Zachariah Hughes

Zachariah Hughes is an Anchorage-based journalist with a background in public radio and podcasts, and experience in print and photography.  

For nearly six years, he covered state and local politics, the military, Indigenous issues, the environment, drugs, and dog-mushing (Alaska’s official state sport) in a variety of formats for Alaska Public Media, the state’s public media hub. Additionally, he freelanced print pieces and photographs for national outlets. His specialty is producing newsworthy and human stories from extreme environments that are hard to report on.

He has embedded overseas with an Alaska-based military unit, reported and produced features from small towns above the Arctic Circle, and collaborated on multimedia projects on everything from juvenile detention to remote radar stations.

He worked at WHYY in Philadelphia for several months in 2020 during the height of the coronavirus pandemic and protests for racial justice, but he moved back to Alaska to focus on feature reporting.

Hughes grew up in New Haven, Connecticut, graduating from Wilbur Cross High School and the Educational Center for the Arts. He was an exchange student in Adana, Turkey, before attending Harvard University, where he earned a bachelor's in social studies in 2012.

After interning at WNYC in New York, he got his first reporting position at a small radio station in Nome, Alaska, and moved on to his current position at Alaska Public Media in Anchorage in 2014.