How an Alaska News Nonprofit Bought the Local Newspaper It Was Founded to Compete With

How an Alaska news nonprofit bought the local newspaper it was founded to compete with

It’s been a big couple of years for Amy Bushatz. A former executive editor of Military.com, her husband’s military career had taken their family to the Matanuska-Susitna Valley of Alaska — northern suburbs of Anchorage that make up the state’s fastest growing region. (Perhaps best known in the Lower 48 as the starting point for Sarah Palin’s political career.) Seeing a void in the local news landscape, in 2024 she launched the Mat-Su Sentinel, a…

How this LION in Alaska bought the hometown legacy paper in just three weeks

Late last month, LION member Mat-Su Sentinel, operating in the Matanuska-Susitna (Mat-Su) Valley region of Alaska, announced some seriously exciting news: the digital newsroom, less than two years old and winner of our New Business of the Year Award just last year, had acquired the 80-year-old local legacy newspaper, Mat-Su Valley Frontiersman. It’s not every day a LION pulls something like this off — and our News Entrepreneur Community Slack wa…