#MeetOurAlumni: Nathaniel Herz, '12 M.S. Stabile

Nathaniel Herz, '12 M.S. Stabile, worked in New York for a year after graduating from Columbia Journalism School. But having grown up in Maine, he needed more open space, so he took a job covering politics for the Anchorage Daily News in 2013, and hasn't looked back. Since then, he's covered the Alaska Capitol for the Daily News and also worked at Anchorage's public radio station; in 2022, he founded a statewide environmental news and politics website and newsletter, Northern Journal. Now, working with a team of partners and investors, he's reviving the Anchorage Press, a dormant alt-weekly in the city, with a focus on arts and culture reporting and investigative journalism.

What does a day of reporting or storytelling look like for you, and what work are you most proud of? 

A few weeks ago, I rode a bush plane out to the dirt airstrip at Hooper Bay, a small Indigenous village at the edge of the Bering Sea, to talk to residents about how they currently pay $8.44 per gallon of gas. After the staff at the local Tribal government served me a cup of coffee, I sat on the back of an all-terrain vehicle as a resident drove me from house to house so I could talk with elders and others. Before hopping my flight out of the village, I had a chance to harvest a dozen tiny seabird eggs from nests tucked into the tundra. Those kinds of trips don't happen every day — oftentimes you can find me at a desk in my co-working space in Midtown Anchorage, working the phones or editing a story draft submitted by the Press' environment correspondent. But Alaska's rural places are what make the state special, and it's a privilege to travel to villages and hub communities and to be able to share their stories with urban audiences that aren't always aware of what's happening off the road system.

Which CJS skill do you find yourself using most often?

It's hard to pick one. I had an incredible core group of instructors at Columbia, each of whom imparted some indelible lessons. From Mirta Ojito, who taught my foundational RW 1 course: Report with all five senses. From Wayne Barrett, the legendary investigative reporter who advised me on my master's project: File public records requests early and often. From Jim Mintz, who taught a memorable course on interviewing as part of my training at the Stabile Center for Investigative Journalism: Sharing things about yourself to a wary source can humanize you, and it's also okay to wait in awkward silence as a way of getting a source to keep talking.

What’s the most unexpected place your CJS degree has taken you, geographically or professionally?

Broadly: Alaska. I never had any desire or expectation to end up here. But I landed in Anchorage in 2013 thanks largely to a New York-area daily newspaper internship that Columbia facilitated. Since then, innumerable additional unexpected journeys have presented themselves. Helicopter rides to mining exploration sites and Denali's glacier base camp for mountaineers. A trip aboard a fishing trawler on the Bering Sea. (Yes, I did get seasick.) Inside the pickup truck of Alaska's first Indigenous state House speaker, as he drove me around the few miles of road that exist in the remote fishing hub community that's his hometown. I've also been lucky enough to cover four winter Olympic Games, in Canada, Russia, China and Italy.

What does being a Columbia Journalism School alum mean to you today?

For one, it means I have a network of trusted friends I can turn to whenever I'm in a journalistic pinch — if I'm in need of ethical, legal or editorial advice. It also means that even though I live in Alaska, far from the centers of America's media business, I can still stay connected to the industry's cutting edge through my relationships with former classmates and other alumni. Every time I leave Alaska for a journalism conference, I catch up and trade stories with friends from my time at Columbia. And I've had educational and perspective-broadening meetups with Stabile alumni in places as far from my home as Hong Kong.

If you could give one piece of advice to current CJS students about building a journalism career right now, what would it be?

I stayed in New York for a year after graduating from Columbia, and before I left, I was considering two job opportunities — one that would have kept me in the city, and another in Alaska. Many friends in journalism advised me to stay, with one arguing vehemently that leaving the city would be "killing my career." I loved my time in New York, and I learned so much there that still guides my approach to work today. But the opportunities I found by leaving the city for a different place are way beyond anything I could have imagined. Don't be afraid to take a path a little less traveled.