The Press: Alaska Gold

Katherine Fanning's Anchorage Daily News has a circulation of 15,500, a staff of 20 (including the receptionist) and an editor-publisher who, until her husband died in 1971 and left her in command, could have rated herself as little more than a cub reporter. The morning daily does not have its own presses, rarely runs more than 20 pages an issue and has long been overshadowed by its afternoon competitor, the Times (circ. 45,000). Yet last week Fanning's tiny paper edged out some of the nation's leading dailies to win journalism's most esteemed award, the Pulitzer gold medal for public service.

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