BANGOR – Jeff Hope’s internal compass must point north. Or at least northwest.

Hope, 39, a reporter with WABI-TV 5 News for 12 years, is leaving the station for a similar position with a station in Anchorage, Alaska. Today is Hope’s last day on the job in Bangor.

“The lure is grizzly bears, salmon,” Hope joked in a telephone interview Tuesday.

A native of Pemaquid and graduate of Lincoln Academy in Damariscotta, Hope’s first love was music. A drummer, he pursued an education at the University of Maine at Augusta, but soured on the thought of teaching percussion for the rest of his working life.

Instead, he switched directions and attended Boston’s Emerson College, learning television news reporting. In 1990, he landed a part-time job at WABI-TV as a photographer.

For anyone entering the field, Hope said, it is wise to learn to operate a camera along with reporting skills. Gradually, he worked into reporting, offering his bosses the ability to be what he describes as “a one-man band,” operating the camera and handling the reporting.

If Hope had a niche at Channel 5, he said it was his storytelling, which he particularly enjoyed developing on feature assignments. Though he was assigned his share of hard news stories, he said he especially enjoyed showing and telling viewers about such slices of Maine as whale-watching, the schooner fleet, or the efforts to restore puffins to Maine’s off-shore islands.

“It’s been the best,” Hope said of his tenure at WABI-TV. “You’re kind of allowed to do whatever it is you’re best at,” he said.

For a period, Hope served as the station’s weekend news anchor, but the schedule conflicted with that of his wife, so three years ago he switched back to daily reporting.

The lure of working in Alaska is not limited to grizzly bears and salmon. Hope is approaching the prospect of living in and reporting on a region as unusual as the nation’s northernmost state as he would an adventure.

And his wife is very much on-board.

“My wife has vacationed there twice,” he said. “When we heard about the opening, she practically yelled, ‘We’re going!”‘

Hope will be reporting for KTUU-TV Channel 2, the NBC affiliate in Anchorage. The market is slightly larger than Bangor, and while the pay is also slightly higher than that in the Bangor market, it will cost a lot more to live there, he said.

Hope is not the first WABI-TV employee to head for the land of the midnight sun. He said a former photographer at Channel 5 went to Alaska, though he now works in Philadelphia.

On today’s 6 p.m. newscast, Hope will introduce replays of some his favorite stories during his tenure at Channel 5.