Mark Trahant

Mark Trahant is an independent print and broadcast ^[1] journalist. He writes a weekly column^[2] and posts unique daily content on Twitter.^[3][4] Trahant was a reporter on the PBS series Frontline with a story called "The Silence," about sexual abuse by clergy in Alaska.^[5] Trahant was recently a Kaiser Media Fellow. At the 2004 UNITY conference in Washington, D.C., he asked George W. Bush what the meaning of tribal sovereignty was in the 21st century; Bush replied, "Tribal sovereignty means that. It’s sovereign. You’re a ... you’re a ... you’ve been given sovereignty and you’re viewed as a sovereign entity."^[6]

Trahant is the 2014 Atwood Chair of Journalism at the University of Alaska Anchorage.^[7] He is a member of Idaho’s Shoshone-Bannock Tribe, and a former president of the Native American Journalists Association.^[8] Trahant is the former editor of the editorial page for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, where he chaired the daily editorial board, directed a staff of writers, editors and a cartoonist.^[9] He was chairman and chief executive officer at the Robert C. Maynard Institute for Journalism Education.^[10] The Oakland, California–based nonprofit is the country's premier institute for providing advanced training and services nationally to help news media reflect diversity in content, staffing and business operations. He is a former columnist at The Seattle Times and has been publisher of the Moscow-Pullman Daily News in Moscow, Idaho; executive news editor of The Salt Lake Tribune; a reporter at the Arizona Republic in Phoenix; and has worked at several tribal newspapers.^[11] He recently was editor in residence at the University of Idaho.

Books

Trahant authored The Last Great Battle of the Indian Wars in 2010.

He authored Pictures of Our Nobler Selves, a history of American Indian contributions to journalism published by The Freedom Forum in 1996.^[12]

He authored a commissioned work, The Whole Salmon, published by Idaho’s Sun Valley Center for the Arts.^[13]

He co-authored his most recent book, Lewis & Clark Through Indian Eyes, an anthology edited by Alvin Josephy Jr.^[14]

Honors and Awards

Trahant has won numerous journalism awards and was a finalist for the 1989 Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting as co-author of a series on federal-Indian policy.^[15] Trahant’s awards and honors include Best Columnist from the Native American Journalists Association and the Society of Professional Journalists, a Ruhl Fellowship, and co-winner of the Heywood Broun Award. He was a 2009-2010 Kaiser Media Fellow.^[16][17] In 1995 Trahant was a visiting professional scholar at The Freedom Forum's First Amendment Center at Vanderbilt University. He also serves as a Trustee of the Diversity Institute, an affiliate of the Freedom Forum, based in Washington, D.C. Trahant was a juror for the Pulitzer Prize in 2004 and 2005.

Personal life

Trahant lives in Fort Hall, Idaho.

References

External links