Hi there,

The Anchorage Daily News won the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service in May for “Lawless,” a partnership with ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network that revealed how Alaska’s Native villages are denied access to first responders. The starting point for this series: brave accounts from hundreds of survivors of sexual violence in Alaska, which has the highest rate of sexual assault in the nation.

In June, the Daily News and ProPublica published “Unheard,” stories from 29 survivors who chose to speak about what happened to them. These stories were accompanied by portraits taken by Daily News photographers that reflect the courage and strength of each person.

Join us Today, July 10, from 12-1 p.m. AKDT / 4-5 p.m. EDT, for a conversation with Daily News photo editor Anne Raup, ProPublica engagement reporter Adriana Gallardo, Standing Together Against Rape (STAR) Executive Director Keeley Olson, and a survivor who chose to tell their story on how they approached reporting on sexual assault.

Moderated by Daily News reporter Kyle Hopkins, the panel will discuss ways they earned the trust of people sharing their stories and the intentional choices behind the photography. They will also cover policy changes that have occurred since the newsrooms began shining a light on sexual violence in Alaska, and whether, more than a year after the Daily News and ProPublica began their reporting on it, the problem is getting any better. Register to submit questions in advance or during the live event.

For many Alaskans, sexual assault is a secret so embedded in everyday life that to discuss it is to disrupt the norm. As such, the “Unheard” team approached this sensitive subject as a collaborative reporting project between journalists and the people featured — asking profile subjects to pick the emotions they wanted to convey in their photo and allowing them to have a say in how their experiences would be represented.

Since the Daily News and ProPublica first began investigating sexual violence in Alaska, where about one-third of women have experienced sexual assault in their lifetime, U.S. Attorney General William Barr declared the lack of law enforcement in rural Alaska to be a federal emergency.

In this Zoom conversation, the panelists will discuss both the process behind their reporting and the policy impact it has had.

Hope you can join us,
Cynthia Giwa
Proud ProPublican