling off assets, but still wants to give chief executive a bonus
Alaska's largest rural airline has declared bankruptcy, laid off more than 1,000 workers and is selling off its assets. But the company still wants to split $250,000 in bonuses between its highly-paid chief executive and other employees.
Alaska officials say Trump’s proposed $400-a-week unemployment boost is under review
Alaska Governor Mike Dunleavy's administration is working to see how it can restore expanded unemployment benefits to about 60,000 people under a new initiative announced by President Donald Trump, but there's no time frame for getting the program started.
Southcentral Foundation fires three dentists, including husband of chief executive, for falsifying health records
One of Anchorage’s leading tribal health-care providers has fired a senior executive and two dentists after an anonymous complaint documented “falsified health records” and “serious compliance issues,” the provider said in a statement Tuesday.
As Trump pulls down Republican Congressional candidates, two Alaska independents out-raise GOP incumbents
As national opinion turns against President Donald Trump and threatens to trickle down to Republican Congressional candidates, two Alaska independents have continued to out-raised the GOP incumbents they're challenging, according to new figures released Wednesday.
Southern California commuter service, Float Shuttle, will buy core Ravn assets for $8 million
Float Shuttle is buying nine of the Dash-8 planes and two of the federal operating certificates that Ravn's airlines, Corvus and PenAir, once used to fly passengers from Anchorage to the Aleutian Islands, the Kenai Peninsula and an array of other rural Alaska destinations.
Alaska’s largest rural airline will go on the auction block Tuesday
Fourteen bidders intend to participate in the auction, Ravn said in a prepared statement Monday, though it did not reveal their names.
Ravn says 30 bidders want to buy at least a piece of the company, but next steps are murky
Five of the bidders are interested in buying Ravn intact. There were also nearly a dozen offers to buy “substantial assets” from Ravn -- not the whole business, but more than $1 million.
But the next steps in the process are still murky.
A Mat-Su state House race could reshuffle the Alaska Capitol’s balance of power. Here’s why.
The state House race centers on an incumbent, David Eastman, who’s so polarizing that some lawmakers say he played a big role in blocking his own party from forming a majority in his chamber last year.
U.S. Rep. Don Young downplayed COVID-19 as the “beer virus.” Now he and other Republicans are back to in-person campaign events.
Alaska Republicans have been quicker than Democrats and independents to resume in-person campaigning, at events where many attendees and candidates have foregone masks and social distancing.
Both national and in-state polling data show Republicans to be far less concerned about COVID-19 than Democrats.
Have questions about police accountability and use of force in Alaska? We’ve got some answers.
What does data show about police shootings and use of force in Alaska, particularly when it’s used on people of color? What do we know about how officers are disciplined for violating those policies? We ask and answer those questions, and others, about Anchorage police and the Alaska State Troopers.
For Gov. Dunleavy, COVID-19 evokes century-old family loss to the flu in rural Alaska
Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy grew up in Pennsylvania. But his wife, Rose, is Inupiaq, raised in the Northwest Alaska village of Noorvik, and her mother once told Dunleavy a story that connects to the state’s traumatizing experience in the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic.
Alaska’s fishing communities have plans to contain COVID-19. Now they’ll be put to the test.
Hundreds of millions of dollars worth of fish are still available for harvest, and thousands of workers are set to arrive in coastal Alaska communities from Outside, where infection rates are much higher. But seafood companies, fishermen and local leaders say they’ve set up systems to limit the risk that the visitors could spread infection.
Dunleavy will pick from three Anchorage judges, one attorney to fill Alaska’s open Supreme Court seat
The candidates are three Anchorage Superior Court judges -- Dani Crosby, Jennifer Stuart Henderson and Yvonne Lamoureux -- and Dario Borghesan, who works as a chief assistant attorney general for the Alaska Department of Law in Anchorage.
Thousands of summer workers are headed to Alaska from Outside, where the infection rates are higher
“This is a question about levels of risk that Alaska is willing to tolerate,” said Bryan Fisher, the incident commander for Alaska’s pandemic response.
Anchorage Daily News wins Pulitzer Prize for rural justice investigation
The Anchorage Daily News was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for public service Monday, for "Lawless," the newspaper's collaborative investigation with ProPublica that revealed shocking inequities in law enforcement between Alaska's rural and urban communities.
A $3 million planeload of PPE for Alaska has landed in Anchorage
The plane is filled with orders of surgical masks, gowns, gloves and face shields that came from six different Chinese manufacturing companies, though tighter-fitting N95 masks couldn’t be obtained, said Heidi Hedberg, Alaska’s public health director.
From her home office yurt, Alaska’s chief medical officer navigates ‘uncharted territory’
Dr. Anne Zink started as an emergency room doctor, but was drawn into health policy after seeing the failures of Alaska's medical system while she was on the job. Now she's become a trusted voice as she appeals to residents to follow stringent social distancing guidelines.
More cash aid from the state makes sense, economists say, but it may not be as simple as another PFD
Some lawmakers, led by Gov. Mike Dunleavy, say the dire, once-in-generations nature of the coronavirus pandemic requires drastic measures in response. And a number of of Alaska economists agree -- though they stress that extra spending from the Permanent Fund should done carefully, and that it comes with trade-offs.
Some conservatives are pushing to reopen Alaska’s economy. But elected officials, doctors and economists urge caution.
There's building pressure to reopen the economy from political conservatives at both the state and national level. But elected officials and experts describe Alaska's low case count as hard-won and tenuous, and they say that resuming economic activity will have to proceed slowly and carefully.
Alaska is exempting some businesses from health mandates. But it’s keeping their plans secret for now.
More than 700 companies want exemptions to a public health mandate from Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy that quarantined employees coming from out of state work from home for two weeks. But the state has so far refused to release companies' plans publicly, even as municipal leaders press for access.