With a majority of the U.S. workforce at home and on-line, it may seem ironic to report that COVID-19 has hit local journalism hard. For example, at the end of March the Anchorage Daily News announced it had cut salaried staff pay by 20% and trimmed back full-time hourly workers to a 32-hour week. That’s on top of the seven employees it laid off. The ADN is not alone.

To discuss the issue, I turned to retired Fairbanks Daily News columnist Dermot Cole who now files independently from his site “Reporting from Alaska,” at dermotmcole.com