Kay Fanning's Alaska Story: Memoir of a Pulitzer Prize-Winning Newspaper Publisher on America's Northern Frontier

By Mark M. Bello

In 1965, Kay Woodruff Field, 38, a newly divorced former debutante once described as the "Grace Kelly of Chicago," loaded her three children into a Buick station wagon and headed north to start a fresh life in Alaska. Little did she know that she would became the most influential woman in Alaska. Fanning took a job at the Anchorage Daily News, a struggling morning newspaper that she and her new husband, Larry Fanning, later bought. After Larrys death, Kay became editor and publisher. She pressed for settlement of Alaskas Native land claims, alienated advertisers by covering environmental issues deemed to threaten development, and in 1976 won a Pulitzer Prize for coverage of corruption in Alaskas powerful Teamsters Union. Kay Fanning died in 2000, her memoir unfinished. Katherine Field Stephen, herself a reporter, was determined to finish her mothers book. And she did, by inviting eighteen of Kays friends and colleagues to contribute personal stories about Kay Fanning.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0974501476
• ISBN13: 9780974501475
• Release Date: November 2006
• Publisher: Epicenter Press (WA)
• Length: 255 Pages
• Weight: 0.95 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 6.1" x 8.9"

Customer Reviews

Kay Fanning's Alaska Story

This is a story of how courage, faith and a motive to see justice and equality prevail is played out in Alaska. Kay came from an elite background and yet was very practical and down to earth in her dealings with everyone she met. She lived her religion and it saw her through trials that would challenge even the strongest individual. It is a good story of how ethics and morals win out when the motive is pure and the faith...