Deb Krol
Indigenous Affairs and Environmental Reporter at the Arizona Republic
It’s not American journalism without the Indigenous beat
Deb Krol has reported on Indigenous peoples (from religion and art, to political and climate issues) for nearly 25 years. Her job is a personal one. “I just tell everybody, my beat is my fellow Indians,” she said.
Krol said she’d always wanted to write, and she hoped to be the Native American version of Danielle Steel — until she found out how much novelists make. She eventually pivoted to reporting, finding an interest in environmental journalism. “As Native people, our lands and our environment are inextricably intertwined with our culture and religion,” she said.
Krol freelanced and worked different media jobs until landing a full-time role covering her favorite subjects at the Arizona Republic.
She has been recognized as a Best Beat Environmental Reporter by the Native American Journalists’ Association. Her piece “Sacred Spaces,” a story about how Indigenous peoples have to fight to protect sacred places outside of tribal lands, won an award from the National Press Foundation, as well as an Emmy nomination.
By Tiffany Corr
I made the transition several years ago to full-time reporting and I’m having a blast.
To have this freedom where I get a paycheck coming in every two weeks and I get to do what I’ve been training myself to do for 25 years, to know that my work is valued, my position is valued, and that they’re backing me? It’s gold.
I could have kept doing freelance work and writing for niche publications and Native media. But after working at the Republic for a few months, I realized that that’s preaching to the choir. The people who really need to know about Indian Country are the people who read things like the Arizona Republic, the New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal — you know, non-Indians. That’s who I’m writing for.
Covering Indigenous Peoples for Legacy Media
We have what I like to call the “Indigenous News Desk.” There are two Indigenous reporters and our editor, Shaun McKinnon, who has worked in Arizona longer than a lot of the reporters in the newsroom have been alive.
I’ve noticed a few other papers with Indigenous news desks. But when it comes to legacy media, we’re the biggest ones. It’s an area that hasn’t been invested in.
I’m very rarely told no. There’s just so many issues to cover. With water, tribes in Arizona have rights to at least 40% of the Colorado River allocation for the state. There are land issues. There are MMIW (missing and murdered Indigenous women), and now that includes men and boys. Tribes here are a really big part of the state: 28% of the state is tribal land.
We try to tag-team each other and make sure that we’re not leaving gaps or double covering the same thing. There are other people in the newsroom who do stuff related to tribes, but we’re the ones who are exclusively tribal focused.
I’ve noticed a few other papers with Indigenous news desks. But when it comes to legacy media, we’re the biggest ones. It’s an area that hasn’t been invested in. There are a few people who did it and when they did it, they did it well. Then they retired and nobody else took their place.
It’s something that should have been done a long time ago, and I’m really glad that our executive editor Greg Burton saw the need for this. The news director and my own editor, Shaun, are all really enthusiastic about it. They procured the funding to get this started.
When Newsrooms Repeat Mistakes
So much of the coverage out there was bad, inaccurate, and not complete. Sometimes reporters get in the crunch, they’ll take something that was written 10 years ago as gospel when it’s not correct. They’re repeating the same mistakes, using the low-hanging fruit.
I didn’t think people really valued learning about tribes. They either think we’re all extinct or we’re all casino Indians and we don’t have any culture — or that we all have powwows, which is not true.
There’s a place to talk about drumming and dancing, but putting drumming and dancing into a broadcast story just because it’s about Indians? It’s like nails on a blackboard to me. This is giving all of us journalists, particularly those of us who work in mainstream media, an opportunity to correct a lot of those tropes and misperceptions and stereotypes.
I also like to engage with readers, even if they don’t agree with me, but in a respectful way: “I hear what you’re saying, but here are some facts that you may not be aware of.” That has almost always paid off in dividends. If I’ve educated one reader, I’m doing my job.
There are some phenomenal Native journalists who are experts in their field, but they’re not working for the Washington Post. A couple of them used to work in mainstream media, back in the battle days, but got frustrated and retreated to Native media. Mary Annette Pember at ICT News, she’s one of the biggest examples of a mainstream journalist who turned to Native media.
I’d like to see some of them come back. They are voices of authority and speak from their experiences, not only as Native people, but from their self-education, investigative skills, and accumulation of all their institutional knowledge of tribes and Native people.
Teaching the Next Generation
I’ve been working to get more young Native journalists into the Republic. I take them around, show them where they can find stories and how they can educate themselves about other tribes.
Some of them come from a tribal area and that’s all they know. It’s nothing against them. Everybody knows about the Navajos, Apache, Sioux, the Cheyennes. I come from California, where hardly anyone knew our tribal histories.
So, say someone comes from the Standing Rock Tribe to the Republic, I’m going to show them the smaller Arizona tribes. I’ll take them across the river and show them the California tribes. That broadens their knowledge and helps them grow more of an authoritative voice.
They can then say, “I know something about that tribe,” instead of falling back to the tropes that we Native journalists can sometimes set for ourselves.
Auntie Deb needs to get all of the chickies educated. My boss keeps joking around, telling me I can’t retire until the year 2087. Everyone knows sooner or later, I’m going to retire. I need someone who is as knowledgeable as me taking my place — and preferably two or three.