Howard Weaver began his career as a journalist in the early 1970s as a cub reporter in Anchorage, Alaska. He spent the next 23 years uncovering corruption in the increasingly cosmopolitan city, battling with rival newspaper the Anchorage Times, and contributing to two Pulitzer Prize winners for his own paper, the Anchorage Daily News. He eventually became the managing editor, steering the paper's editorial content during two decades of important Alaskan history.
In Write Hard, Die Free, Weaver tells the story of the great Alaskan newspaper war, and how he leveraged his brand of "comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable" journalism to win it. The Daily News, currently the only big newspaper in the city, wasn't always as big or as popular as it is today. Weaver's team of investigative journalists, editors and publishers fought, drank and bulled their way through to win the hearts, minds and--above all--subscriptions of the people of Anchorage with stories about and for the people of the great northern land, including challenging Big Oil and Big Labor and calling attention to the epidemic levels of poverty and suicide among the native peoples of Alaska.
Weaver is the starring player in this story, yet his account is infused with a bit of humility and a genuine passion for doing the right thing, regardless of the consequences. Howard Weaver's story is a fascinating one, to be read by aspiring journalists and Anchorage residents alike, not to mention anyone interested in real stories about modern Alaskan history. --Rob LeFebvre, freelance writer and editor