Our local Seattle paper, The Seattle Times, is one of a few major city newspapers nationally that is still family owned and independent. Four generations of the Blethen family have owned and shepherded the paper through more than a century of American history, including wars, depression and recession, the rise of the internet, and the onslaught of the colossal media empires that have consolidated (and frequently gutted) most of the other news organizations across the country under the control of a few super-rich owners and private equity firms.
Because of the paper’s own history, The Seattle Times editorial board carries regular coverage of the ongoing struggle of local journalism to survive in the face of massive revenue losses and media consolidation, and the paper advocates tirelessly for the support of local journalism as a critical source of important news and investigations on the local level, as an indispensable component of a functioning democracy.
So it was not surprising that in a column I read in The Seattle Times on this same topic last week, there was a review and a pitch for a new prime-time ABC dramatic series, just launched, called Alaska Daily.
Loosely based on a real newspaper, The Alaska Daily News in Anchorage, it tells the story of Eileen Fitzgerald, a successful, driven New York investigative journalist (played superbly by Hillary Swank). Disgraced and unfairly forced out of her prestigious job because of an inadequately sourced (but true) story about a corrupt official, she is recruited by an old colleague to move to Anchorage to work for a small, poorly funded local newspaper, the fictional Daily Alaskan.
Having now watched the first two episodes of Alaska Daily, I am really excited about this show and its prospects. I don’t watch many shows from the “big 3” old networks (ABC, CBS, NBC) – The Good Fight is the only other show from these networks in my active list at the moment – but this one is off to a great start.
I generally enjoy a good “fish out of water” story, especially the ones where the main protagonist is a big city slicker suddenly forced to survive in a smaller, rural community, where the opinions, resources and relationships are different, but the people, their lives and loves are just as real as back in the city, and where the need for personal change, adaptability and growth (for all the characters) are the inevitable drivers of the dramatic tensions in the story, and the clash of two cultures.
In just two episodes, Swank has set up this story and her character powerfully and convincingly. As a journalist, she comes across as a force of nature – fast-moving, quick to understand how to get information and find sources to interview, yet direct to the point of rudeness, arrogant and inflexible in her dealings with her colleagues, and almost ruthless in her determination to get the story.
She seems cold and unlikable on first impression, but she also struggles with emotional anxiety, and shows glimmers of a passion and care for the people whose lives are affected by the stories she covers that hint at much more depth than the self-centered careerist ambitions we (and other characters) might assume are driving her. In other words, she’s a complex and interesting character, ripe for the sort of change and personal growth we expect in a "fish out of water" story like this. At the same time, it's clear already that her big-city sophistication will bring new tools and effectiveness to the dedicated small-town reporters around her.
I would watch this show just to see how her character develops, but there is a lot more going on too. Much of it has to do with showing the fascinating reality of the lives of local journalists – the relationships between the reporters, editors and newsroom staff, the perils of asking tough questions of vulnerable and often hostile sources, and the creative ways investigative journalists find information and verify it in solving mysteries and telling stories, much like police detectives, but without the power of guns and the state to compel cooperation on the part of witnesses.
One of my other all-time favorite shows was The Newsroom (on HBO), produced by Aaron Sorkin, about a fictional cable news organization during the Obama presidency (also highly recommended, if you haven’t seen it). Alaska Daily is the first dramatic series I've seen since then that appears to be ready to portray the lives of working reporters investigating real-world stories.
The Newsroom gave a fictional view of cable television journalists following major national news and politics; Alaska Daily instead shows print journalists in a small media market, working on major regional stories, beginning with the ongoing tragedy of Indigenous women who continue to be abducted, trafficked and murdered at a horrifying rate in Alaska and across the west, in most cases with little apparent notice or accountability.
This particular first investigation in the show mirrors a real one that has been conducted and published by The Alaska Daily News. But I expect in the course of Alaska Daily’s opening season, and perhaps future seasons (if the show is continued), we will see other story lines and investigations as well.
One other thing that is noteworthy about this new show – it’s about Alaska. In 2019, just before the pandemic, my wife and I took our first trip to see Alaska, including Anchorage. And it really is a special and unusual place, which I felt again immediately when I started watching the show.
Alaska has such unique features, like the fact that you can’t get to many places in the state except by flying in small planes; the routine presence of very large wild animals nearby, like moose, elk and bear; the extremes of the seasons, the long summer days and the long winter nights, the bitter winter cold and isolation – all of these factors and more make for a special kind of place, where communities are small and close-knit of necessity, yet are still torn by the same political splits, personality clashes, prejudices and competing economic interests we find everywhere else. These are themes I also expect to see explored in this show.
One can never make a completely accurate prediction about the fate, or the ultimate quality, of a brand new television series, based on the first couple of shows. And I may be wrong, but I think that Alaska Daily has more going for it out of the gate than most other new series I know about, particularly on the big 3 networks. Check it out, and see what you think! Highly recommended.
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