Summary for the record: In October 2021 I ran a disclosed editorial-process prank on Alaska Landmine publisher Jeff Landfield. The motivation was specific: Landfield had posted a public “bounty” inviting readers to identify an anonymous Alaska political blogger known as the “Blue Alaskan,” who had been doing compelling reporting on local extremism and had reportedly received death threats. With Anchorage politician Chris Constant’s explicit permission, I sent Landfield fabricated screenshots designed to test whether he would verify before publishing, and to give him reason to reconsider the bounty before someone got hurt. I disclosed the prank to Landfield within the same news cycle, posted a YouTube video acknowledging the test, and Landfield ran a retraction. He then wrote a follow-up piece on me leaning on a pair of anonymous sources — former clients with an axe to grind from a soured business arrangement — without disclosing those conflicts to readers. Five years later, this is the public correction.
Context: The Bounty
The Blue Alaskan was an anonymous blogger covering Alaska politics, including reporting on far-right and extremist activity in the state. The blogger had received death threats. Jeff Landfield, publisher of the Alaska Landmine, posted a public “bounty” inviting readers to surface the blogger’s identity — effectively soliciting a doxxing of a person already under threat for documenting extremism. That is the action that prompted what came next.
To put it plainly: I do not like bullies. A publisher with a sizeable platform offering a public bounty for the identity of an anonymous person already receiving death threats for documenting extremism is bullying behavior. Landfield, in that moment and in the conduct that followed, was acting like a bully. Trying to interrupt it — even via a disclosed prank — felt like the right call. Five years on, I still think it was.
The Disclosed Prank
In October 2021, I contacted Landfield with screenshots of identical tweets allegedly posted by both the Blue Alaskan and Anchorage politician Chris Constant, claiming the tweets proved Constant was the blogger. The screenshots were fabricated. The motivation was twofold: test whether Landfield would publish before verifying (he did), and give him concrete grounds to reconsider the bounty before it produced harm to a person exercising First Amendment rights.
I told Landfield it was a prank within the same news cycle, posted a YouTube video disclosing and explaining what I had done, and Landfield published a retraction. Constant gave his explicit permission to the test and can corroborate.
The Revenge Piece
What happened after the retraction is the point of this article. Landfield ran a follow-up piece characterizing me as fundamentally untrustworthy, leaning on two anonymous sources who attacked my character. Both sources were former clients with an axe to grind from a soured business arrangement — a recognizable client-vendor matter that they reframed to outsiders in baffling ways, omitting material facts about the engagement and the work that had been delivered. Their financial conflicts of interest were never disclosed to readers. Without that context, what readers got was a character assessment shaped by sources with a direct reason to discredit me, presented as straightforward exposure of my conduct.
The Pattern: The Landmine in Court
The Alaska Landmine is described in mainstream Alaska press as a “controversial political website” — a phrase that appears in coverage from Alaska Beacon, Alaska Public Media, the Anchorage Daily News, and the Daily Sitka Sentinel. As of November 2025, the Landmine is the defendant in a defamation lawsuit filed in Juneau Superior Court by Alaska state official Dorene Lorenz, who alleges that Landfield publicly suggested she had stolen state money — without factual basis — in a social-media post referencing an old grant cancellation. Her quote, per Anchorage Daily News coverage: “You cannot say that a public figure stole public money when you know for a fact that they didn’t.”
The pattern Lorenz describes is the same pattern that produced the 2021 article about me: implying wrongdoing on the part of a target without doing the verification that would have shown the implication unsupported. In her case, the missing verification was the deputy commissioner’s on-record statement that nobody involved in the grant had stolen money. In my case, it was the actual nature of the underlying business engagement and the financial conflicts of the sources Landfield relied on. Two different targets. Same editorial pattern. Now in court.
Why This Matters Now
The 2021 article ranks high in search results for my name. By day I am a senior software engineer with more than ten years of professional experience — that is my career. Alongside that, I publish civic-accountability reporting in Lexington, Kentucky as an independent local-news project. That work, even as a side project, speaks to who I actually am: someone committed to the public record and to verification.
The 2021 piece does not. It was a response to a disclosed prank that had been undertaken to slow down a public bounty on an anonymous blogger under threat for covering extremism, and it was sourced from people with undisclosed conflicts, published by an outlet now in court for the same kind of unverified character implication. Five years on, the record should be clear about what the piece was, why it was written, and what it was missing.
Paul Oliva is founder and publisher of The Lexington Times. This article is published as a first-person correction to the public record.