10 Years of TATW Accomplished: Behind the Scenes of an Arctic Newsletter

A decade ago this year, The Arctic This Week (TATW) was first published as a weekly editorial on Arctic happenings, which often included over a dozen pages of analysis. Many of the topics discussed, such as Political Science, Energy, and Mining, are still a stalwart in the newsletter today (for example, “Political Science” and “Mining”), while others have faded away over time (such as “Blood and Treasure,” upsettingly).

The newsletter was created under the united idea that educating folks on the Arctic would ultimately better the region and provide accessible means to learn more about one of Earth’s most mysterious and inaccessible regions. Within a decade of consistency in delivering news from throughout the Circumpolar North, the TATW team has gradually grown from being a one-person newsletter started by TAI legend Tom Fries to a robust editorial board, aligned with TAI’s principles of horizontal hierarchy and gender diversity.

And while generations of versions of TATW have come and gone, the purpose has remained the same: to provide those interested in engaging the Arctic region a home for staying up to date on important issues and events.

TATW behind the scenes

But how does the newsletter get published, week after week? There is a committed team of ten to thank. The process starts every Sunday, with a clean template created and shared by TATW’s Manager. Every Sunday, the Manager also chooses articles for the upcoming week’s newsletter, communicates with the team any updates, and assigns weekly writers for Top Stories.

Between Monday and Wednesday, the writers get busy with their work. Each writer manages one of the following sections: Politics & Law; Energy; Military and Search & Rescue; Mining; Science & Environment; Industry, Development & Infrastructure; and Health, Youth, Society & Culture. This includes transferring articles shared by the manager to the newsletter template, as well as researching and drafting a Top Story, which is a short synopsis of one of the weekly articles. Authors are encouraged to write about what they find most compelling each week, and these individual choices add to the newsletters diversity, as they all represent different countries and disciplines. Occasionally, the scope and classification of the sections is revisited, in accordance with the expertise of the assigned authors, or in response to emerging trends in Arctic realities.

Ever-expansive content

The newsletter content complements an array of different sections including TAI news and announcements, Arctic early-career and academic opportunities, information on forthcoming events and relevant academic publications. A Map of the Month section has also been incorporated in the newsletter, an initiative that strives to highlight the various ways the changing Arctic can be visualized, by showcasing maps created by various geographers, cartographers and organizations around the world.

More recently, and in light of the UNESCO proclamation of the years 2022-2032 as the ‘Decade of Indigenous Languages’, TATW decided to dedicate a section to the Indigenous Word of the Week, wherein priority is placed on the empowerment of Arctic Indigenous languages.

From the Arctic straight to your mailbox

After the authors finish their work, TATW’s editor-in-chief (EIC) comes in for the final push: to review and prepare the weekly letter for publishing, done by TAI’s Content Manager Andreas Raspotnik. With a scrupulous eye, the EIC polishes the letter from Tuesday to Thursday morning to ensure the thousands of subscribers are met with high-quality writing and analysis, week after week.

Our anniversary year begins with the accomplishment of 2500 subscribers and over 1,000 articles shared via the newsletter each year. With the number of subscribers ever-increasing, the minimum that the TATW editorial board can ensure is a long-standing commitment to time-consistency and high quality content.

As of June 2022, the TATW team consists of: Zaiba Ali (author), Victoria Bergström (author), Trym Eiterjord (author), Caroline Humphreys (manager), Mariel Kieval (author), Fanny-Tsilla Koninckx (author), Kate Ng (author + Map of the Month), Apostolos Tsiouvalas (editor-in-chief) & Michel de Wall (author).

Listen to the TAI team’s 10-year anniversary podcast episode here.