A Pennsylvania native, Joe LaRocca (Photo-r) has worked as a newsman in four states for more than 40 years, including Alaska, where he resided for 20 years, from the late 60s to the late 80s. He has degrees from Slippery Rock, PA, and Harvard universities.  He has worked for newspapers in Pennsylvania, Ohio, North Carolina and New York. In Alaska, he also worked in radio and TV news.  (Review his Alaska gas pipeline related work here.)

In the early 1960s he was press secretary for the Pennsylvania legislature, and later worked for severalyears as an investigative writer and field representative for the Pittsburgh-based Carnegie Hero Fund Commission. In that capacity he traveled throughout the U.S. and Canada investigating reported acts of heroism to determine whether they qualified for Carnegie Hero medals and/or cash awards.

In 1967, responding to a long held fascination with the Alaska mystique fueled by the literature of the North Country - Robert Service, Jack London, Rex Beach, Joachim Miller, and others - he left a position as city editor with the Erie, PA. Morning News to take a job in Fairbanks with the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner as assistant news editor. Because of his experience with the Pennsylvania general assembly, he was later named legislative correspondent and sent to the state capital of Juneau to cover the annual sessions of the state legislature

During the interims between legislative sessions, he returned to Fairbanks, where he was assigned as Resources Editor. Besides reporting, writing and editing, he produced a weekly tabloid insert for the paper dealing with the development and/or conservation/preservation of Alaska's vast natural resources, especially North Slope hydrocarbons (oil and gas), the first special newspaper section of its kind anywhere in the nation.

During his two-decade tenure in Alaska, LaRocca also worked for The Alaska Broadcasting System, a statewide radio network, as well as for radio and TV stations in Fairbanks and Juneau., He was the principal field correspondent in Alaska for the New York Times during the early 1980s. He reported, edited  and wrote news and hard-hitting commentary for Tom Snapp’s All-Alaska Weekly in Fairbanks for more than a decade.

In 1972, he launched Alaska’s first and only journalism review, a monthly public affairs journal  and award-winning magazine in slick format which he edited and published for two years called CounterMedia, the Alaska Journalism Review and Public Affairs Journal.

For the next 15 years, he worked as an independent reporter, writer, commentator  and correspondent in Alaska variously and sometimes concurrently for, among others, The Anchorage Times, The Juneau Empire, KFRB-TV in Fairbanks, KINY in Juneau,  the Peninsula Clarion in Kenai, the New York Times, and the Whitehorse Daily Star in Canada’s Yukon Territory .

For three months during the mid-1970s, he worked undercover on the trans Alaska oil pipeline project as an equipment operator in order to monitor pipeline construction operations firsthand, then wrote and published news and feature articles about his experience under a pseudonym.   

In 1968, he was invited to sail aboard the SS Manhattan, then the world’s largest ocean-going tanker during its historic  voyage through the ice-choked waters of the fabled Northwest Passage, an experiment to test the feasibility of shipping Alaska's North Slope oil across the top of the continent to U.S. East Coast refineries and markets.

In the mid-1970s, as work on the $10 billion trans Alaska pipeline got underway, he was asked to found, organize and lead a local government agency in Fairbanks.  This position became the focal point of pipeline activity, dealing exclusively with the adverse impacts of world class oil development and pipeline construction on the community, the first of its kind anywhere which served as a model for others that followed.  

Named the North Star Borough Pipeline Impact Information Center, its broad charge was to identify, forecast, and disseminate to private and public sector institutions information relating to perceived pipeline impacts, and assist in designing strategies to mitigate or capitalize on them.
 

While in Alaska, LaRocca was the recipient of numerous Alaska Press Club awards for reporting and writing; received an award in the annual  University of Missouri national competition for excellence in writing on business and economics, and was the first recipient of  the Alaska Communications Conservationist Award in 1970 jointly awarded by the Alaska Chapter of the National Wildlife Assn. and the Alaska Sportsmen's Council for  "Outstanding Contributions to the Wise Use and Management of the Nation's Natural Resources." Later, in 1990, he received an award from the Ohio Bar Assn. for "Excellence in Writing on the Legal System."
 

In 1981-82, he accepted an invitation to study at Harvard University's John F.
Kennedy School of Government, where he earned a master's degree in public policy, then returned to Alaska where he continued to work as an independent newsman, until retiring in 1986 and returning to Pennsylvania. Since then he has written for The Pittsburgh Post Gazette, the Buffalo News, The New York Times, The Anchorage Daily News and many others.
 

Though retired, LaRocca continues to work nearly fulltime as a writer and author. In 2004, he published his first book, “Alaska Agonistes- The Age of Petroleum: How Big Oil Bought Alaska,” which has earned favorable reviews in Alaska’s major newspapers as well as in the Alaska Historical Society’s journal “Alaska History.”

In 2004, he was invited to participate in the University of Alaska Fairbanks "Living History" program designed to recognize while still living those who have made contributions to Alaska's historical development, delivering several classroom and public lectures focusing on his book and related matters. 

Joe is a decorated U.S. Army veteran of the Korean War, in which he served during the mid-1950s.

He may be reached at 23 Clinton St., North East, PA, 16428; (814) 725-8926; or jlar555@aol.com  His web site address is www.northeastrarebooksink.com