EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR
Rosey Robards is also the director of Alaska Teen Media Institute, where teens produce a monthly, public-affairs radio show, podcasts and multimedia content. You might recognize her name from publications such as the Anchorage Daily News, Anchorage Press and The Northern Light. She worked at the ADN as an Interactive Content Producer and currently serves as an Alaska Center for Excellence in Journalism board member.
CONTRACTORS
John Kendall is a contest manager for Alaska Press Club and media production mentor at Alaska Teen Media Institute. He graduated from the University of Alaska, Anchorage in 2011 with a BA in English Literature and a minor in Creative Writing. While at UAA, he served as Music Director and Program Director at KRUA 88.1 FM The Edge. In his free time, John enjoys writing and producing movies.
Victoria Barber is features editor at the Anchorage Daily News. She’s lived and traveled around the state as an editor and reporter for several rural Alaska newspapers—including Dutch Harbor, The Arctic Sounder in Barrow/Kotzebue, The Tundra Drums in Bethel and the Seward Journal. In Anchorage, She was editor for the Anchorage Press from 2011-2012. Barber was a 2010 Logan Science Journalism fellow and a finalist for the international Knight Fellowship award at MIT.
ALASKA PRESS CLUB BOARD
The Alaska Press Club board is made up of 11 members and two student members*, all appointed in an annual election (as vacancies open) by the general membership. Every full member has a vote. Board members serve two-year terms. Officers are named annually.
The Board has the authority to declare Board seats vacant and to appoint members to serve until the next general election.
* The student seat on the Board was created by a vote of membership at an annual Alaska Press Club meeting, April 17, 2004. A second student seat was added April 22, 2017.
Apply to become a board member here!
PRESIDENT
Julia O’Malley is a freelance journalist who writes about food, politics, the environment and culture in Alaska. She has written for The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Guardian, and National Geographic among other publications. Before going freelance, she was a reporter and columnist for the Anchorage Daily News for nine years.
SECRETARY
Tom Hewitt is the opinion editor for the Anchorage Daily News. Born and raised in Fairbanks, Tom received his journalism education at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. He got his start in professional journalism as the government, politics and court reporter for Fairbanks CBS affiliate KXDF. In 2014, he moved to print when he joined the News-Miner as its opinion editor. In 2017, he returned to broadcast as news director for Fairbanks’ two local TV news stations, and in April 2018 he moved south to Anchorage to join the ADN.
TREASURER
Andrew Kitchenman is Editor-in-Chief of the Alaska Beacon. He has covered state government in Alaska since 2016, serving as the Capitol reporter for Alaska Public Media and KTOO before joining the Alaska Beacon. Before this, he covered state and local governments on the East Coast – primarily in New Jersey – for more than 15 years. He enjoys reading, watching movies and walking around Anchorage.
VICE PRESIDENT – CONFERENCE
Tegan Hanlon is a reporter at Alaska Public Media in Anchorage, and works on Alaska’s Energy Desk — a collaboration with reporters across the state who focus on energy issues. She previously worked at the Anchorage Daily News from 2013 to 2019. Before that, she interned at newspapers in Colorado, Texas and her hometown, Allentown, Pa. When not telling stories about life in Alaska, Tegan enjoys hiking, biking and reading a good book.
VICE PRESIDENT – CONTEST
Kortnie Horazdovsky spent more than 12 years at Alaska’s News Source, a TV station in Anchorage. She worked as the Investigative Unit producer, Executive Producer, Content Manager, Multimedia Content Manager, Assignment Manager, newscast producer, and produced/reported for KTUU.com. She was born and raised in the Mat-Su Valley and graduated from the University of Alaska Fairbanks, where she wrote for, shot photos for, designed and was editor of The Sun Star. She completed journalism internships at ADN’s Play Magazine and the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner in the sports department. She now freelances working on news and media literacy with the Alaska Teen Media Institute.
BOARD MEMBERS
Lori Townsend is the News Director for Alaska Public Media in Anchorage. Townsend went to work for the Alaska Public Radio Network in 2003 as host/reporter for Alaska News Nightly and was promoted to News Director after APRN merged with KSKA FM and KAKM TV.
Townsend arrived in Alaska from Wisconsin in 1999 to work as a broadcast trainer for KNBA and Koahnic Broadcast corporation. From there she helped create Native Voice Communications, an independent media company that produced a nationally distributed daily headline news service called Independent Native News.
Before moving to Alaska, she worked as a print reporter and then found her true love….radio! She spent seven years as special projects producer and then News Director for WOJB FM on the Lac Courte Oreilles Ojibway reservation in northern Wisconsin. Townsend’s reporting work has won state and national awards. She writes fiction in her spare time and has just completed the third book in a series featuring an Anchorage based reporter.
Michelle Theriault Boots is originally from the Seattle area. She married an Alaskan and moved north a decade ago. She has been a reporter at the Anchorage Daily News since 2012. Before that, she taught journalism as an adjunct at UAA, worked at newspapers in the Pacific Northwest and California and earned a master’s degree in narrative journalism from the University of Oregon. She was a 2017 fellow of the Kiplinger Program in Public Affairs Journalism and is a 2020 John Jay/Harry Frank Guggenheim criminal justice reporting fellow. She previously served on the Alaska Press Club board from 2011-2012.
Angela Denning is a news reporter at KFSK public radio in Petersburg. She’s been reporting in Alaska for 20 years. She started at the Tundra Drums regional newspaper in the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta and moved on to News Director at KYUK in Bethel. In these roles, she traveled to most of the villages in the region reporting on everything Bush Alaska as well as the vibrant Yup’ik culture. She also mushed and raced sled dogs for 15 years. In recent years, she’s been reporting in Southeast and commercial fishing in the summertime.
Eric Sowl is the Chief Photographer of Alaska’s News Source – KTUU-TV & CH5 CBS. He grew up in Anchorage and attended the University of Alaska – Fairbanks. He has worked at KTUU-TV for over thirty years where he has covered news all over the state and the world. In 2018, Eric was inducted into the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences Silver Circle in recognition of his contributions to the broadcast industry.
Davis Hovey is currently the Operations Manager for KNOM Radio in Nome. Davis began his radio career in Nome in 2016 and has held almost every position at the radio station within the last six years. His passion is news reporting and storytelling, but he also enjoys hosting a country music show, recording regional weather forecasts, and audio editing longform programs that air on KNOM. His work has been heard on Alaska Public Media, National Native News, and NPR.Currently he spends half his time in Anchorage, and the other half in Nome. When he’s not working, Davis enjoys the Alaskan outdoors such as hiking, skiing, fishing, and soccer (indoor or outdoor).
Eric Stone is the news director for KRBD, a public radio station based in Ketchikan. He works closely with reporters and editors in the public radio system throughout Southeast Alaska and across the state. His work has appeared in Grist, NPR, Pacific Fishing and other publications. He was elected to the board in 2022.
STUDENT MEMBERS
Interested in being a member of the Alaska Press Club Board? Find our application here.
Alaska Press Club 