Editor and Publisher Reports

In May of 2020, The Anchorage Daily News (ADN) was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for their yearlong series entitled “Lawless,” which provided an in-depth look at the criminal justice system's failures across Alaska. The team who created the series was led by ADN special projects editor Kyle Hopkins who had the assistance of ProPublica, the nonprofit entity that assists news publishers nationwide with investigative reporting projects.  As “Lawless” was being picked up by national news sources resulting in a visit by then U.S. Attorney General Bill Barr, Hopkins started hearing from TV and movie producers who began showing interest in adapting the stories the ADN was uncovering. It was Tom McCarthy,  the well-known writer and director of the 2016 Emmy Award-winning movie "Spotlight," centered on the Boston Globe's investigation of sexual abuse by the Roman Catholic clergy, who had been thinking of creating a show that went deeper inside the workings of a newspaper newsroom. He eventually brought the ADN into the nat