It was originally an online news outlet focusing on statewide coverage of the U.S. state of Alaska, and on circumpolar affairs and policy.
In 2009, Alice Rogoff, former U.S. News & World Report chief financial officer and wife of Carlyle Group co-founder David Rubenstein, bought a majority share in the website, and the organization moved into a hangar located along Anchorage's Merrill Field Airport, where Rogoff, a licensed pilot, also houses her Cessna 206.
In 2009, the site earned positive coverage for its series on a massacre of caribou in the rural Alaska village of Point Hope.
In that same profile, an editor of the Anchorage Daily News newspaper, at the time one of the site's competitors, referred to Alaska Dispatch's coverage as inconsistent, and questioned the sustainability of its business model.
[7] In 2011, Alaska Dispatch won first place in the breaking news category in the "Best of the West" journalism competition for its coverage of the August 2010 plane crash that killed former U.S.