Hope McKenney
News DirectorHope McKenney is a public radio news director, reporter, producer and host based in the Aleutian Islands, Alaska.
Born in rural Northern California, Hope started as a reporter and producer at KZYX in Mendocino County. She's also worked for WBAI in New York and KQED in San Francisco.
In 2019, she moved to Unalaska/Dutch Harbor, Alaska, to work for Alaska's Energy Desk and KUCB — the westernmost public radio newsroom in the country. Hope has lived, worked and filed stories from California, New York, Bolivia, Peru, Cuba and Alaska.
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Three-year-old Remy walked into the newly-renovated Unalaska Public Library earlier this month, hand-in-hand with his dad Carlos Tayag, his library card hanging from a carabiner across his chest. He approached the desk — his eyes just above the countertop — and handed a form to the librarian, titles of different children’s books scribbled on the gridded white sheet. Library staff greeted him with a paper certificate and a medal on a sparkling gold ribbon that read “1,000 books before kindergarten.” -
Three top healthcare providers at Unalaska’s clinic recently left the island, but they assure patients that high-quality care will continue during the transition. -
Unalaska celebrated its second annual LGBTQ Pride event Friday under gray skies and drizzle. But the weather didn’t deter dozens of community members from showing up to the two-hour event to play games, answer trivia questions on LGBTQ history and enjoy homemade corn dogs and rainbow cupcakes to the soundtrack of the musical Hair and Diana Ross hits. -
Ben Knowles, who served as a firefighter in Minnesota before joining the Unalaska Fire Department in 2018, was promoted to the head role on June 1. Knowles has held several leadership positions with the department, and has been recognized with statewide awards for both service and leadership. -
Dozens of Unalaskans turned out Friday evening to celebrate LGBTQ+ Pride Month. Across the country, Pride Month celebrations take place each June to honor the 1969 Stonewall riots, which started in response to police raids of gay bars in New York City. -
Dozens of Unalaskans turned out Friday evening to celebrate LGBTQ Pride Month; there was a major vehicle collision on Unalaska’s S-curves Monday afternoon; and the state’s health department has a new program to prevent opioid overdose deaths among workers in Southeast Alaska fisheries.
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Nearly 2,000 tons of subsea fiber has begun the journey from Europe to Alaska and its eventual home on the ocean floor along the Aleutian Chain. The fiber — which is the foundation of GCI’s 800-mile Aleutians Fiber Project — would close the digital divide and bring high speed internet to homes in some of the most remote communities in the nation, including Unalaska. -
One of the most sealed off communities in the country is under a hunker down order following a surge of COVID-19. Roughly half of all coronavirus cases recorded on St. Paul Island since the start of the pandemic have happened in the last two weeks. -
Nearly 2,000 tons of subsea fiber has begun the journey from Europe to Alaska and its eventual home on the ocean floor along the Aleutian Chain; Celebration — the every-other-year gathering of Indigenous people in Southeast Alaska — kicked off Wednesday in Juneau; and a group of researchers is hoping that data collected from Gulf of Alaska's sea floor will shed new light on the environmental effects of bottom trawling.
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St. Paul Island is at its highest coronavirus risk level, as active cases in the small Pribilof community rose to 12 on Wednesday; Sen. Dan Sullivan honors Mike Livingston and Gertrude Svarny as "Alaskan of the Week;" and Sen. Lisa Murkowski was one of several congressional candidates in Kodiak over the weekend for the island’s Crab Festival.
