Paula Akana was a UH Mānoa journalism student in the early 1980s when she took an internship at KITV. For the next 35 years, she served as a reporter and anchor, becoming a household name throughout Hawaiʻi.
“She was, and still is, the trusted Aunty whose words you always believe,” said Chuck Parker of PBS, who worked with Paula at KITV as news director. “There was no story she could not do and whatever story she did, she did well. What set her apart was how she told the story. She always had the viewer in mind and was a master at weeding through details so the human element stood out.”
In 2019 Paula became President and CEO of The Friends of ʻIolani Palace, where she carries on the work that has been her passion, from her years as a student to her decades as a journalist.
“Each and every day we have a goal to make the Palace better,” she said, “to make sure she is standing 20 generations from now and that the stories of our sovereign Hawaiian Kingdom and our aliʻi continue to be told. It is a kuleana ( responsibility) that I take extremely seriously.”
Her journalism career actually started even before UH, when she was a student at Kamehamea Schools Kapālama and a reporter on the Ka Mō‘ī newspaper. As a college student, she complemented her major in journalism with studies in anthropology and archeology.
“Journalism taught me important skills—to be inquisitive and to question things,” she said. “Also, to be impartial, to be fair. As a reporter/anchor, these skills allowed me to dig deeper into the stories I was covering and today I feel very comfortable asking important questions.
“The classes I took in anthropology and archaeology helped me to cover important stories such as burials, language and Polynesian navigating, because I had a better understanding of the issues. Those classes help me today in understanding my Hawaiian culture and protecting important cultural resources.”
She participated in the Polynesian Voyaging Society, a non-profit research and education entity established to perpetuate traditional Polynesian voyaging methods.
“Getting involved with the Polynesian Voyaging Society was a huge part of my life, and it all started at UH,” Paula said in a PBS podcast. “I took a class with Ben Finney, and he invited us all to come along on that journey.”
As a journalist at KITV, she later joined the crew of the Hōkūleʻa, accompanying them in their voyage through the locks of the Panama Canal in early 2017. She also covered the revitalization of ʻŌlelo Hawai’i over the years, watching the children begin in Pūnana Leo—private, non-profit preschools that teach Hawaiian—and thrive as they grew up. “The language,” she said, “starting off fragile in numbers, is now vibrant and alive.” And she produced a news special on the Marco Polo condo fire, the tragic 2017 blaze of a 36-story building that killed four people and injured 13.
As for her current role with ‘Iolani Palace, “I think everything that I had done in my life led me to this point,” she told PBS. “It’s grounded me culturally more than anything else I’ve ever done in my life. It’s challenged me, in ways I can’t even start to talk about or sometimes even comprehend.”
She added, “Hōkūleʻa was able to really raise the self-awareness of our lāhui on how remarkable we were, and I really hope the palace does the same thing.”