Alaska Dispatch

Craig Medred fled the suburban sprawl of Minnesota for the wilds of Alaska in 1973. He never thought he'd have to hear the words "you betcha" again. He found shelter from the phrase for 30 years as a reporter in Fairbanks, Juneau and Anchorage, but now endures the "you betchas'' of a rogueish, common-sense conservative echoing from the Talkeetna Mountains outside of Wasilla. It makes Medred long for the quiet of the Iditarod Trail, where in 1987 he won one of journalism's most prestigious prizes -- the American Society of Newspaper Editor's Deadline Reporting Award -- for his coverage of the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race. It was the first and only time the honor has been bestowed on someone writing about a sporting event. But then, as Alaskans and sled-dog fans know, the Iditarod is more a war against nature than any sort of traditional game.

As a one-time newspaper reporter, Medred has covered everything from the sinking of the luxury cruiseship Prinsendam in the Gulf of Alaska to the disappearance of Japanese national hero Naomi Uemera on the slopes of Mt. McKinley to the bogus "rescue" of a pair of young, foolish whales trapped by ice near Point Barrow. Along the way, it has been his luck to sail a small boat across the Gulf, climb on the glaciers of North America's tallest peak, and spend a lot of time shivering in the cold dark. He prefers any of those things to reporting on the manueverings in Alaska's halls of power where the 49th state's resources are often divvied up between the powerful and the near powerless. In Alaska, however, he has discovered that politics is something that cannot be avoided, even by those who live in cabins in the woods, and thus he has often found himself embroiled in stories of a political nature. In journalism as in life, he often approaches things with a directness prone to win him a few friends and plenty of enemies.

Contact Medred at craig_alaskadispatch.com.