Tag: Alice Rogoff

Craig Medred: Queen of the Arctic

With Alice Rogoff’s dream of an Alaska media empire dead and a federal Bankruptcy Court trustee sniffing her back trail to find the hole down which tens of millions of dollars disappeared at the Alaska Dispatch News, the woman who some former employees once considered the self-anointed heir to the title of the Queen of the Arctic is rebooting as Alaska Online Publisher 3.0 (AOP 3.0).

A “Dear Reader” letter started appearing in the email in boxes of people across the north this week announcing the rebranding of “Arctic Now” as “Arctic Today.” Arctic Now was a website Rogoff spirited out of the ADN as she was taking the company into bankruptcy.

Arctic Today is an all new “platform,” sort of.

Read more: Queen of the Arctic

How Alaska’s largest newspaper went bankrupt – Columbia Journalism Review

Source: How Alaska’s largest newspaper went bankrupt – Columbia Journalism Review

Empire lost – Craig Medred

The woman who once thought she could own the news in the north was back in federal Bankruptcy Court in Anchorage on Thursday acting dazed and confused.

Gone were the crowds that had followed Alice Rogoff to previous hearings. So, too, most of the media. There were now only a handful of people in the courtroom in the Old Federal Building downtown in the heart of Alaska’s largest city.

They clustered close around bankruptcy trustee Nacole Jipping and Rogoff at table in a corner of the courtroom where attorneys would normally sit facing a judge. Her back to the crowd, Rogoff had friend and bankruptcy attorney Cabot Christianson at her right elbow with Erin Austin, the chief financial officer for the Alaska Dispatch News at her left elbow.

Across the table sat William Armus, an attorney representing her creditors in what has now evolved into a Chapter 7 liquidation of what little is left of the short-lived Rogoff version of ADN, a news enterprise with roots back to the Anchorage Daily News.

Empire lost – Craig Medred

Craig Medred:  Back in the game

Arctic Now was a subsidiary of the ADN until recently. How Rogoff managed to fold the Dispatch News, stiff creditors and leave with Arctic Now remains unclear.

So, too, the relationship between website and the ADN. The Arctic Now contact page directs inquiries to David Hulen, the editor of the ADN, and Krestia DeGeorge, a New York-state based editor for the ADN.

Back in the game – Craig Medred