Hello, My name is Victoria Petersen

Victoria Petersen is a journalist living in Alaska. She’s a general news reporter at the Peninsula Clarion, a regional newspaper on the Kenai Peninsula. Her beats include education, city and borough government and agriculture.

At the beginning of 2019, Petersen was selected to be the year’s Education Week Gregory M. Chronister Journalism Fellow. The fellowship offers funding and support of a reporting project on rural education in Alaska.

Before moving to Kenai, she was the copy editor and a columnist at the University of Alaska Anchorage student newspaper, The Northern Light . She was an intern for Alaska Public Media and Alaska Dispatch News (now Anchorage Daily News).

Victoria is the founder and editor-in-chief of The Spenardian, an award-winning hyperlocal news source for Anchorage’s Spenard neighborhood. 

Born and raised in Alaska, Victoria moved to the Kenai Peninsula in the summer of 2018. She calls Anchorage home, specifically Spenard, where her great-grandparents homesteaded, her parents met and where she tells the stories of the Anchorage neighborhood and beyond through The Spenardian magazine. 

In collaboration with her other foodie friend, Abigail Slater, Victoria is working on a long-term Alaskan cookbook called Bloom and Bounty. The publication features stories, memoirs and recipes from around the state. 

Her work has been featured in The Northern Light, Show Me Alaska, Anchorage Press, The Frontiersman, Knik.co, Juliaomalley.media, Last Frontier Magazine, Great British Chefs, First We Feast, Alaska Dispatch News, Edible Alaska Magazine, Cruise Critic, Crude Magazine, Anchorage Daily News, Alaska Public Media, Mt. View Post, Eaten Magazine, Education Week, Wildheart Magazine, Associated Press, Homer News and the Peninsula Clarion. 

In 2019, The Spenardian took home third place in the External Publications category at the Public Relations Society of America-Alaska Chapter Aurora Awards.

For 2018, Petersen received three Alaska Press Club awards.

• Third place in the Best Reporting on Government and Politics Category – for a story regarding the Kenai Peninsula Borough invocation policy
• Third place in the Best Blog category – for The Spenardian
• Third place for the Best Magazine Cover category – for The Spenardian, issue 3

For 2017, Petersen received three Alaska Press Club awards.

• First place in the Vern McCorkle Award for Best Business Reporting – for a story she wrote about Alaska-made lingerie.
• Third place in the Suzan Nightingale Award for Best Columnist – for her cooking column at UAA’s student newspaper.
• First place in the Best Blog category – for her blog The Spenardian.

For 2016, Petersen was the recipient of an Alaska Press Club award for third place in the general news category for her work in 2016 on an indoor hydroponic farm in Spenard. 

Contact: victoriagpetersen@gmail.com, thespenardian@gmail.com or vpetersen@peninsulaclarion.com