Mark Trahant is an independent print and broadcast journalist. His blog, Trahant Reports, currently covers Native Americans and politics. He also posts unique daily content on Twitter, including news rhymes. Trahant was a reporter on the PBS series Frontline with a story called "The Silence," about sexual abuse by clergy in Alaska. Trahant was recently a Kaiser Media Fellow. At the 2004 UNITY conference in Washington, D.C., he asked George W. Bush what the meaning of tribal sovereignty was in the 21st century; Bush replied, "Tribal sovereignty means that. It’s sovereign. You’re a ... you’re a ... you’ve been given sovereignty and you’re viewed as a sovereign entity."
Trahant is the Charles R. Johnson Professor of Journalism at the University of North Dakota. He is a member of Idaho’s Shoshone-Bannock Tribe, and a former president of the Native American Journalists Association. Trahant is the former editor of the editorial page for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, where he chaired the daily editorial board, directed a staff of writers, editors and a cartoonist. He was chairman and chief executive officer at the Robert C. Maynard Institute for Journalism Education. The Oakland, California–based nonprofit is the country's premier institute for providing advanced training and services nationally to help news media reflect diversity in content, staffing and business operations. He is a former columnist at The Seattle Times and has been publisher of the Moscow-Pullman Daily News in Moscow, Idaho; executive news editor of The Salt Lake Tribune; a reporter at the Arizona Republic in Phoenix; and has worked at several tribal newspapers. He was an editor in residence at the University of Idaho.
Trahant authored The Last Great Battle of the Indian Wars in 2010.
He authored Pictures of Our Nobler Selves, a history of American Indian contributions to journalism published by The Freedom Forum in 1996.
He authored a commissioned work, The Whole Salmon, published by Idaho’s Sun Valley Center for the Arts.