Former KDLG reporter dies, age 29, in New Mexico

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According to KDLG and KUNM, reporter Hannah Colton died last week. She was 29. The reports of her passing suggest the cause was suicide.

“KDLG is heartbroken by her passing. Colton came to Dillingham in 2015. She dedicated a year of service as a journalist to the people of Bristol Bay, lifting their voices with compassion and going to bat for the concerns of this community. Colton constantly pursued the truth, and she will be deeply missed,” the Dillingham public radio station reported.

Colton’s stories appeared frequently in the Anchorage Daily News during the year she lived in Alaska. She wrote about Katmai bears, fishing, hydro power at Chignik Lagoon, and the Pebble Project.

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Colton accepted a job as the education reporter and news director at KUNM, a public radio station in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

There, she had been a champion for social justice.

“She was passionate about equity and racial justice. She fought those fights in the field, in news content and on behalf of her staff,” KUNM wrote.

“Hannah loved being a reporter. She was a gifted storyteller. She was great at meeting people and talking with them, asking good questions and really listening to the answers.

“She well-understood the urgency of this moment, and she gave it her whole heart, working around the clock to cover equity and education, the dangers of the virus for people who are incarcerated, protests and the pandemic’s impacts on people without shelter,” the station wrote.

Colton was said to have suffered from depression.

She recently wrote, “The older I get and more work I do, the more convinced I am that most or all of us are traumatized to some degree by this messed up, unjust, patriarchal, white supremacist society. Healing is possible, but we cannot heal alone. And that’s why I love making pieces about mental health. Especially when I get to speak with compassionate, expert elders.”

Of her passing, U.S. Sen. Tom Udall wrote, “Heartbroken to learn of the loss of Hannah Colton of @KUNMnews. Hannah was an incredible person dedicated to independent, thoughtful reporting. This is a devastating loss for the journalism community in New Mexico. Jill and I extend our deepest condolences to Hannah’s loved ones.”

18 COMMENTS

  1. Liberalism is a mental disorder. It can lead to clinical depression, feelings of detachment, derangement, and despair. Non-intervented, it can lead to suicidal ideation. Here, it did. The cure: conservatism.

  2. It sounds like her depression about self-conceived white supremacy got the best of her which shows her passion for what she did. You can’t fight the cause from the grave. While I may not have agreed with her philosophy, I am saddened for her loss and of her families.

  3. She sounds like her thoughts leaned Left eventhough i never read her writing nor heard her, but i disagree about the patriarchal opinion cause even matrilineal societies were patriarchal in some forms as Every head of household and tribe is always a man! My theory i think is correct Suicides are more common on the left-thinking democrat side because of the party’s apathy to human life and its lack of knowledge beyond its members own education. As one facebook comment mentioned hypothetically “if they were a democrat, they will commit suicide.” Which i concured long time ago thinking the same thing how can a democrat person live with such apathy agianst a living God and others without ever considering the self harm on themselves?
    I hardly hear about a right-thinking republicans taking their life.

  4. “the more convinced I am that most or all of us are traumatized to some degree by this messed up, unjust, patriarchal, white supremacist society.”

    Is she talking about the society that invented the quite comfortable modern world? Canned food, penicillin, welfare, and electricity is really traumatic? compared to what? What the ?
    The liberals brainwashed another young mind into despair.

    • I think she’s promoting the one that never invented the wheel while denigrating the one that invented the medium that clothed and fed her. Regardless, shame she couldn’t have seen the world from a different perspective. Once you decide ‘the man’ is against you, you transition from flower to weed.

    • No. This is why we need vouchers so people aren’t forced to send their kids to public schools to be brainwashed by leftists maggots.

      • You are stereotyping a bunch of teachers whom you don’t know and are painting a broad swath. Yes I know a lot of leftists the way you describe them, but I know a lot of conservative good-hearted people that happen to be teachers as well that refuse to join nea. Probably best to keep that sort of talk in your back pocket until you walked a mile in their shoes.

  5. Suzanne,
    It is good you are writing about suicide.
    The media has been silent on this real epidemic for way too long.
    If the truth was spoken, you would see how drastic these COVID mandates have been to the health of our society.
    Instead of focusing on the daily “case” count for 10 months, more journalists should put faces & stories behind those who decide to end their lives early.
    We are currently living in a MSM echo chamber that repeats the same story daily.
    My deepest condolences go out to Hannah’s family in this time of grief.

  6. “The older I get and more work I do, the more convinced I am that most or all of us are traumatized to some degree by this messed up, unjust, patriarchal, white supremacist society.”
    .
    Probably rude to ask how’d that work out… we talking about an example worthy of emulation?
    .
    Only a hardened cynic would ask how a life falls apart if one never had it together.

  7. I wonder if this young person’s depression was deepened by the fact that she was white & the guilt she perhaps felt because her people created a “….messed up, unjust, ……white supremacist society”

    Do our young really think invention, science & physical comforts gained by commerce & white western society are bad even though we all benefit from these things?

    Some people just can’t be happy knowing there is one person in the world that is not happy.
    Some are happy all the time, even though they have very little.

    I’ve come to believe it’s our nature (& not nurture).

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