The Alaska Press Club

Take this survey, please!

2010-09-08T21:46:00.003-08:00

Alaska Press Club is surveying its members on purpose and service. Let us know your thoughts.
Find the survey here.

J-Week 2010 Radio Track

2010-04-30T21:08:00.005-08:00

THURSDAY, May 6 – APTI

Conference Room, APTI Building, 3877 University Drive
8:30 a.m.: Light breakfast and introductions.

9-10:15 a.m.: Making basic stories more interesting, with NPR’s Tom Goldman: How to find the human elements, real-world impacts and other aspects of otherwise dry topics.

10:30-11:45 a.m.: Concise radio reporting, with Northwest News Network’s Tom Banse: Identifying the most important elements of a story amongst a myriad of possibilities. How to stay on track, avoid tangents and identify which audio to use. (Bring a script to edit.)

Noon-1:15 p.m. Lunch group listening session, with NNN’s Tom Banse and NPR’s Tom Goldman: Our guest trainers play and discuss reports that serve as examples of new, different or just plain great radio news approaches.

1:30-2:30 p.m.: Sweeten the sound, with APRN’s Dave Waldron: Audio processing with Adobe Audition and CoolEdit, plus how to get better sound in the first place, including phone audio.

2:45-4 p.m.: APRN in the present and future, with APRN’s Lori Townsend: What’s happening with the network, what it can do to better support station news staff, and what station news staff can do better to help APRN. Also, plans for series or other group projects.

4-5:30 p.m.: Listening session #1: One-on-one coaching (sign up early) sessions with NPR’s Tom Goldman, NNN’s Tom Banse, CoastAlaska’s Ed Schoenfeld, KTOO’s Rosemarie Alexander or APRN’s Dave Donaldson. Those not in individual sessions can be part of a group listening session. Bring scripts and reports for feedback.

FRIDAY, May 7 at APTI

8:30 a.m.: Light breakfast and introductions.

9-9:50 a.m.: Multimedia options for small radio stations, moderated by APRN’s Annie Feidt: What works best to enhance online coverage. With Annie Feidt on video, KMXT’s Jay Barrett on posting scripts and Ed Schoenfeld on links, photos and extra audio.

10-10:50 a.m.: The ethics and practice of editing audio, with CoastAlaska’s Ed Schoenfeld: How and when to make actualities shorter and more concise. Keeping context and the speaker’s voice while editing to make it easier for the listener to hear and understand.

11 a.m.-noon: Listening session #2: One-on-one coaching (sign up early) sessions with Tom Goldman, Tom Banse, Ed Schoenfeld, Annie Feidt, Lori Townsend or Rosemarie Alexander. Those not in individual sessions can be part of a group listening session. Bring scripts and reports for feedback.

11 a.m.-noon: Covering the Capitol, with APRN’s Dave Donaldson: Tips and tools for covering local or regional issues in the Legislature and the Capitol from your location station.

FRIDAY, May 7 afteroon – Radio track moves to UAA

Move to University of Alaska Lee Gorsuch Commons, 3700 Sharon Gagnon Lane, west of Elmore Road between Tudor Road and Providence Drive.

1:30-2:50 p.m.: Making local sports more interesting, with NPR’s Tom Goldman: Moving beyond scores and coach interviews. Using but not overusing sound. Bringing a broader approach to sports reporting.

3-4:20 p.m.: On the road again panel, moderated by CoastAlaska’s Ed Schoenfeld: Reporting from communities you don’t know well without falling into the traps of parachute journalism. How to plan and explain your role to people who don’t understand how news media works. With Northwest News Network’s Tom Banse and APRN’s Annie Feidt.

SATURDAY – Radio track continues at UAA

Saturday, May 8, University of Alaska Gorsuch Commons, Sharon Gagnon Lane

Noon: Native issues panel, moderated by APRN’s Lori Townsend: Three panelists to be announced.

J-Week writing workshop leader provides story links for session

2010-04-27T22:46:00.004-08:00

Kevin Fagan, reporter from the SF Chronicle, is teaching two workshops for print journalists at JWeek 2010. One session is on the art of storytelling and truthtelling; the second one is on how to keep a fresh perspective despite contracting newsrooms and declining resources. This reporter says he's having a great time being a reporter after 30 years on the job, and can report that the SF Chronicle is no longer losing $1M a week. Kevin says they've turned the corner and are making money, thanks to a blend of print and online strategies.

Here are the two story links he'll talk about in the Storytelling workshop:

Giants' Villalona enmeshed in hometown slay case
Shame of the City, Homeless Island

Here are three shorter essays that address the 2nd workshop on keeping a fresh perspective:

Why I go to executions
Writer misses Jill's skinny hugs
Reason to smile, Rita Grant's teeth were a raw reminder of her brutal years on the streets

The full workshop schedule will be posted by Friday.

Alaska Press Club list of presenters for J-WEEK 2010

2010-04-19T14:36:00.002-08:00

Lots of info here on our keynote speaker Robin Sloan, and our array of presenters. Panels are still coming together, and we may still have a few presenters surface. Next step is working them all into a coherent schedule. H-E-L-P!

Anyway, here is the link to take a look and start thinking about who you want to meet and talk to at J-Week, May 6-7-8.

http://alaskapressclub.org/index.php/conference/

NY Times Blog, Bay Area, says this region is ground zero for nonprofit journalism

2010-04-10T16:21:00.015-08:00

Story link:
Bay Area emerges as center for nonprofit journalism

Besides being interesting in light of this new if shaky environment for journalism, I point out this story because it mentions SF Public Press.

One of our 2010 J-Week presenters, Suzanne Yada, is a member of the steering committee for SF Public Press where she is a social media strategist for them. Suzanne was a full-time professional newspaper copyeditor in Visalia, California, doing feature and A-1 news layouts, when she decided to go back to school. She will graduate in May with a B.S. in journalism and a minor in business. She moderates a weekly nation-wide Twitter conversation from 8-10 p.m. Monday nights on college journalism under the Twitter hash tag #collegejourn. Recently she was invited by a University of Oregon journalism professor to participate in an online panel on Twitter and journalism. Her blog provides the link, and a window into how new journalists are thinking about breaking news.

Her bio:
Suzanne Yada is a social media strategist for SF Public Press, an independent nonprofit news organization in San Francisco. She is also the online editor for the Spartan Daily, San Jose State University's daily newspaper. She comes from a print background, having been a copy editor and designer at a daily community paper in Central California for three years. She's also been involved in at least eight different media-related startups. She blogs and tweets about the future of the journalism industry at suzanneyada.com and twitter.com/suzanneyada.
---

Stay tuned, more info will be coming onto the blog and onto the Alaska Press Club Web site over the next week as we highlight the presenters coming for the conference May 6-7-8 at APRN/UAA.

Poynter Institute visual journalist offers free workshop in Anchorage on April 16

2010-04-10T00:15:00.007-08:00

Who: Poynter visual journalist Sara Quinn will be in Anchorage/Fairbanks April 12-16 as a visiting Atwood Professor.

What: She is giving a free workshop for any and all interested local media on VISUAL JOURNALISM in Anchorage on Friday, April 16 at the UAA campus. This workshop is co-sponsored by the Alaska Press Club.

When: Friday, April 16, 2-4 p.m.

Where: UAA Fine Arts Building, Room 117.
Parking is free on the UAA campus on Fridays. There is a ginormous parking lot and a parking garage right next to the UAA Arts Building, so quick arrival and quick getaways will be easy. Enter the campus at the traffic light at Providence Drive and Alumni Way (close to the UAA Consortium Library). Another entrance is off UAA Drive, turn left BEFORE you go under the overhead spine, and follow that road around until you see the Arts Building and the Arts Building parking structure at the far east end of the campus.

Workshop Description: This workshop is suitable for anybody looking for a visual way to tell a story. She will talk about appropriate media that fit the story -- from print graphics and lists, to audio, video and non-linear multimedia storytelling available only on the Web. She's been given a list of local news Web sites to peruse before her arrival. She was excited to get it, so I suspect she will take a look to see what sort of visual storytelling is going on here online and may refer to some local sites in her talk. Not a definite, but she seemed very willing to take a look. She is also hopeful the session can be interactive, not one-way.

This workshop is available to anyone who needs to tell a story with the newest tools.

Link: Sara Quinn's page at Poynter is http://www.poynter.org/seminar/faculty.asp?id=84220

Public Talk at the Wendy Williamson: Quinn will address the new direction of journalism on Monday, April 12 at 7:30 pm at the Wendy Williamson Auditorium, with a dessert reception beginning at 7. This event is free and open to the public. Her topic that evening is New Challenges, New Passions for a New Journalism, about how young media professionals can prepare themselves for careers that have yet to be clearly defined. She’ll explain how the forms of storytelling and business models will change, but how the need will always be there for people to understand the world around them. She is spending a week at UAA as the visiting Atwood Chair for the Department of Journalism and Public Communications. Through the Atwood Foundation, created in 1962, Bob Atwood funded the Atwood Chair with yearly donations to further the cause of educating the next generation of Alaska reporters and editors.
--

Being an entrepreneurial journalist: more free training

2010-04-01T18:38:00.004-08:00

At the J-Week conference May 6-7-8 in Anchorage we will have a session on the journalist as an entrepreneur (necessary due to the decline of journalism institutions that employ journalists). Here is a free interactive, online workshop for business journalists who want to understand this concept. If you are starting out in your career, this may be a tool you want in your toolkit.

Sign up for it here. Below are some details from their Web site. The seminar is in August, one hour a day, available at two times during the day, for five days.

WHAT YOU WILL LEARN

Monday: Figuring Out the Nuts and Bolts

Tuesday: Maintaining Your Social and Mental Health – Maya Smart offers tips on relationship building, dealing with isolation (home office or not?) and rejection, as well as handling ethical concerns. Are there worthwhile organizations to join?

Wednesday: Marketing Yourself – Maya Smart tells you how to find clients who will pay you well and on time and discusses whether you should specialize in a niche to make yourself more efficient. What topics are selling well now, and does multimedia reporting pay?

Thursday: Branding Yourself – Joe Grimm will teach you how to define your brand as a journalist, including what you need to do to establish yourself as an expert and how to promote your brand via social media and other means.

Friday: Live Chat with Successful Journalist Entrepreneurs – Joe Grimm will host a live chat with five successful business journalists turned entrepreneurs. Listen as these entrepreneurial journalists tell their stories to Joe Grimm.

Free Investigative Business Journalism workshop, Portland, May 7

2010-04-01T18:19:00.003-08:00

May 7 in Portland, Ore.: Join Pulitzer winner Gary Cohn and former Washington Post investigative reporter Alec Klein in this daylong workshop, “Investigative Business Journalism on a Beat,” as they walk you through the steps to successful investigative business stories. These two top reporters turned journalism professors will take you through the investigative story from start to finish: refining and pitching an idea, developing and interviewing sources, plumbing public documents, and organizing and presenting the story effectively in multimedia. Come with an idea for an investigative project, and leave with a story pitch to take back to your editors. The emphasis will be on pursuing investigations while still covering your beat.
· June 9 in Las Vegas: Come an afternoon early for the Investigative Reporters and Editors annual conference and polish your investigative business reporting skills with Alec Klein in this condensed version of “Investigative Business Journalism on a Beat.”
Both free workshops are sponsored by the Donald W. Reynolds National Center for Business Journalism, but you must sign up at BusinessJournalism.org. Space is limited.

Poynter visual journalist Sara Quinn will be visiting Atwood Professor

2010-03-31T15:41:00.003-08:00

Here's is an early head's up on some free web visual training in Anchorage. The committee that oversees the Atwood Chair at the University of Alaska Anchorage has decided to bring up a visual journalist for a week of residency at UAA and a visit to UAF. Her name is Sara Quinn and she teaches at the Poynter Institute. She'll visit classes at both university campuses and give a public talk on Monday, April 12. But there are now plans afoot for her to give a free workshop to local media on Friday, April 16 from 12:45-3:45 p.m.

Whether you write, video, photograph or plan layouts for the web, this class could be useful to you. We'll update as the specifics are nailed down.

The Alaska Press Club is a co-sponsor of this open workshop. It will likely be held in Fine Arts Building, and parking at UAA is free on Fridays. Quinn's visit is being arranged by Dr. Fred Pearce of the Journalism and Public Communications Department on behalf of the Atwood Chair committee.

All expenses paid seminar on covering the 'Green Economy'

2010-03-23T17:30:00.004-08:00

Seminar dates: June 28-30
Deadline to apply: April 26
Where: Arizona State University, Walter Cronkite School of Journalism & Mass Comm
Why:

“The volume of press releases and other pitches that business journalists get from companies saying they are doing something to be green has exploded in recent years,” said Linda Austin, executive director of the Reynolds Center. “Those attending this seminar will be better prepared to question those claims and assess the responses.”

Who is paying: McCormick Foundation
Link to press release

This is entry week for Alaska Press Club

2010-02-18T22:39:00.002-09:00

Friday, Feb. 19 is the postmark deadline for entries in the Alaska Press Club. Entries should be from Jan. 1 2009-through Dec. 31, 2009. You can mail them to the Press Club PO Box on the entry form, or drop them at the Associated Press office at 750 W. Second Ave in downtown Anchorage. Thank you AP!

Note, we did not arrange the protocols with APTI for radio entries to be filed on their servers, so radio entries need to be mailed in or dropped off.

Thank you!

Feb. 4 is deadline for Alaska Professional Communicator's 2010 contest

2010-01-27T20:47:00.003-09:00

This note comes to us from Alaska Professional Communicators, a local group that affiliates with a national press association and its annual competition. Here is the deadline and rules for their annual competition, as provided by their member, Elise Patkotak:

See How Your Work Compares With the Best!
Have you done something at work this past year that you're especially proud of? Ever wonder how it would stack up against the best in Alaska and the nation? Then the Alaska Professional Communicators' 2010 contest is for you.

Alaska Professional Communicators, formerly Alaska Press Women, is made up of both women and men in journalism, writing, photography, public relations, and related fields. For more than 30 years the organization has offered a contest in many categories of communication with winning entries going to the national competition run by the National Federation of Press Women.

The contest is open to all Alaska resident communicators, not just APC members. (Contestants who win first place at the state level must join APC to compete nationally.) The contest includes 78 categories for print journalists, Web writers, book authors, photographers, and more. There's a separate Collegiate Contest for college undergraduates.
Winners get feedback from recognized experts from outside Alaska, as well as certificates and recognition from their peers. Entry fees are low--$20 for APC members, $30 for nonmembers.

The deadline for entering is Feb. 4. Complete contest information is at http://www.akprocom.org/commcontests.php.

Alaska Press Club 2010 news

2010-01-18T22:30:00.004-09:00

Thank you for your patience as the Alaska Press Club organizes for J-week 2010, the journalism competition and the annual conference of workshops and banquet.

Here's some current information:

CONTEST DEADLINE: Alaska Press Club entries must be postmarked by Friday, Feb. 19, 2010. The membership form and the contest entry form are both available as PDFs for download from this page. Review contest rules in the December 2008 Polar Bear available by PDF on this page.

CONFERENCE DATES: J-Week will be Thursday through Saturday, May 6 - 8 in two locations. Thursday, May 6, with a focus on radio, will be held at APTI (home of APRN, KSKA, KAKM). While the focus is on radio reporting, all APC members are welcome. The conference moves to Rasmuson Hall on the University of Alaska Anchorage campus for May 7-8, Friday and Saturday. We have the option of using this space on Sunday, May 9, if we have any spillover workshops.

APC Board discussing Spring 2010 conference dates

2009-11-01T14:36:00.001-09:00

Currently under discussion is whether to hold the Spring 2010 J-Week sessions May 6-7-8 at UAA. A final discussion and vote by the board is due by Nov. 3, 2009.

2009 APC Board to meet Saturday, Aug. 29, 2009

2009-08-28T23:55:00.002-08:00

This is our first opportunity to get together as a board after summer. We'll be teleconferencing Saturday, and getting oriented to the tasks ahead.

Press Club Meeting: Board & Officers Election

2009-03-28T16:14:00.004-08:00

Agenda

Opening Remarks
Treasurer’s Report
Conference Discussion
Contest Discussion
Member Poll
Election of New Officers
Photo of New Board
Adjournment

Conference Discussion

So much Alaska media is Anchorage-centric; it’s interesting to see how Anchorage frequently controls the narrative. With the demise of “AK” in particular, might a statewide theme be appropriate?
There are two audiences to the Press Club (traditional media and new media); should the club be changing into something new? Traditional journalists might not be as happy with the new direction.
When you’re the only reporter in a small community, an annual conference is a great opportunity to have your work reviewed and adjudicated, to interact with other journalists, and communicate.
Should we poll members to see what they think about a new direction?
There’s a huge value to the Press Club and the conference for those members who are not in Anchorage. Keep people more involved by having multiple smaller events rather than one big annual event.
What happened to the Polar Bear? It was supposed to be replaced by an e-mail newsletter.
There are a lot of basic responsibilities involved in the conference and the contest; it’s hard to get extra things done.
There are a lot of people who can’t be here today, so it would be nice to hear from the membership. The new media seminars were popular and helpful. The diversity of types of media this year was great and should be continued. The days of focusing on just one medium are over. You have to be agile.
For next year’s theme, we need to take a hard look at who we’re training for future jobs and what those jobs will be. What’s the potential for a job in this state and Outside?
Entrepreneurial journalism — how do you get the job done when the institution isn’t there? Grassroots journalism is becoming more important.
We have to look at the lack of diversity in Alaska’s press corps. What are the institutions that are reaching out to a more diverse audience? How can we get them involved?
This year’s organizers should be applauded for working through so many obstacles. The target is moving quickly.
Do we have a head count? This year is an anomaly, but do we have numbers from other years? Membership list has about 350 names.

Treasurer’s Report

About $15,000 in the account; that’s down somewhat from past years. We were expecting contest entries to be down, but they were comparable to last year (about $12,000). We’re working on getting reimbursements for volcano-canceled flights. This year’s conference cost less than $10,000.

The Senior Center is a great venue from a financial standpoint; the deposit is a few hundred dollars, and the banquet is the biggest expense. It’s been suggested that, if we want this venue next year, we reserve it now. Members have suggested this year’s conference was too early. This was the only time we had. Later in April is better (after the Legislature wraps up but before finals start at the University, keeping Easter in mind). The University might be a possibility if we want to change venues. It would be relatively easy. There would be a charge, but it wouldn’t be expensive. If a student club signs on as a co-sponsor, the facilities fee will be waived.

Contest Discussion

Should there be different categories for bloggers? Big blogs and small blogs? Currently there are no special categories for bloggers.
Should we assign two members to research what other press clubs are doing and come up with a model rather than reinventing the wheel?
Add a body of work category — five best articles? In addition to (or instead of) awards for specific articles?
Adding new categories means adding judges and increasing workload for board members.

Member Poll

Maybe we should establish a subcommittee to find out what members of the press want from the Alaska Press Club.
Could be done as a “webinar,” too.
What about the possibility of doing an online conference?
We seem to be more serious lately; we used to have fun.

Election of New Officers

Nominations for the 2009-2011 term:

Shannyn Moore
Tom Hewitt
Suzanna Caldwell
Will Morrow
Ben Stanton
Rindi White (current board member)

All candidates were unanimously elected to the board.

Election of officers:

President: Kathleen McCoy
First Vice-President: Dimitra Lavrakas
Second Vice-President: Shannyn Moore
Third Vice-President: Ben Stanton
Fourth Vice-President: Will Morrow
Secretary: John Creed
Treasurer: Rindi White
Membership Director: Aliza Sherman Risdahl

Adjournment

— Maia Nolan

Liveblogging J-WeekPanel DiscussionRural Alaskans on the Move

2009-03-28T16:09:00.002-08:00

Ed Schoenfeld (Coast Alaska), Kyle Hopkins (ADN) and Lori Townsend (APRN) are tackling the issue of urban migration.

Hopkins started covering rural affairs over the past year, and he says ADN pulled the plug on a planned summer series on urban migration because they found the facts didn't necessarily match up to the perception. There's a stereotype, according to Schoenfeld, that there's a mass migration from the villages into Anchorage. In fact, the movement is from small villages into larger villages, from larger villages to regional centers, from region to region. The Wrangell newspaper has a regular shipment to Wasilla, where there are former Wrangellites working construction. It's not a simple, one-dimensional situation. In Southeast, former loggers and fishers from places like Kake are moving away. Some of them have gotten mining jobs in Southeast.

"This is not a story about environment versus economic development. Here's a guy from the village who's gotten a job ... and he's sending money back to the village," Schoenfeld says. Some jobs require workers to move to more remote places. Some rural communities are becoming bedroom communities.

Hopkins lived in Kake in the mid-1980s and had always wanted to go back and do a story — catching up with people he went to grade school with, seeing how the community had changed — but found that many of them had moved to other communities. At the same time, people were beginning to talk about rural migration, and ADN started looking at the issue. Non-profits said they were seeing increased need due to families moving into Anchorage from the villages, but when he'd try to get in touch with a family, it would generally turn out either that the family had moved for other reasons (medical care, for example) or had been on the move for years. It was frustrating at first; were they looking in the wrong places? But after a few weeks, it started to feel like forcing the story. There was no flash of people; it was a slow-building story, not breaking news. Tom Kizzia did a follow-up article in December looking at the numbers, and on closer examination, the numbers just weren't there.

"I find it really confusing," Hopkins says. "When you talk to people, anecdotally, you hear it all the time." The Anchorage School District had 500 new Native students last fall, but the way they tally racial background has changed, so compared to prior years' numbers, "they weren't apples and apples anymore."

Townsend agrees that it's difficult to track down specific stories of relocation to Anchorage; most often, what she's found are people who move into town for the winter and go back to the village in the summer. "A lot of what we see as far as people moving around, it is more village to village and smaller places to hubs rather than coming into Fairbanks or Anchorage." She recalls that, when she lived in the Lower 48, there used to be reports that young people were leaving reservations, but it seemed to be an ongoing pattern. One of the issues she'd like to see more work done around is what happens when villages empty out. What kind of an impact does that have? Alaska villages are very different from the small towns that sprung up along the railroad in the Old West. Those towns may have died, but they didn't have the thousands of years of history many Alaska villages have.

"We try to take little bites at it here and there." Recently she heard about a community where suddenly dozens of houses are for sale; that's a story. Alaska News Nightly is thinking of restarting a segment from "AK" called 300 Villages in which individual communities were profiled. She'd like to focus on issues in individual communities and the issues they're facing. It sounds easy enough to leave and get a job someplace else, but a lot happens in small towns that makes them hard to leave. You have to go there to report; people in small towns are suspicious of outsiders. Making cold calls to the tribal council or the village council is a hard way to get answers.

First Alaskans Institute did a survey about moving frequency and reasons, but it wasn't a scientific survey, although the numbers are interesting, Hopkins says.

Suggestion from the room: Perhaps the story isn't about leaving rural Alaska, but how those who stay are managing to stay. What are they giving up to pay for fuel? How are they heating their homes and feeding their families? The economic question is major, especially among rural Alaskans who have seasonal employment. There's a lot of talk about creating economies in villages, but there's no model that has successfully created economic stability in small communities off the road system.

Townsend says village pride has been increasing among young people; could it be there's a circular effect that's countering some of the outmigration? She's interviewed many Natives who were punished for speaking their language, especially in boarding schools, but now people have a better understanding of what it means to be ripped away from one's culture. In Kotzebue, most of the students at the UAF extension campus are not traditional-age college students, which suggests that traditional students are leaving town to go to school.

Infrastructure in the villages — is it worth $40 million to run power to remote communities? These regions are wide-open to every con man and dreamer who comes through, Schoenfeld says, and sometimes it's hard to tell the difference. There are a lot of energy technologies, but how many of them are viable in these regions? One of our jobs as journalists is to look into these ideas when they are proposed and see if they are legitimate and practical. There is a rush to economic development, but it also has to be prudent. If one village renovates their cannery and makes it a tourist destination, that may be successful, but there can only be so many renovated canneries (or water bottling plants, etc.).

Townsend says that when she asks village councils if they're losing people, they're frequently reluctant to answer; they may not want to ask for help, or they may be afraid of losing funding.

From the room: I know of a lot of schools that open with ten students and end the year with five. How do I tell that story without jeopardizing the school's funding? Townsend says she has also heard of students registering in multiple districts to help schools stay open. Tenakee is currently using Craigslist to attract new families so they don't lose their school funding. Some schools have kept on teachers they didn't like because the teachers' children kept enrollment numbers high enough to protect state funding.

Cooperation will be important in trying to tell this story; one anecdote from one region doesn't establish a trend, but if reporters can show that it's happening in numerous communities in several reasons, then it's a story.

Sexual assault may play a role in urban migration for young women. Barrow recently had a case that was notable in that a rape actually went to trial and garnered a conviction, which is extremely rare. It's hard to get primary sources on the record for this kind of story, but social service providers often talk about it off the record.

There's also a disparity in employment opportunities. A whole day at AFN last year was dedicated to exploring marketplace opportunities. It's easy to do a story on a startup business bringing jobs to a small community; it's important to remember to follow up and see what happens. There's a tendency to over-report the optimistic stories and not check back. You don't want to only tell the rosy and forget the reality; at the same time, you don't want to overlook the good things that are happening. "As a consumer of news, you're just kind of hungry for more context," Hopkins says. "I'd like to get more on that story." Why do people stay in rural Alaska when times are hard? You have to tell that part of the story, too.

There's another census coming up next year, Schoenfeld says, which means the redistricting questions will come up again: Which regions are overrepresented? Which are underrepresented? Southeast will probably lose a House district, and it may lose a Senate district. Anchorage, Mat-Su and the Railbelt will absorb those seats. Redistricting is really a rural issue. In the past, the Bush has had political power, but if it loses power in the Legislature, it will lose out on resources.

Personal stories can illustrate a lot of these issues. It's difficult to get those stories, Schoenfeld says, but it's important to remember that we need to talk about the personal impacts of all of these issues. Be thoughtful. Think about how you're going to approach people and what you might have to say. If you have the opportunity, as an urban reporter, to go to a rural place, that's an opportunity to look for those people. Even if we don't have an immediate trend, there is a long-term trend of changing people's health, diet, activity level, lifestyle and culture, and you can tell those stories well if you personalize them. It takes an investment of time, especially if you go into smaller communities. People in urban centers are more used to things moving quickly; in rural areas, it can take longer to get people to trust and talk to you. You have to sit down with people and let them talk until they're done talking, Townsend says, which is increasingly difficult. There's a lot of value in establishing relationships with contacts in rural areas — even just a few minutes on the phone each week. Hopkins says that was part of why he wanted to launch the rural blog at ADN: It forces him to reach out into rural communities on a regular basis, and as a result, he's developing contacts in those areas, so when news breaks there, he knows who he can talk to.

— Maia Nolan

Liveblogging J-WeekPanel DiscussionOpen & Transparent Government: Fact or Fiction?

2009-03-28T13:08:00.011-08:00

Gregg Erickson, Alaska Budget Report
You have to look at the executive branch and the legislative branch separately. Executive branch has gotten “worse and worse and worse” since he started out. Each administration has learned from the previous administration how to keep things secret. “Certainly, the Palin administration is the worst we’ve ever seen.” He’s said the same about the Murkowski and Knowles administrations. On the other hand, the legislative branch has become much more open and transparent. They still do go behind closed doors, but it happens less frequently. “By and large, the direction of change in the Legislature has been better.” Maybe they have less to hide, or maybe they are less concerned about public criticism. Electronic bill tracking has made things easier to follow; “people are on the record a lot, lot more than they used to be.” You don’t have to be a journalist to ferret things out. Our public records laws are not ideal; Rep. Mike Doogan has sponsored legislation this session that may improve them.

John McKay, attorney
The Palin candidacy shed some light on our public records laws. The most significant change in terms of public records access in the last 10 years has been the change in the public interest attorney rule. We are the only state in the union that penalizes citizens for seeking records, unless it turns out that you’re right. “It’s a tremendous disincentive.” Deliberative process privilege is asserted more and more; for example, it was asserted in regard to the Todd Palin memos during the election. A few years ago, there was a woman appointed to a state commission, and another commissioner happened to have a job as the head of the Republican party. He was using state time to do party business, and the woman became upset because she wasn’t able to blow the whistle on the other commissioner because it was the subject of an ethics investigation. The woman felt muzzled. She was being told that because it was being pursued as an ethics violation, she couldn’t speak publicly about it, but she did finally talk to some reporters. Eventually the ADN filed a lawsuit requesting the public records. The woman, of course, was Commissioner Sarah Palin. Palin talked a lot about openness and transparency during her campaign. We need to appeal to people’s better natures and attempt to enlist them as allies; remind them that they once espoused the idea of open and transparent government.

Jason Moore, KTUU
Moore has been covering Governor Palin since she was mayor of Wasilla, and what he’s seen is the change in Palin over the last six months. He thinks there was a genuine sense during her first two years in office that she was more open, although he attributes that in some ways to the “love affair” the media had with her at first; she was a “breath of fresh air” after Murkowski. He saw that change dramatically once she became a national candidate. She came back and it’s been drastically different; she now has a press office that is as hostile as he’s ever seen. E-mails are “over-the-top” with complaints about how the administration is covered. Before the Republican National Convention, reporters could knock on Palin’s door and talk to her; now it’s “nearly impossible” to get a straight answer.

Gregg Erickson
When Palin came into office, she told ABR she couldn’t understand why Alaska Budget Report was so “crosswise” with the government over public records; she seemed to want to be more open. Two weeks later, ABR submitted a request for transition reports from the Murkowski administration that they knew had been shared outside the executive branch, which should have meant deliberative process did not reply. The request was denied. They were later told they could see the reports, but not make copies or take notes because they would “confuse the public” about what the administration had in mind. The document on top was a memo from the attorney general’s office that indicated that the documents had been redacted as fully as possible. Ultimately, ABR managed to get the documents released. The problem, it turned out, was that perhaps the Department of Law had been “a little too candid” about some of the failures of the Murkowski administration. If you go to court to try to make public records public and you lose, you are on the hook to reimburse the Department of Law. It has “a tremendous chilling effect” on public records requests. You can’t convince a publisher to be on the hook for tens of thousands of dollars.

John McKay
What records become state property? Ruedrich blurred the line between personal and public. Recently an Attorney General opinion ruled that personal electronic devices (such as BlackBerries) aren’t necessarily personal if they’re being used to do state business. That doesn’t necessarily mean the state will give e-mails up easily. Bill Dedman of MSNBC wrote an article about the State of Alaska’s attempt to charge him $15 million each for three different requests for state e-mails.

John McKay
Asked about the status of requests for Gov. Palin’s e-mails, McKay said he doesn’t know of any pending litigation. Andree McLeod, who is not a journalist, has filed some requests, but will she take the financial risk of pursuing them? He’s not sure. Just because Todd Palin was copied on an e-mail does not necessarily mean that deliberative process privilege is not legitimate. Deliberative process is not the end of the road; if the citizen can prove the interest of the people outweighs the interest of the government, the privilege can be revoked. Remember that Gov. Palin ran as a reformer, and that’s how she views herself. Hold her to that.

— Maia Nolan

Liveblogging J-Week:Lunch with Anne Kilkenny

2009-03-28T12:32:00.007-08:00

Anne Kilkenny opens her remarks by reading an e-mail she received from a stranger last fall:

“Much has been said about the bravery of our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. Too little has been said about those who have fought in their own ways to hold the line against a shadow from within.”

That shadow is the threat to free speech. Americans can disagree, and agree to disagree, while respecting one another’s rights to free speech, Kilkenny says. “Without you — without a free press, there is no healthy democracy. There can be no healthy democracy.”

Kilkenny jokes that she was not selected for this honor because of the “great journalistic quality” of her e-mail. “You can tell (State Rep. Mike) Doogan, I swear, I wrote that before his comments.” She adds that she didn’t “go hide under a rock” when her e-mail went viral; she realized she had a responsibility to stand behind what she’d said. Kilkenny was present at a city council meeting in which she observed then-mayor Sarah Palin ask about the process of removing books from the local library.

“My selection should not be construed as an endorsement of my opinions, or my politics, or my candidacy for pope,” Kilkenny says. Balanced reporting, she adds, depends on reporters having access to minority and dissenting opinions. It’s fitting that the Press Club chose to represent someone who expressed an unpopular opinion; free speech is not about just telling those in power what they want to hear.

“For two months, I set aside my personal life ... because I did what my conscience directed me to do,” Kilkenny says. “In short, I was selected for doing what you do every day: Telling a story as thoroughly as possible.”

“What can I tell you about the cost of being the messenger that you don’t already know?”

Kilkenny received 14,436 e-mails, up to 3,000 per day, 200 per hour. She replied to questions from about 5,500 e-mails. Most days she worked 18 to 21 hours, replying to e-mails and giving dozens of interviews. She was on the BBC live and did more than 28 interviews with foreign media. On the worst night, she got four phone calls between 2 a.m. and 6 a.m., and she learned to tell callers in her sleep how to find her e-mail on the ADN website. When people contacted her with new information, she did her best to help them connect with media. She provided “innumerable” primary sources to reporters. There was a steady stream of reporters through the house.

“At one point, our mudroom looked like the lost-and-found at Heathrow Airport.”

Kilkenny tears up as she talks about the support her husband and son provided. She is proud that her son volunteered for a campaign and wore his candidate’s button to Wasilla High School, and experienced only a little backlash.

“Some people had me canonized and on the bullet train to heaven. Others, about six percent, had me demonized and already on the way to the hot place.” If she only had a buck for every person who thought her use of “irenic” had been a misspelling of “ironic,” Kilkenny said, she’d be in Hawaii. She deeply regrets having used the word “hate”; that kind of word should be avoided like the plague, she says.

“There’s kooks out there, but far fewer than I feared.”

She found two “distressing themes” in the e-mails she received: First, prejudice, including blind partisanship, is alive and well. She was alarmed at the number of people who used the information in her e-mail to reinforce personal prejudices against one candidate or another. Second, she was appalled by the number of people who believe that the First Amendment should be used only to protect speech with which they agree, particularly when it comes to social and religious issues.

Here’s how to deal with people who are in the middle of a media frenzy:

E-mail is not the best way to contact them. They don’t have time to read it.
Use the phone. People are in the phone book. She’s in the phone book.
Call repeatedly, but be patient and don’t get nasty.
If you do e-mail, put your name and publication in the subject line in caps. (“I got about 10,000 that said ‘your e-mail.’”)
Clearly define your lead topic and communicate with your interviewee early on.
Never terminate an interview without leaving contact information.
Leave a business card with the date and time of the interview written on the back.
Let the interviewee know where you’re staying in case you leave your custom European sunglasses on her buffet.

Develop and support citizen journalists:

Give us validation and credentials. (The ADN was helpful by confirming that she was a person.)
Fact-check us. Work together.
If you can’t prove something, simply say so. Don’t use the label “partially true” just because you can’t prove it. That implies it’s partially false.
Don’t badmouth the public or spread fear of the public. Don’t call attention to the negative effects of media attention. (The negative e-mails were only a tiny percentage.) Why would anyone ever speak up if they thought it would ruin their life forever?
Respect your sources. (“I don’t need to go into why.”)

“Maybe I’ll write a book someday. Why not?”

The board could have chosen anybody “but they picked me, a nobody,” to represent everybody.

She closes her remarks by reading an e-mail she received from a survivor of the Auschwitz and Dachau concentration camps:

Dear Anne,
Too bad there were no people like you in pre-Nazi Germany!

— Maia Nolan

Liveblogging J-WeekNew MediaCommunity Funded Journalism

2009-03-28T11:07:00.017-08:00

We’re getting ready to hear from David Cohn, founder of Spot.Us, about community-funded journalism.

Cohn, fortunately, was able to get in late last night despite Redoubt’s continued activity. He calls himself a “recovering tech reporter.” He used to write for Wired, then worked as a freelancer while getting his Master’s in journalism from Columbia. After that, he worked as a new media consultant (although he hates the word “consultant”).

New media is a broad term, and Cohn is beginning by asking the room what we’d like to know about new media — or what we think it is. In addition to gateway media, there’s social media, too, and then database journalism (sites like EveryBlock). He’s sharing an example — watching the growth of Wal-Mart at Flowing Data.

Cohn doesn’t know what the evolution of journalism will look like, but he is confident that there will continue to be a need for journalists. There’s no lack of desire for news — news outlets have more readers than ever — it’s just a question of how the marketplace will emerge. It will look drastically different, and he doesn’t know that it will be sustained by news organizations the way it is now, but it will be an industry, and it will make money.

“Journalism is a process, not a product. Newspapers are a product ... and there is journalism in it. But journalism is a process.” You used to need an institution — like a newspaper — to cover the overhead for the delivery of journalism, but that’s no longer the case. “Journalism itself is alive and well.” But the organizations no longer have the authority to say who is and isn’t going to do journalism. More organizations that have traditionally not been news organizations are now doing reporting; for example, the ACLU was one of the first groups to break news about Guantanamo Bay. It’s an advocacy group, of course, but it did do reporting, and we’re going to see more of that. Journalists will find work, but it won’t necessarily be for a newspaper; it will be for other entities.

“Let’s talk about WikiMedia.” Buzzword: Crowdsourcing. Crowdsourcing is great for some things and not for others; for example, you don’t want your brain surgeon or your airplane pilot to be crowdsourced. Think journalist as community organizer. One example is the Off The Bus project at Huffington Post, which provided ground-level coverage of the 2008 presidential campaign. It’s participatory journalism.

What about online comments — how can they be elevated to be productive and not just divisive? There are different levels of engagement, and commenting is a low threshold, so it’s more likely to incite snarkiness. Ever heard of the 1-9-90 Rule? If you are looking for participation and you have 100 readers, one will participate actively. Eight or nine will comment now and then, and the other 90 won’t be engaged. What are some ways other than commenting that will engage that one reader (and require a level of involvement that will “weed out the jerks”)? You have to engage; it will require time and effort. The more time you put into it, the more you’ll get out of it. Cohn tends to have a “yes” attitude, so he’s not advocating for shutting off reader comments, but, as with fishing, you have to throw some back before you land a keeper.

It’s important to be on Twitter, but not because it’s cool. Remember Friendster? It was replaced by MySpace, which was familiar and usable because you already knew Friendster. Then came Facebook — same thing. Twitter is different. Maybe it will go the way of Friendster, but your time on Twitter isn’t wasted, because what Twitter represents is not going to go away. If something comes along to replace Twitter, you’ll know how to use it. He’s also introducing the room to FriendFeed. TweetUps and Meetups capitalize on social media by bringing it into the real world. It’s about making yourself available online. These are tools, not chores. If you think of Twitter as a chore, don’t use it.

One thing you can do as a journalist is take data — like police reports — and make it available in a user-friendly format so citizens can collect information. When you want to do something on the web, find the path of least resistance and stay agile. Don’t spend six months building something that might fail. Try something that will take you a week to build. Example: SeeClickFix, where you can create a map to track non-emergency issues like potholes in your area. Again, don’t be on it just because it’s hip and new; use it as a tool if you can, or don’t.

The first thing to do is to not get sidetracked by the tools. Decide what you want to do, and then find the right tool. ReadWriteWeb is a good site that covers tools like these. Potholes are a great example of an issue that can be covered using participatory journalism; you make the map available, then track reports from citizens.

Journalists sometimes get sidetracked by technology and the fear that we have to build everything from scratch. We don’t. The tools exist already; we just have to use them.

There’s a difference between being on the web and being of the web. The New York Times asks online readers to register, and one of the questions asked is country of residence. The number two response to that question — after United States — is Afghanistan. Why? Because that’s the first country in the drop-down list. Those readers aren’t in Afghanistan; they just don’t want to register. The Times is on the web, but it’s not of the web.

Some news organizations are making use of Second Life, where there is a real economy. Cohn has a friend who reports for Reuters in Second Life, and he covers Second Life events like real news. Second Life may have some possibility for expansion, but Cohn isn’t sure. Like Friendster, Second Life may go away, but what it represents will stay.

— Maia Nolan

Liveblogging J-WeekPhotojournalismVideo vs. Still Photographs: A Walk in Two Worlds

2009-03-28T09:11:00.015-08:00

AP photographer Rick Bowmer is going to talk about the transition from still photography to video, a medium in which he’s recently started working. So far the room is not packed, but it’s still early... if you’re just waking up, come on down to the Senior Center. We have coffee!

Bowmer says the AP was late in coming to online slide shows, but once they started doing them, there was a big push for them. Two and a half years ago, the AP selected Bowmer and three other photographers (out of 116) to shoot HD video. He “heard the word experiment quite a bit” — the AP wanted to see what was possible. There was a learning curve — “It’s like still photography on steroids” — but he’s gotten a new appreciation for the medium. He used to be annoyed by news videographers — “They were always in the way” — but now he has a better understanding of what they do. He had to learn Final Cut Pro, and he’d come home at 7 p.m. and work until 3 a.m., playing with video. “After a while, it started making sense.” After about six months, he could pick up the video camera and it felt as familiar as the still camera. He can program it with his eyes closed. Now it’s fun, but for the first six to eight months, it wasn’t. “It’s a labor of love.”

Colleagues have accused him of selling his soul, but Bowmer tries to explain to them that it’s a rewarding medium. Capturing audio was very powerful for him — adding sound to images adds a deepening element to the story. Each of the four photographers who participated in the pilot program approached it differently. Bowmer abandoned stills at first and focused on video, then realized that perhaps he had “stepped over onto the dark side.” After about a year, he started working with both together, which he thinks is a lot more powerful.

“When I go on the road,” he says, holding up his still and video cameras, “these are my weapons. These are my tools.”

With the economy the way it is, it might not seem like the right time to expand into a new medium, but at the same time, video offers more market opportunities.

He’s now sharing one of his first videos — it’s a roller derby story. He opens with a long slow-motion shot of a racer picking herself up off the track as the other skaters move by in the background. He tries to use as many stills as possible, and he likes to use slow or fast motion — “It gives you the power to really tell a story. Using video to go from point A to point Z, you tell the entire story.” Surprisingly, he doesn’t really watch too many movies (although he did take one film class in college).

“It’s just a fun way to tell a story.
I guess I drank the Kool-Aid.”

In another video, about extreme kayaking, he sets a voice-over of a kayaker talking about feeling like he’s moving in slow motion over a slow-motion shot of the same kayaker descending a Class Five rapid. He also uses still shots with the voice-over, which he says he thinks can have a bigger impact than just video. For the video stories, there isn’t a lot of canned voice-over; he tries to use more natural sound to tell the story.

In a recent story about an Oregon family that recently found itself homeless, Bowmer uses long still shots taken from video — close-ups of the family members’ faces in particular. Don’t feel handicapped by video, he says; it’s easy to frame-grab for stills.

Bowmer thinks video is a “pretty powerful medium,” and as an example, he shows two episodes from an AP video series called “Lucky Charms,” about American soldiers serving in the Middle East, and their families back home. Again, he uses organic audio over video and stills, and the effect has a deep emotional impact.

He shows a photo of a man, covered in blood, being carried away from an explosion in the West Bank. It has impact, he says, but without the audio, the story isn’t as complete. There are elements you need, he says, and still photography is a powerful medium, but it is missing something that video can provide.

Take a look at some of Rick Bowmer’s AP videos.

— Maia Nolan

Tom Snapp's family attends press club conference

2009-03-28T01:54:00.003-08:00

Tom Snapp's sister, Colleen Redman, brought her son, Scott, by the Senior Center this afternoon to meet some people. He has worked for Conoco Phillips in Anchorage for 25 years as a reservoir engineer. He bears a striking resemblance to his well-known uncle, Tom Snapp. Scott Redman grew up in Fairbanks, a graduate of Lathrop High School, where he was co-captain of the varsity football team.

The Press club's 1st Amendment award is names after Tom Snapp and Howard Rock, founders of the Tundra Times newspaper in 1962. The paper was founded largely to oppose Project Chariot, a bizarre plan by Edward Teller and the Atomic Energy Commission to use nuclear explosives to create a deep water port at Cape Thompson in Norhwest Arcic Alaska in the early 1960s. Tundra Times established a dissenting voice within an Alaska press corps that had been in support of Project Chariot. Tundra Times also led the fight for the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act.

AUDIO PODCAST: Gasline 101

2009-03-28T01:46:00.000-08:00

Friday, 3:45-5 p.m.

Program: The fundamental mechanics and politics of building a gasline. Former House Majority leader Ralph Samuels learned on the job and will share some basics about the gas industry that all Alaskan reporters should know.

Listen to the session here:

AUDIO PODCAST: Beyond meetings, making goverment coverage come alive

2009-03-28T01:44:00.001-08:00

Friday, 3:45-5 p.m.

Program: CoastAlaska News Director Ed Schoenfeld, UC Berkeley Journalism Professor Bill Drummond and Atwood Fellow Patrick Yack will offer pointers on how to improve local government coverage. Topics: different approaches to the same story, finding personal impacts, covering issues instead of meetings, and involving citizen journalists.

Listen to the discussion here:

AUDIO PODCAST: Panel - Photojournalism, Going to Extremes

2009-03-28T01:36:00.001-08:00

Friday, 12-2:30 p.m.

Program: Over lunch, find out how to take compelling photographs while shaking from hypothermia or with your camera frozen. What to carry in that bag. And how to mentally prepare for doing your best work in extreme conditions. Some of Alaska’s ﬁnest photographers: Chris Ho, KYUK-AM/TV. Scott Jensen, KTUU-TV, Jim Lavrakas, former Anchorage Daily News photographer. Clark Mishler, author of Anchorage, Life at the Edge of the Frontier. Rick Bowmer, Associated Press, Portland. MODERATOR: Dimitra Lavrakas.

Listen to the discussion here:

Shout out to Erik Hill, ADN photographer who demo'd Sound Slides

2009-03-27T19:09:00.005-08:00

We attempted to podcast this session, but sadly the audio card was full and we were unsuccessful. Thank you Erik for your time and good work.

AUDIO PODCAST: Lisa Margonelli - Mapping the maze of oil and gas

2009-03-27T19:03:00.003-08:00

Friday afternoon, 2:30-3:45 p.m. (teleconference, Lisa didn't make it out of SF due to Redoubt)

Program: The oil industry can seem like a labyrinth with minatours around every corner. But Lisa Margonelli, author of Oil on the Brain, has spent years following the network of intricate passages to demystify the oil supply chain. She’ll show you how you can help your readers, viewers and listeners understand how the industry affects our daily lives.

Listen to it here:

Thank the volcano gods, the keynote speaker made it out of Seattle, bound for Anchorage

2009-03-27T18:55:00.003-08:00

David Cohn hung on all day in the Seattle airport, waiting for that slip in the throng that would let him skip onto a flight to Anchorage. He said the Seattle airport was wired, so he was happily at work, and he'd wait for all the flights into Anchorage to see if he could get one. He only had to wait until 4:45 p.m. (like, all day.)

In honor of his success, we're offering this shrine to Mt. Redoubt in appreciation for letting one of our Outside presenters slip through.

AUDIO PODCAST: Robert Meyerowitz - The art of intimacy

2009-03-27T18:41:00.001-08:00

Friday morning, 10:30-11:45 a.m.

Program: A feature story done well is about intimacy. Maybe that’s why it’s one of the most powerful forms of journalism. UAF Snedden Professor Robert Meyerowitz takes you beyond “who, what, when, where and why” to tell gripping tales.

Listen here:

AUDIO PODCAST: Clark Mishler-Elements of Photography

2009-03-27T18:37:00.003-08:00

Friday morning, 9-11:45 p.m.

Program: How to take better pictures no matter what level you're at. Veteran Alaska photogrpaher Clark Mishler will show you 15 elements of shooting that even professionals sometimes miss.

Listen here:

AUDIO PODCAST: Panel - Are we ready for the next big one?

2009-03-27T18:28:00.003-08:00

Friday, 9-10:45 a.m.

Program: From quakes to volcanoes, to ice jam ﬂoods to ﬁres, Alaska is a state where the question is not if a disaster will happen, but when. Since 2001, every region in the state has experienced at least one disaster. Many have had several. Given the odds, you’d expect newsrooms to be prepared. But are they? PANELISTS: John Madden, Director of the State Division of Emergency Services. Lt. Gen. Craig Campbell, Commissioner of State Dept. of Military and Veteran Affairs. Edgar Blatchford, UAA Journalism Professor who was in Seward in 1964, where the earth opened up and waves washed away the waterfront. Janice Boylan, compiled: The Day Trees Bent to the Ground: Stories from the 64 Earthquake. Tay Thomas, 1964 Earthquake Survivor. Mike Ross, KTUU-TV Anchor who worked at WWL-TV in New Orleans, the only station that stayed on the air during Katrina. MODERATOR: Michael Carey, host of Anchorage Edition.

Listen to the session here:

Liveblogging J-WeekAlaskan Issues: Gasline 101

2009-03-27T15:55:00.013-08:00

Former House Majority leader Ralph Samuels is here to explain the gasline in terms we can all finally understand. Samuels is upfront about the fact that he voted against the Alaska Gasline Inducement Act, but he promises to try to give us a balanced look at gasline issues. He’s starting with a primer on state finance.

Currently, oil revenue provides 90% of the state’s budget. North Slope oil production is on the decline and will continue to decline, but the decline has been hidden by the high price of oil. The state’s budget situation will become critical well before 2016. Alaska needs to move rapidly and decisively toward replacing its oil-based economy with a more diversified economy based on natural gas. Gas is the new Prudhoe Bay. “Eventually, the production decline gets us. That’s the frank reality that nobody wants to talk about.”

TAPS vs. Gas Pipeline

TAPS was built in the 1970s.
At its peak, it transported two million barrels per day.
Currently, it’s transporting fewer than 800,000 barrels per day.

Alaska rode the crest of oil money until the 1980s, when the state crashed in a major way.

Oil pipelines are common carriers, which means they are required by law to provide service to all legitimate applicants.
Gas pipelines are contract carriers, which means the transporter provides service on a contractual basis.

Who should own the pipeline? If anyone could answer that question without getting into rhetoric and politics, we wouldn’t have a problem. (The shipper must be a separate legal entity from the entity that owns the gas — so Denali, for example, must be completely separate from BPXA and Exxon.)

Third-party ownership - Perception
Third-party will build cost overruns into tariff.
Why pay a middleman to ship the State’s gas?
High tariffs make more profits and companies will strive to meet this objective.

Producer-owned pipeline - Perception

Producers will tie up explorers.
Explorers will be at a disadvantage by being forced to pay their competitors for transporting gas.

If you’re a small company, will you want to explore in Alaska if you know you’ll have to “kiss Exxon’s ring” to get your gas out?

Tariff: The cost of shipping gas to market, usually given in millions of British Thermal Units (as opposed to millions of cubic feet). Tariffs only incorporate the cost of the pipeline, including return on equity, and treatment — not the cost of exploration and development. Right now, 8 billion cubic feet of gas is reinjected into the reservoir to pressurize the reserves so more crude oil can be recovered. Some say we should have built the gas pipeline in the 1970s, but the truth is that, right now, the gas is more useful in the ground, helping pressurize the reserves for recovery of higher-priced crude. We have a “monstrous amount of natural gas” in our reserves.

Ownership of pipe vs. ownership of gas: What are the risks, and who takes them? You’ll never build a pipeline with no gas in it. You get contracts in place, take them to Wall Street, and then you get the money to build. Currently, the risk is with TransCanada. In AGIA, the State of Alaska assumed half that risk by fronting $500 million.

Compression: Expansion by compression offers relatively inexpensive addition utilizing compressors. It increases throughput. Generally speaking, compression drives the tariff down, depending on how much additional gas is added. If Conoco, Exxon and BPXA all agree to ship gas at a tariff of $5, and then another producer gets on board and more compression stations are added, the tariff is decreased for each producer.

Looping: Increasing capacity of a transmission system by inserting an additional section of pipeline. This is less expensive if included in the original design. Generally speaking, looping drives the tariff up.

Two types of tariffs for expansion:

Rolled-in tariffs: Costs are borne by all shippers, both new and old. Usually in the U.S., tariffs are only rolled in when the tariff is lowered for existing shippers.
Incremental tariffs: Additional costs are borne by the entity that caused the expansion.
FERC must approve tariff changes.

AGIA requires rolled-in tariffs.

FERC: Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. “FERC is the king. FERC will make the decisions that govern what the tariff is.” President Obama is in favor of this project. Of course, so were President Bush and President Clinton. FERC does NOT regulate retail electric/natural gas sales to consumers, nor do they have oil pipeline or local distribution oversight.

Risks:

Completion risk
Cost overrun risk
Firm transportation risk
Market price risk
Political, tax and regulatory risk

Who assumes the risk?

Midstream (Pipeline builder) - Risk from now until open season.
Upstream (Shipper) - Risk beginning in open season

Open Season: The process by which a pipeline company invites prospective shippers to bid for transportation capacity and, after having reviewed the bids, awards to and allocates capacity among prospective shippers. The open season process is regulated by FERC.

There will not be two pipelines ever built. We may not get one pipeline; we certainly won’t get two competing pipelines.

Alaska Natural Gas Pipeline Act (ANGPA):

Expedited the approval process
Prohibited an over-the-top route
FERC required to adopt regulations for open season
Environmental reviews
FERC given expansion rights for the first time
Drue Pearce, federal coordinator, 2006
Study of alternatlive means of construction
Loan guarantees
Judicial review
Special in-state provisions

“Some of this is dry stuff.”

Capacity allocation: Put yourself in the shoes of Conoco Phillips. They own a third of the gas in Prudhoe Bay. Say they bid it in Chicago — it’s sold in Chicago. Then the State says, “No, we want to take gas from Point Thomson.” Conoco only owns five percent of Point Thomson. Now they have a sale but no product. How am I going to sign a 20-year deal with Chicago Light and Power when I don’t know where my gas is going to come from?

Financing:

Department of Energy loan guarantees
Firm transportation (FT) commitments
Debt equity ratio

Samuels says that hopefully Sens. Begich and Murkowski will be able to ensure more federal assistance; “read the politics however you like.”

The DOE loan guarantees were authorized to the sum of $18 billion, indexed for inflation. They are to be administered by the Secretary of Energy. They are not to exceed 80% of the total capital costs of the project — including interest during construction. Terms of any loan are not to exceed 30 years.

Firm Transportation commitments (FTs) are binding commitments made by a shipper to a pipeline to ship gas (or pay even if no gas is shipped) at a specified volume and cost, for a set period of time. The FTs are the bottom line. They are what gets the money to build the pipeline. It’s a piece of jargon you need to know.

Debt-equity ratio: What formula will be sought for financing? FERC mandates the rate of return on equity.

You want to look down the road 20 years, but you also need to look at tomorrow. You’re planning on 30 to 40 years of cash flow. Other issues: Completion risks, international issues with Canada, First Nations claims (don’t forget that TAPS was the impetus to settle Alaska Native land claims), etc. Many of these issues are common to Denali and AGIA. Natural gas pipeline stakeholders include the people, the governor, the legsilature, the builders, current and future shippers and explorers, and the governments of the United States and Canada. “You have to deal with all of them; you’re not going to steamroll any of them.” You’re going to have to sit down and address some of this risk mitigation.

For those of you who are in broadcast media, Samuels says, he feels feel sorry for you. To cover this in a three-minute segment at the top of the news is nearly impossible; it’s dense stuff. He thinks that many of his former colleagues still don’t fully get it.

— Maia Nolan

Liveblogging J-WeekAlaskan Issues:Mapping the Maze of Oil and Gas

2009-03-27T14:39:00.009-08:00

Lisa Margonelli was, unfortunately, a travel victim of the Redoubt eruption, but organizers are working on getting her on the phone. Margonelli is the author of Oil on the Brain, and if we can reach her, she’ll be helping us understand how the industry affects our daily lives.

***

Rhonda McBride has managed to connect us to Margonelli, who says she’s sorry she’ll be missing former House Majority leader Ralph Samuels’ talk, Gasline 101, which follows this session.

Margonelli is giving some background on her oil expertise. In 2001 she got an assignment from now-defunct Jane magazine to go to Saddam Hussein’s birthday party. It was her first immersion in “a very weird oil culture.” Everyone in Iraq, down to the coffee shop waitress in her hotel, defined their lives in terms of oil.

The same month, Margonelli was sent to Arctic Village, north of Fairbanks, to follow a Native filmmaker, but by the time she got there, the story was the fight to keep ANWR closed to development. Gail Norton flew in while she was there, and the people of Arctic Village were fighting to keep the Refuge closed. As Margonelli flew out of Arctic Village, she could see the Trans-Alaska Pipeline, and it occurred to her that it was strange for her to use so much oil without understanding the issues around it. She drove to Barrow, following the pipeline, and decided she wanted to learn more. That’s how Oil on the Brain was born.

One thing she learned in Iraq is that there are a lot of unlikely alliances around oil that aren’t really reported on — for example, people from countries that are supposedly at war are colluding on oil smuggling operations.

To write the book, Margonelli spent time along the supply chain at all levels, getting to know the people who make the industry run, and looking at how their lives were affected by greater forces in the oil economy.

Gas Stations
Consumers see two things at a gas station: Convenience, then price. A three-cent price difference will get people to make a four-point turn to the other side of the road. A six-cent price difference will get them to drive across town. Gas stations make only a few cents per gallon in profit. Gas stations face a variety of other bizarre challenges, including customers driving off with hoses still in their cars, robbery, and accidents.

Transportation
Part of what drives retail prices is boutique air quality requirements; different places require different fuels. Even truck drivers face customer hostility about prices; one truck driver she spoke to said his own wife had called him to complain about the amount she was paying for gas. One of the things consumers don’t think about is who takes the risks. They’re focused on price and convenience. Transporting petroleum is a risky business, as anyone who lived through the Exxon Valdez oil spill knows.

Margonelli visited an oil barge in New York Harbor. The barge was attended by three different tugboats. The tug pilots would call ahead to bridges and tell workers to stop welding when the barges passed through. A single spark on the deck of a ship carrying four million gallons of gasoline could be a disaster. A lot of petroleum infrastructure is very old — built as long ago as the 1920s.

Politics of energy consumers

Mainly care about convenience.
Price is more than just dollars; it’s well-being.
Feel we have no control, are “addicts.”
Believe in conspiracies... of all sorts.
High oil prices make us want to punish oil companies AND “drill baby drill.”
Fantasies of “energy independence.”

Some of the conspiracies we believe in: Producer price fixing; environmentalists blocking development; OPEC manipulation; a variety of Middle East conspiracies. Consumers and voters want to see oil companies punished and publicly reprimanded (congressional hearings, windfall taxes), but they also want to drill in protected areas. Fantasies include running cars on water or solar power, but “energy independence” isn’t realistic.

Who has the oil now?
North America doesn’t have much; 67% of reserves are in the Middle East. We are, however, historically the largest consumers of oil.

Venezuela is the U.S.’s oldest oil exporter. Setting them up to export oil was conceived as a way to provide Venezuela with some independence and self-sufficiency. Now Venezuela is associated with Hugo Chavez. Venezuela’s politics are determined by oil, and there is notaxation. One Venezuelan politician told Margonelli that, while we see corruption in moral terms, he sees it as a method of distribution. Chavez will give oil money away as schools, medical care, food. It costs Venezuela a lot of money to keep oil flowing; they’re constantly re-drilling wells, and there’s a constant struggle between those who want to distribute oil money to the poor and those who want to use it to continue drilling oil.

When you live in an oil-producing country, expect the following from your government:

Cheap gas.
God gave us wealth, so we should be powerful.
Our destiny is controlled by someone else.
The U.S. is trying to control us.
Government as “cow” leading to corruption, poverty, lack of democracy, and violence.
No taxes.

Where does Alaska fit?

Extreme consumers and extreme producers.
State bears large risks.
Multiple political/environmental realities in state, PLUS outside advocacy groups. Squabbles and blame.
Extraordinarily complex economic, political, and technical issues vetted at local levels.

As she was touring and looking at oil producers, she started to question things. The Republic of Chad is the world’s newest oil producer. The World Bank helped Exxon make it happen. Chad has become “a nightmare.” The country is so poor that there are no gas stations; you buy smuggled Nigerian gas out of whiskey bottles on the side of the road. Exxon followed its regulations, but it didn’t have the same level of accountability it would in the U.S. Ultimately, everywhere oil comes from is someone’s backyard. In Chad, there was no accountability. In the U.S., there is at least some accountability, even in moderately stable countries like Kazakhstan.

How do we change?

73% of Americans want change.
But we don’t agree on why, or on what to do.
Nuclear, solar, wind, tar sands, more drilling, efficiency...
The “media” is seen as eroding morally and physically.

Examples of reporting that does a disservice: People replicate stories they’ve seen before; they say they blame the oil companies. But it’s a lot more complicated than that. Nixon, Ford, and Carter’s energy conservation policies have paid off, but all three lost their careers (in Nixon’s case, obviously, not for those reasons). If you go against the dominant narrative, you take a risk as a politician. Know what the myths are and report on them as myths, then move into the deeper causes. We have to get out of the “the oil companies are ripping us off” narrative; it goes nowhere and it doesn’t allow for change.

— Maia Nolan

Liveblogging J-Week: Rolling With the Punches

2009-03-27T14:26:00.002-08:00

Thanks to Mt. Redoubt’s continued activity, last-minute adjustments are being made to this weekend’s schedule. Fortunately, some presenters may be able to appear telephonically.

— Maia Nolan

Liveblogging J-WeekPhotojournalism Panel

2009-03-27T12:39:00.016-08:00

Jim Lavrakas, former ADN photographer:

Some tips for shooting in the cold:

Keep your batteries warm. When he buys a new parka, he gets extra pockets put in to store batteries next to his body.
Rotate warm batteries into your camera regularly.
Use pocket handwarmers to keep your spare batteries warm.
If your LCD screen freezes, you just have to stop chimping and trust your camera. If your shutter is firing, your meter is working, even if it doesn’t seem to be.

Some of his favorite photos are from the Iditarod; it was freezing and he slept on the trail with his camera in his sleeping bag. “At the finish line in Nome, the mushers are cold, the photographers are cold. I always wanted a really good snot-sicle photograph, but I never got it.” Be aware of snow conditions and avalanche possibilities. Cold can be your friend, though, if you use the light right; steam and light can create a holographic effect.

When working with a pilot, use a professional commercial pilot. They know the territory, they can handle the weather, and they can put you in the right spot for the perfect shot.

On wildlife photography: “Telephoto is the way to go when shooting big, scary animals.” Keep your distance.

Spot news is extreme, too. People can be unpredictable. Stay back. You need to sort out what your best place is going to be so you can be safe and let the police do their job. It helps to build relationships with police officers who will let you get into position to get your shot.

Click here to see a gallery of Lavrakas’s favorite shots, compiled for the ADN

Clark Mishler, Anchorage: Life at the Edge of the Frontier

Mishler is sharing photos from a trip he made to the North Slope, including shots of the Bering ice shelf, a village preschool/high school graduation, and the products of a polar bear hunt.

“When I’m in these situations, I’m just keeping my eyes open for whatever’s going on in the community,” he says. “I’m always looking for frames” — other objects to look through in order to see his actual subject.

A touchy connection is giving Mishler’s projected photos a bluish tint, but he’s not letting it bother him. “This is my world, actually; seeing things in blue is sort of the way I see.”

“Dressing warm is real obvious for this kind of thing. Don’t mess around. Buy the best possible clothes. It takes years.”

“Any effort that you as a photographer or journalist — any effort will be richly rewarded, because nobody else is doing it.”

Scott Jensen, KTUU-TV

Dealing with the cold is simple: Get a good down coat, a good shell, and good pants. He uses polypro glove liners and handwarmers in his pockets and finds he’s usually hot on the trail.

Video has a different challenge: There’s so much time to fill (up to three minutes) and so much editing to be done. Before GPS, he spent a lot of time on the trail just waiting. He’s always thinking about motion coming into the frame. He looks for where the action isn’t and then follows it into the frame, which means he has to remember to roll before the action gets there. He’ll take his wireless mic and set it up 200 yards up the trail so he can hear the dogs before they run into his shot. You can’t have your hands in your pockets waiting; you always have to be ready.

This year he sat on the trail, in a snowbank, for an hour, waiting for a team to come around the corner. As soon as he hears them coming, he has to maximize the amount of time the dogs are in front of him.

“There’s a lot of patience in video.”

He lost mic battery outside Shaktoolik this year — “I’ve never had nine-volts die so quickly.” He had to go without sound on those shots, which made it a lot tougher.

He didn’t do much editing on the trail this year, but he spent more time actually on the trail this year than he has before. Most of his Iditarod responsibility this year was shooting footage for the recap show. KTUU uses a portable satellite uplink and bases coverage out of Willow, McGrath, Unalakleet, and Nome. The crew will fly out to more remote locations to shoot stories and then back to one of the bases. Next year he’ll probably spend the race on a snow machine, which is his “dream” for Iditarod.

“Every year we’re weathered in somewhere, and this year it was McGrath.” As a result, they missed Lance Mackey’s Takotna-to-Angvik run, which was the race’s key moment. It was hard on the team to miss that.

Rick Bowmer, Associated Press, Portland:

Bowmer is sharing photos from Gaza and the West Bank. He worked with a bulletproof vest and a “brain bucket,” but not a gas mask; some photographers in the mideast carry onions with them. When tear gas is released, they bite the onions and hold them next to their eyes so they’ll tear up before the tear gas hits them.

He shot the Branch Davidians in Texas; he expected to be there a day or two but ended up spending 54 days in Texas. His last day there, after the compound burned, he was chased by helicopters and dogs and finally arrested for sneaking into the compound. He’s also dodged gunmen and been slapped with a machete.

“I’m now living in Portland, and it’s a good place to be. There’s no one shooting at me ... and everyone speaks English.”

In Utah, he was taken two miles down into a mine that had collapsed. It was dark, it was wet, and then he’s stuck underground — and a tremor hits. He looked to a miner, and the miner said, “Aw, that’s nothing. Just relax.” He found out later it was the first mine tour that had been given to the media.

He covered the ValuJet crash in the Everglades. He and another photographer took turns shooting out sides of a helicopter. One time he leaned too far out and the door blew open. Now he travels with his own harness.

Question from the crowd: Are you lucky in other stuff, too? Like picking football winners?

Answer: Well, I got in on the last plane yesterday.

— Maia Nolan

J-Week LivebloggingAlaskan Issues:Covering Native Corporations: It’s the People’s Business

2009-03-27T12:09:00.002-08:00

UAA professor, former Seward mayor, Columbia graduate and former state commissioner Edgar Blatchford discusses covering Native corporations. Here are his remarks, condensed and paraphrased:

I was very interested in Native issues. I testified to federal legislative committees on the importance of building the Trans-Alaska Pipeline and settling Native land claims. Make sure it’s “fair, just and equitable.” Native corporations have to be watched. I served as Gov. Hickel’s commissioner of regional and community affairs. I worked with regional and community organizations, so I had a great deal of influence over administration of regional grants. I went back to Seward when Knowles was elected and got involved in city politics. I then served as commissioner of commerce under Gov. Murkowski, and I was also on the board of a Native corporation, Chugach Alaska. There is this special benefits program that allows Native corporations to get government contracts and generate revenue to move to Native areas. I began to be caught between two different interest groups. When I voted the wrong way on the board of directors, the minority on the board took their complaints to the governor and I was asked to resign from the board. Then there was some bad press during the last days of my tenure with the state during which information was disclosed to the ADN.

The Basics
Why should you watch Native corporations? They are not tribal entities, per se. In the Lower 48, what you have are Indian reservations. The land is not owned by the tribe; it’s held in trust by the Department of the Interior. They have to ask permission to do anything. Native corporations are very, very different, and so you shouldn’t make comparisons between an Alaska Native corporation and Native entitites in the Lower 48. I’m not talking about the non-profits; I’m talking about for-profit corporations. What I’m really talking about are the over 200 village corporations and the 12 regional corporations: Ahtna, CIRI, Doyon, etc. Who owns these corporations? Shareholders. And you must always keep that in mind. There’s a big difference between a normal corporation and a Native corporation, and that is that, in order to own stock in a Native corporation, you had to be alive in December 1971. The first “after-born,” or “new Native,” was born at 12:01 a.m. on December 19, and she was not eligible to be enrolled. Native corporations are allowed to create a new class of stock in order to open up the rolls for those born after 1971. Doyon, ASRC and NANA have opened their rolls. You get a life estate; when you die, your shares go back to the corporation or they evaporate.

Stock Transfer
I was born before December 1971, so my shares of stock are not going to evaporate. What am I going to do with them? If I don’t like my kids or my corporation, what am I going to do? I’m going to leave my shares to Prince Harry, Prince William, and Bill Gates. Can I do that? Yes, I can. Original shares of stock in a Native corporation can be gifted. I can leave them to anybody. Native shares of stock are transferable upon death to anybody in the world.

Who Watches the Corporations?
Who watched Madoff? The SEC. There were some complaints, and examiners did not follow through on those complaints. Later you find out that the SEC didn’t do their due diligence duty in looking into the complaints that were filed against Madoff. Who watches Native corporations? Under the Settlement Act, it explicitly exempts SEC oversight and leaves it to the State of Alaska. Who watches the Native corporations? When I was commissioner of commerce, community and economic development, this is how I got into trouble. I was a member of the board of directors of a for-profit corporation, and I was a commissioner. When it was offered to me, they said, “We want you to stay involved in Native issues, but we don’t want you to have anything to do with the board. Delegate those responsibilities.” I did that, but I didn’t do it in writing soon enough. Why should you watch a Native corporation? Well, it’s the people’s business. Should you be sensitive to allegations that it’s discriminatory reporting? Should you back off? No. I think what you have to do is have pretty thick skin and barrel right through it. Somebody has the responsibility to watch them. The government has that responsibility. You should treat a Native corporation just like you treat any corporation. Someone has to watch them.

Corporate Democracy
What responsibility does a corporation have to its shareholders? An annual financial report and one meeting a year with shareholders. One report and one meeting a year. When you have an election to a board of a Native corporation, is there such a thing as corporate democracy? Corporate democracy was created for the first time when the Settlement Act was signed. All shareholders were equal. One hundred shares each. Now let’s look at the elections. You have a shareholder who doesn’t like what the corporation is doing. That shareholder is entitled to speak — for the amount of time determined by the people who run the corporation. If I want to run for the board and I have the signatures, does the corporation have to put my name on the ballot? No, they do not. They can put the names of only the people they want on the ballot. When people congratulate other people on election to a board, I say, “Get off it.” If it were a real election, we’d call it a rigged election. A corporation has a rigged election system. That’s how it is. It’s not just Native corporations; it’s across the board. What can a corporation do if they don’t like me? They can keep me off the ballot. You can go to them and ask why your name isn’t on the ballot. “You know why; you don’t behave. You don’t vote right.” Do I have any legal recourse? No. They can use attorneys, accountants, PR people, all their liquid assets, to elect the people they want on the board. Democracy doesn’t exist. This is the system. This is the free enterprise system.

Native Corporations are Big Business
It’s big business. How big is it in Alaska? If I were giving this presentation on public relations for Native corporations, this room would be packed. You guys are going up against a Goliath. Why should you watch a Native corporation? Because it’s the people’s business. There’s one thing on an annual report that has no recorded value because they don’t know what the value is: It’s about 70,000 square miles of land. It’s held at zero value on the balance sheets. There is value to it; we just don’t know how much. I think the only way you can determine the value is to go to the Exxon Valdez Trustees Council and see how much they spent for land purchases. 277,000 acres were sold for conservation, but I don’t remember any big stories about it. “They’re Native corporations, so let’s just back off.” How much of this is private land? All of it. It’s not Native land. It’s private land. It’s owned by a Native corporation. Not all of the shareholders are Native.

Shareholder Interests
When I die, you’ll have Prince William going to an annual shareholders meeting with Bill Gates. Prince William will argue for jobs and economic development for Englishmen. Bill Gates will want a laptop in every office, or something like that. Their interests will not be based in the tradition and interests of Native people. Is this happening? Yes. I think what’s going to happen as Alaska Natives become more distanced from tradition, these corporations will become more bottom-line oriented. Do they have an obligation to watch out for tradition and culture? No, they do not. The only obligation a corporation has is to make money, to declare a dividend for their investors. I suppose you all know this. I want people to be aware of these Native corporations. The State of Alaska, in my opinion, has abdicated its responsibility in watching these Native corporations. If you’re a shareholder and you file a complaint, you’re lucky if it gets addressed. It’s like what happened with Madoff and the SEC. If a shareholder doesn’t like what a Native corporation is doing, they file a complaint. There’s this form you fill out. I’m not blaming the commissioner; they don’t have the people to follow up. Meanwhile, who has the money and the power? The corporation. And they can silence you. If the board is committed to a financial return, do you think they’ll put a shareholder’s name on the ballot if that shareholder is opposed to logging? They might. But they’re not going to put any resources into getting that person elected. What’s it take to control a board of directors? I never learned to count to five. “Edgar, there’s nine directors. You need to learn to count to five. That’s a majority of the board. Once you can count to five, you have the majority and you control the corporation.” There’s no open-meeting laws that apply to corporation. They don’t have to do anything out in the open.

So how do you get information on a Native corporation? You could talk to shareholders. But then, management doesn’t have to give all that much information to the shareholders. They’re only obligated to give an annual report. It is private land. It’s owned by the corporation. It is not owned by Natives. This is what Congress intended when they passed the Settlement Act. President Nixon didn’t want to create pockets of poverty in Alaska, so the best thing was to create an entrepreneurial system.

Future Shareholders
How many Alaska Natives were there in 1971? Maybe 60,000. What’s the Native population today? About 120,000. What’s it going to be 10 years from now, 20 years from now? Maybe 240,000? How many of them are going to be shareholders? When Prince William inherits my shares of stock – or Bill Gates – or they’ll share – will they receive more than an after-born or a New Native? Will their shares of stock give them potentially more dividend than an after-born? Will Prince William receive more money owning 56.5 shares? I would say yes. He probably will be receiving more money than an Alaska Native born after 1971 who has only life estate shares. What’s the difference? Go back to land ownership. 70,000 square miles. Why will Bill Gates and Prince William be receiving more? Under the Settlement Act — and this is where you’ll really get into conflict between 60,000 haves and 60,000 have-nots — 70% of revenues from development of the subsurface estate have to be shared with shareholders of other Native corporations. That means that when Red Dog turned 10 years ago and they finally started to return dividends, I got a check. Section 7(i) of ANCSA states that 70% of net subsurface has to be distributed to all original shareholders or shareholders who have inherited original shares. In 2030 there will be about 200,000 Natives, most of whom will be life estate shareholders. If Pebble was on Native corporation land, you’d have every Native corporation pushing for it. Subsurface includes gold, gas, timber… 7(i) was meant to develop equality among Alaska Natives. It’s a legally-mandated revenue-sharing clause.

Look at Pebble. Let’s say Pebble was on Native land. There’s a Pebble in every region of this state. How much of that has been explored? Very little. Just look at the original estimates of Pebble. It’s a mining district of maybe 500 square miles. Pebble is 15 square miles. Native corporations own 60,000 square miles. We’re talking lots and lots of land. The value of the subsurface estate at Pebble was estimated at $10 billion. Then it went to $50 billion. Then it went to $100 billion. Last year when the economy was good, they stopped guessing. If it were Native land, there would be enormous pressure on the corporations to develop the subsurface estate. The press might not want to cover it because it’s a Native corporation and it’s too sensitive. Where’s the pressure coming from for these transnational corporations to explore? Population. Alaska’s mineral-rich. Look around. Why do we have so many national parks and national forests? That’s a clue, isn’t it? The only people who look off into the future seem to be environmental organizations. They’re transparent. Mining organizations are looking into the future. There are findings of some of these minerals all over Alaska.

Pressure on the Bottom Line
If you’re a shareholder in Houston or Portland, do you want the corporation to dedicate part of the bottom line to culture and tradition? No. You have a car payment, a house payment, kids going to college, and you’d like to take a vacation. When I first ran for the board, I pushed for jobs and economic development in the villages. Now I’m political. Now I talk about the dividend. We’re older. We’re not looking for jobs. We’re looking for retirement. The pressure on the boards is this: $

If nobody’s watching them, if the State has abdicated its responsibility to watch these corporations, who’s going to watch out for that shareholder who wants their voice in the corporation? You see very few people in regional corporations who talk to the press. I’ve been chairman of the board before. I wouldn’t talk to you guys. But somebody has to watch what’s happening. We’re running out of natural resources, and people are going to look north. They are looking north.

How Do You Get Information?
That depends on the instincts of the reporter. How did Woodward and Bernstein do it? They found a source. If you want to know, if you think there’s dissention in the corporation, call up the Division of Commerce, banking and securities, and ask if there are any complaints. And maybe they’ll say, “Oh, it’s an open investigation, we can’t tell you anything,” but then you’ll know something’s going on.

— Maia Nolan

J-Week LivebloggingAlaskan Issues Panel: Are We Ready for the Big One?

2009-03-27T10:10:00.008-08:00

This morning’s disaster-preparedness panel is being moderated by Michael Carey, who begins by introducing the panel members:

John Madden, Director of the State Division of Emergency Services
Lt. Gen. Craig Campbell, Commissioner of State Dept. of Military and Veteran Affairs
Edgar Blatchford, UAA journalism professor and eyewitness to the 1964 earthquake
Janice Boylan, editor of The Day Trees Bent to the Ground: Stories from the ’64 Earthquake
Mike Ross, KTUU anchor who worked for WWL-TV in New Orleans, the only station that stayed on the air during Hurricane Katrina
Tay Thomas, 1964 earthquake survivor

Carey: We are obviously very much affected by a disaster today; Redoubt has hindered air travel and kept our guests from getting here. I was in Alaska in 1964 when the Good Friday earthquake occurred. I was a freshman in college in New York State and didn’t find out about it until the next day. 131 people were killed, 4 in Oregon and a few in California. Most people were killed by the tsunami.

The quiz question for today is: What natural disaster produced the largest loss of life in American history?

Edgar Blatchford: What can I say about the 1964 earthquake? What I don’t like being reminded is that it was 45 years ago. It dates me. I remind my mother every once in a while that she was responsible for my near death. My mother was cooking dinner, and dinner was generally served at 5:30. My father was very strict and required us to sit down for dinner. Since it was Good Friday, we decided we’d go down to the waterfront. It was kind of a playground. Pigeons used to roost under the Army docks. My brothers used to go down there with slingshots and target practice on the poor pigeons. I was kind of an environmentalist and I’d go with them and say things like, “Today, save the pigeons; tomorrow, save the whales!” As we were approaching the Alaska Railroad yard and they were switching trains. There was this old railroad man looking out, and he hollered at us to cross where we were supposed to cross. So we went down to the Standard Oil yard. The point is, earthquakes happen quickly. We were walking along, my brother and my dog and friends — and all of a sudden the earth started to shake. And it was fun! The earth started to split open. The trains were kind of dancing on the railroad tracks, moving with the flow, like jelly. My brother started pointing at one of the tanks in the Texaco tank farm, and we watched as it split and the fuel came out. Suddenly there was a huge explosion. What do you do as kids? Run to where the fire is. My father looked out and was watching, and started yelling: “Tidal wave! Tidal wave! Tidal wave!” We didn’t know it was right behind us. They didn’t recover the railroad man’s body. The railroad yard fell into Resurrection Bay. All we could see from the Jessie Lee Home — the school — was Seward on fire. About a third of the homes were destroyed. In the morning, smoke was coming down, carried by snowflakes. My point is, earthquakes are sudden, and I don’t know if we can prepare for one. My suggestion is, if you’re in Seward and the earth starts to move, get to high ground.

Carey: How many people have been in an earthquake that made you feel unsettled? (About half.) How about a flood? (A few.)

Janice Boylan: My personal experience with earthquakes is what we have experienced in Anchorage since 1964; however, I was in a tornado. We had a family come to our home because they had no power, no way to cook. It was a time for people to come together, which is what people did after the 1964 earthquake. Those who had power, water, a floor, shared it with others. Ham operators worked overtime to let people Outside know their families were okay. In Alaska here, we have not only earthquakes and volcanoes to contend with; we also have high winds, flooding… you just never know when a natural disaster’s going to happen or in what form it’s going to happen, and we need to be prepared.

Carey: It seems to be that people who survive disasters want to bear witness. In early Skagway, there was an avalanche that killed a bunch of people climbing Chilkoot Pass. I’ve heard that the number of people who said they witnessed that event would stretch around the Earth twice.

Mike Ross: On August 29, 2005, hurricane coverage hit home for all of us. It changed all of our lives. Our station was the only station in New Orleans that was able to stay on the air during or after the storm. Others were knocked out by the storm; some just signed off and left. We had 130 employees, and within a few hours, about two-thirds of them were homeless. We took great strides to serve our community. As journalists, I think that is our duty. We’d had a close call before Katrina, and we spent an entire year preparing ourselves. That planning paid off for us when Katrina hit. I can tell you from personal experience: If you’re thinking about what you’re going to do when the disaster hits, it’s too late. There are so many essentials that disappear in an instant: How do you fuel your car when the power’s out? How do you get from point A to point B to cover a story? How do you take care of your family? How do you take care of your people so they can keep doing the job? We had backup plans on backup plans. Our basic premise was, we will lose everything. We will lose our facilities. Our question was: How do we keep doing our job?

John Madden: I was asked by outside media the other day: How does Redoubt compare with Pompeii? Not a high point in journalism… What do we do differently now than we did in 1964 or 1989? Look at the monitoring. KLM almost lost a plane in 1989 because they were flying blind. Seconds after these last eruptions, we’re monitoring to see where the ash is, and we’re putting out alerts about aviation safety, maritime safety. This is Tsunami Awareness Week, and we tested the system. Screen crawlers, warning alarms — almost all of them worked, and we identified the ones that didn’t. In fifteen minutes, we contacted everyone we needed to by phone. We have signage, education. We’ve helped 4000 people train in incident command. Mike’s right: If you haven’t thought about it by the time it happens, it’s not going to happen. Look at the airplane that went down in the Hudson River. There was no plan to get a plane out of the Hudson, but every ferry that responded had been trained in incident command. Every radio in the vicinity operated with every other radio. There was a clear chain of command — unified command, with agencies working in concert, not in conflict. We’re planning for the capabilities. We don’t want 1000 plans; we want to have the fundamentals. How do we communicate? How do we maintain resources? How do we sort out the serious from the not serious? Plus education of every household that help will come, but it won’t be instantaneous. We emphasized that, no matter what happens, you may be on your own for a while, and here’s what you need in your kit to make it for seven days. That’s the difference between Alaska and other places. We study other disasters to see what worked and what applicability it may have to Alaska. In Alaska, hospitals may be 500 miles away. How do you prepare the community so that they can maintain and stabilize the situation until help can come in?

Carey: It’s probably not too much talked about, but in Alaska history, one of our greatest dangers was fire. Fairbanks in 1906 was heavily damaged by fire. The engines didn’t work properly, the hoses didn’t work properly… The other example is Nome, where a terrible fire burned so much of historic Nome, and Alaska lost a lot of its documented history.

Lt. Gen. Craig Campbell: Remember when Reagan was shot and the appearance was that the military was taking control? I’m not here to take control. I’m here to talk about the civilian side as a commissioner. How many have lived here since prior to 1989? (Fewer than half.) John’s given you a basic overlay of how we operate. That’s important for us to know about. But one of my concerns is that we are now very dependent upon government providing the answer. That may work in Massachusetts, but it’s very challenging in a state like Alaska. Self-reliance becomes more important in Alaska than in any other state in the country. I spent ten years on the Anchorage Assembly. I was the chairman the evening Mt. Spurr went off. We were sending people out of the library: “Go look at the sky. How does it look? We have to get our business done before the ash falls!” I also worked for George Wuerch, doing development. We rebuilt the Emergency Operations Center in Anchorage. Now I work for Sarah Palin on the emergency management side. Buildings now are built to survive an earthquake like the one we had in 1964. Let me give you a viewpoint from afar on Katrina. It was a massive hurricane that resulted in the breaking of levees and the flooding of a major American city. Small businesses and people weren’t prepared to sustain themselves. They’d become complacent. Land-mobile radio system generators in New Orleans were built below sea level, so they flooded and the system didn’t work. We’re getting like that in Alaska. Our land-mobile radio system will be lost in the event of an earthquake. We need self-reliance. Fairbanks needs to be sure Fairbanks can take care of Fairbanks. Anchorage needs to be sure Anchorage can take care of Anchorage. I believe the majority of Alaskans who have moved up here today do not have that seven-day emergency supply. When I moved here 30 years ago, we bought a generator. You have to be sure you can protect your own family, your own house, your own power supply. If a big earthquake happens, we’re going to have significant power disruption. If it happens to be January, thousands of homes will freeze up and thousands of lives will be at risk. We’re developing a complacency towards nature. We are not Massachusetts. We do not have the infrastructure. The thing I’d like the media to ask is: Are YOU ready for a disaster? FEMA in Alaska has our own sub-region that works directly with my division. I believe FEMA will be here on time. But “on time” will not be an hour or two after things happen. On time could be a day or two. And in that day or two, with bad weather and no protection for individuals to sustain themselves, a lot of bad things can happen. We are the Last Frontier.

Carey: I was in Fairbanks for the 1967 Fairbanks flood. My dad was in denial about the whole thing. He’d say, “Do you know how much water it takes to raise the level another foot?” Well, eventually, the water came to our house. We had an old boat there and my dad got it out and went over to the supermarket and “liberated” some food. Some other people “liberated” the liquor store. The house was surrounded by water, everywhere you looked. My most vivid memories are the smell the next day, because fuel oil was all over the water and it smelled like you were in a diesel distribution plant — and there was a huge liquor warehouse nearby that blew up. We sat on our roof and watched it burn. My dad told me not to worry about it, but I couldn’t help thinking, “You’re the one who told me not to worry about the water!”

Mike Ross: One of the untold stories of Katrina is the success of the evacuation. In Ike, I’m convinced that people would have died on the interstates. In the three days before Katrina hit, millions of people evacuated Louisiana. A lot of those people used the self-reliance Craig talked about. I think the most important thing is, what do we do to get the job done after the disaster hits? The first thing that died after Katrina hit was cell phone coverage. Our station had switched over to NexTel. The only form of communication we had was a 40-year-old UHF radio system. The first thing you have to assume is that your cell phone or BlackBerry isn’t going to work. How do you communicate? How do you keep the information flowing? We were getting word-of-mouth reports. We literally had to send crews out to find out what was going on, and they got chased back to the station by a wall of water. In that year of planning, we operated under the premise that we would lose everything. We reached out to Louisiana State University and arranged that we would have a fallback position if we lost our studio in the French Quarter. We also had a backup studio at the transmitter site, but we had to abandon it for security issues; there were looters at the gate. As the storm was hitting, we switched to LSU in Baton Rouge. It was critical to have those places to fall back to. We had signed memorandums of understanding with LSU and Louisiana Public Broadcasting. I was discussing this with Steve MacDonald the other day, and said, “We have to assume that, if the big one hits, we may lose our building. Where do we go if our building falls down?” FEMA told us, “We’ll get help for you in three days.” Help didn’t come in for six days. We had stockpiles of food at our studio. We had a plan for that. No one’s going to take care of that for you. If you don’t have the stockpiles ready, you’re not going to be able to do your job. You’ll run out of gas — literally and figuratively. You have to think about your family, too. Take steps at home to make sure they have food, water and warmth while you do your job. It’s emotionally draining to wonder if your house is still standing and what’s happening with your wife and kids while you’re trying to do your job. We decided to be as self-sufficient as we could. Even so, we started to run out of food after four days. My cameraman and I survived for 48 hours on peanut butter crackers and a bologna sandwich. The most crucial form of communication was radio. Even if you didn’t have power, you could have your car radio or a battery-operated radio. The radio broadcasters pooled their resources and, for two or three months, did an incredible job of communicating necessary information. You really have to depend on yourselves to keep yourselves going. There is a supreme obligation we all have to do our job.

Carey: A few years ago I was about to have an operation, and as they were about to put me under, I wondered, “I wonder what they’d do if there were an earthquake?” What about our public institutions — hospitals, prisons?

John Madden: Every hospital in New Orleans had an evacuation plan. But the plan was to go to the next hospital. They had not planned for that hospital to be incapacitated. Who do you rely upon? In Alaska, we don’t have just one plan for one hospital; the plan is integrated across the entire region. Even during Redoubt, government agencies and the hospital community are still communicating about what they need. That raises secondary concerns about the blood supply. What are your anticipated needs? What if you can’t meet them yourself? The hospital industry is now far better prepared. That idea of being able to continue your mission under all circumstances is fundamental. That same thing applies across the full spectrum. First they have to know what their capabilities are, what’s been damaged, and how you quickly stabilize. Prisons is very straightforward — security, perimeters, etc. The first level of aid is always local — other police officers, State Troopers. We have agreements with other states to bring in outside law enforcement officers and empower them here. If you find you can’t do your mission, there are other ways of doing it.

Tay Thomas: (Her home was destroyed by the 1964 earthquake, and she and her two children were trapped on a chunk of moving earth.) I sensed a very strong presence of God and looked up, expecting the end of the earth. Dave’s swing set floated by on one piece of stone; then our greenhouse on another. We finally came to a stop and everything was totally quiet. Then I heard the drip of water from pipes on another cliff above us. Then I heard, more frightening, electric wires, all around us — live electricity, snaking. I told the kids, “Stay away from them.” The only thing I could think, other than how to get up that cliff, was that a tsunami was coming. We were right on the water. We had to get up that cliff. A few minutes later, I spotted our next-door neighbors. The husband was the only doctor of neurology in the whole state, but he never left his post, even though he knew two of his children were missing. They said he did surgery all night with tears running down his face. I saw two of his children on top of a car, and I didn’t think I could handle four children, so I told them to stay there and I would get help. Later I learned that the oldest boy and the baby had fallen into a crevasse and were never seen again. Three men appeared at the top of the cliff and they said, “Stay there; we’ll be right back.” My kids just fell apart, crying. About ten minutes later they were back with blankets. One of them had a coat that he took off and put around my daughter’s shoulders. To this day she hasn’t parted with it. We climbed up and had to get over about four feet of concrete. The men just pulled me over. We ran into a lot of problems that night in terms of communication. I wanted to tell my husband in Fairbanks that we were all right. I knew he’d hear about the neighbor children being lost. There were no telephones — nothing. The radio ran for two days — for two days, she never left her post, reporting, “So-and-so has called in, and so-and-so is missing.” My husband flew himself back and went down to the communications center they had set up. It wasn’t until five in the morning that he finally found us. The other heroes, as far as I was concerned, were the National Guard, who happened to be on manouvers at the time. They were immediately dispatched to all the areas that were destroyed. Nobody would approach an Eskimo guard sitting there with his rifle on his knee. It was a wonderful help to us, because all our treasures were spread out around, and anybody could have taken them. The other heroes were the ham radio operators, because they were in contact with Outside. I would give them a great big gold medal.

John Madden: Resilience and continuity are important. In Alaska, the supply chain is very important, and a disaster now will later be a disaster further down the supply chain. We’re using the volcanic eruption to test some of these things. If you notice, there were some shortages early on of things like masks, but those shortages were resolved because of communication between the government and the private sector. We’ve trained thousands of people.

Mike Ross: While working through Katrina was the most difficult professional experience, it was also the most rewarding. In the darkest time of our city’s history, we were there to help, and that meant more to us than any of the awards we got. Our challenge in Alaska is to be in a position to do the same thing here. The population here is much greater now than it was in 1964. The city will be on its knees in a major disaster. Our challenge is to be ready for it.

Lt. Gen. Craig Campbell: Of the 54,000 military that were in the New Orleans area, 52,000 were from the National Guard. I think that’s missed. The National Guard works with local authorities. We don’t have to go to the president to get National Guard from other states. We’re ready, we’re always available, and one of our primary responsibilities is to serve as local responders.

Carey: The answer to the quiz question is: The Galveston hurricane. They’re still arguing about how many people it killed — 8,000 or 10,000. It had a dramatic effect on weather reporting and, in some ways, produced the modern weather reporting system we have today.

— Maia Nolan

Edgar Blatchford, Janice Boylan, Lt. Gen. Craig Campbell, Michael Carey, John Madden

Photo by Phillip Munger

Conference Update 2: One presenter stranded, another offers teleconference session

2009-03-27T00:57:00.002-08:00

Thanks to Rhonda McBride late Thursday night who corrected the traveling status of News Lab presenter Debra Potter. Debra had made it from Washington DC to Minneapolis. She's holding there, still hoping to get a flight up to our conference. Thank you Debra, and apologies for making it sound as if you were already not coming, when you are still trying to get here!

Bill Drummond from NPR got as far as Seattle before he was turned back by Alaska Airlines. He's back home now, but told Rhonda he'd be happy to complete his commitment via a teleconference. So, on Friday morning, Rhonda will be talking to the AV folks at the senior center to see if some of these accommodations might work.

We also have a call into Lisa Margonelli, (Oil on the Brain author) who got turned back Thursday by Alaska Airlines and told that a Friday flight was also unlikely. Is any of her presentation doable via teleconference? We'll let you know what she says.

I knew Lisa had been up here to do reporting for the book, but today on the phone, she told me years ago she'd worked the slimeline across the Inlet with Redoubt in full view. She said she often stood at the fish sorting table and pondered that volcano. Now, years later, it's still messing with her, she notes.

I heard someone describe the state of Alaska journalism today as "extremely fragile." That makes me think we might use some of the time at press club to just talk about our situation and ponder whether there's momentum or interest in a homegrown Alaska solution. Think about it. If we do have openings in the schedule, which seems likely, a conversatiion around this topic could be good.

Sadly, word is that Gregg and Judy Erickson (1st Amendment award honorees) had to cancel their flight. Vagaries of the volcano could pin them in Anchorage when they are at their busiest time covering the Legislature. Understandable, but we'll miss them!

Redoubt rumbles, J Week adjusts

2009-03-26T17:02:00.004-08:00

The persistent burping from Mt. Redoubt Thursday has forced some adjustments in this weekend's Alaska Press Club J Week Conference. Several presenters traveling from Outside already were bumped off cancelled flights due to the volcano. We hang in the balance to see how atmospheric conditions unfold for Friday's travelers, and we'll keep you posted here and on the APC Web site.

So far, unable to attend:
Deborah Potter of NewsLab, William Drummond of NPR, and Lisa Margonelli, author of "Oil on the Brain," will not make it to the conference.

Waiting to hear on:
David Cohn, keynote speaker, is scheduled to travel Friday. So are Gregg and Judy Erickson, coming up from Juneau. We'll keep you posted on the status of their arrival.

In the meantime, tonight's opening reception (6-9:30 p.m.) and panel on blogging (7 p.m.) goes forward at the Senior Center.

Other highlights include the Saturday lunch with Anne Kilkenny, the Wasilla resident given special recognition by the Alaska Press Club board for an e-mail on Republican VP candidate Sarah Palin; Friday night pizza and a panel discussion on the Exxon Valdez (5:15-7:15 p.m.) and the party later at the Anchorage Press (7-9 p.m.); an audio slideshow workshop by Eric Hill of the Anchorage Daily News on Friday afternoon (2:30-3:45 p.m.), as well as a panel of Alaska photographers discussing how they do their job in bitter cold (Friday lunch).

You get the picture, there's still lots to do. Plus, given the fragile state of our journalistic institutions, it's a great time to come together and swap ideas and strategies for our future. If you've got some, please share!

Due to these developments, conference organizers decided Thursday afternoon to open the doors to all remaining conference workshops and panels. Press Club members enter free, after typically re-upping their membership when they submit their work to the club's annual journalism competition. Journalists and visitors not covered by this circumstance typically pay $30 a day to attend workshops. Not this year.

The banquet will still require tickets, which are $30 when ordered by noon Saturday, or $35 at the door of the banquet.

That's it for now, but updates will be posted here and at the blog as ash, ahem, settles.

Jay Rosen offers 12 links to think about status of journalism

2009-03-26T12:15:00.006-08:00

Thanks to John Proffitt of Gravity medium for spotting and sharing this info. The article, Rosen's Flying Seminar in the Future of News, focuses a lot on analyzing what the demise of newspapers may mean. I'm still reading so can't pick out the main points for you yet, but it's got a dozen links to go deeper.

Rosen's analysis is ongoing, but was sparked by this March 13 essay by thinker Clay Shirkey, called Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable. A must read.

And while we are sharing links, here's a recent write up on our keynote speaker David Cohn's enterprise, Spot.us, from March 17 in the SFGATE.

Additionally, be aware that press club members plan to audio podcast sessions for those of you who cannot be in two places at once. We are also still recruiting live bloggers, so let me know if you have interest. Maia Nolan has signed on, Seth Boyer from UAA and Kathleen McCoy. More are welcome.

Thanks, all.

Peter Dunlap-Shohl: Limits make you creative

2009-03-20T00:47:00.003-08:00

If you missed the real-time version of Dunlap-Shohl’s talk on how he navigated medical and professional brick walls to come out the other side into one of his most creative periods ever, you didn’t really. Thanks to cyberspace, you can listen to his UAA talk here. Your experience will be greatly enhanced by going to his blog and reading the entry titled “Exiled from my comfort zone: Finding creativity where I least expected it.” There you can follow along with the speech and open the links to the artwork (political cartoons, evolving into animation and films as he progressed).

Dunlap-Shohl’s hardships and subsequent resilience are absolute metaphors for the news industry today. As he learned how to use new tools to do what he used to do, he discovered the tools could do far more. He describes an awakening—“Why would I use a $2,000 machine to reproduce a 19th century version of my work.” Instead, he used the computer to “move into the 21st century.”

More on Anne Kilkenny

2009-03-19T05:36:00.006-08:00

The Press Club has announced a special recognition of Anne Kilkenny for her citizen involvement in providing information during the 2008 presidential election campaign on vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin. Kilkenny wrote an email to friends answering basic questions about Palin; her email rapidly went viral in a climate that was hungry for information about this suddenly emerging Republican VP candidate.

For those wishing to refresh their memories on Anne's original email, you can still find it on the Anchorage Daily News site here.

In addition, below is a later FAQ that Anne provided, threaded with many additional links to information about Sarah Palin.

November 5, 2008

Hello,

Thank you for emailing me with your thoughts and questions about Sarah Palin. I have received over 14,200 emails in response to my email of 8/31 which "went viral"!

I apologize for the hideous length of this "FAQ" email. If I don't address one of your questions it is because I don't know the answer. (I do not open attachments, as some have attempted to send me viruses, so I cannot comment on anything in your attachment.)

I know Sarah Palin in her public roles, not socially, so I don't know about--and am unwilling to research—personal, family, and church issues; I suggest that you buy the National Enquirer if those issues are of interest and importance to you.

I had already been a college graduate for over a decade when Palin was point guard on the Wasilla High basketball team; we didn't go to school together. My husband's youngest sister was one of her classmates, however.

Who are you?
I am a real person, part of the Kilkenny Family of northern California, who has lived in Wasilla, Alaska, since 1981. Wasilla is about 45 miles from Anchorage, on the road to Fairbanks. And, yes, if you've taken the train to Denali or driven from Anchorage to Fairbanks, you've been through Wasilla.

Since the beginning of September you might have seen clips of me on NBC's Nightly News with Brian Williams, the Today Show, and Good Morning, America. You also might have heard me on NPR, Pacific Radio, and several satellite radio programs. All of these organizations approached me, thanks to those of you who forwarded my email to them.

I am the writer of an email dated August 31, 2008, about Sarah Palin that went “viral." SOME PEOPLE HAVE RECEIVED A DISTORTED, EDITED VERSION OF THIS EMAIL, and there was no photo attached to my email. I urge you to go to the website listed below to see what I actually wrote (with an Addendum I wrote on Sept 9th) and confirmation that I am who I say I am. (My original email and addendum are also included at the end of this email.)

_ HYPERLINK http://community.adn.com/adn/node/130537

On Sept 4th, I asked the Anchorage Daily News if they would post on their website my original email. I asked them to do this for several reasons:

1) They are the largest newspaper in Alaska;
2) They are not aligned with either party;
3) I was being told that people were changing what I wrote; and
4) Importantly--they know me. When I go to City Council meetings there is always a reporter from the Anchorage Daily News there; they can verify that I am a resident of Wasilla and frequently to go City Council and other meetings.

If you go to Snopes.com you will see that they have updated their report and apologized to me.

I HAVE NEVER BLOGGED. I DO NOT HAVE A WEBSITE. If you find other things with my name attached, it is campaign dirty tricks. I've also just been informed that if you click on some google links in my name some disgusting, dirty material is automatically downloaded. I have NOTHING to do with this garbage!

I am NOT working for either campaign; however, by now I assume they both are aware of my email as many of you have told me that you have forwarded it to them. I am not a spokesperson for any group. Nobody connected with either campaign suggested that I write my email, nobody has paid me, and nobody has asked me to stop answering my email. Sitting next to my keyboard as I type, however, is the most beautiful bouquet of flowers which were sent to me by a total stranger in Connecticut in appreciation for the time I put into writing it!

I always vote. My commitment to my family has precluded me from running for office until my family is grown.

How and why did you write your email?

My piece about Sarah Palin evolved over a three-day period in response to questions I got from friends and relatives who live outside Alaska. By the afternoon of the third day I was getting replies from friends of friends of friends—in other words, people who didn't know me—and they were asking, "Who are you?" and "Why did you write this?" So I added sections to my email to address those questions and then sent it out to about 30 people on my email list with whom I had not yet communicated. Within a couple of hours, somebody posted against my wishes this version of my email on a website. From there, it was posted on numerous other websites.

I had no idea it would "go viral." For years, I had drafted PTA newsletters that went electronically to hundreds of people, and they never went viral! In fact, I have reason to believe most of the time they weren't even read! Ha!

What has been the feedback from people who just received your email randomly, and in Wasilla?

When I wrote my email I asked that it not be posted because I thought there were a lot of kooks out there. Yes, there are kooks, but they are vastly outnumbered by wonderful people. America is full of unsung heroes, people who have made huge sacrifices for the common good: I know, because many of them have sent me their stories. I doubt that anything I'll ever write will ever be read by so many, but if that should happen, I will not fear it.

On September 30, 2008, there was a story in the LA Times about all the email I have received; that story gave the IN-accurate impression that I have been inundated by "hate" mail. (I should have suspected that a distorted story was being concocted when the reporter only wanted to see the nasty emails that I had received.) The vast majority (92 percent) of people who reply to my email tell me that it helped them decide whom to vote for.

Here, in Wasilla, many people have thanked me for providing them with answers that they could give to the many inquiries that they are getting from friends and relatives in the Lower 48. There have been awkward moments, but no one has been nasty.

Critics of my email who like and agree with Sarah Palin have not been able to identify a single compliment that I failed to give her. Critics of my email who dislike and disagree with Sarah Palin have mentioned to me many negative and critical things that I either didn't know about or considered not important enough to mention.

I do not know the writers of other widely distributed emails about Palin; none of the writers of the emails I've seen went to City Council meetings regularly.

What do people say about you in your town?

People in Wasilla say that I have long been an active and involved citizen who does her homework. Some people in positions of authority who don't like to have anyone questioning them would say I can be a pain. One of Palin's best friends calls me a "nut case."

Would you say that you dislike Palin, or respect her?

I have tremendous respect for Sarah Palin—for what she has accomplished, for her political skills, for her energy, her time management skills, her speaking ability--there's lots to admire!

There is a difference between disliking and disagreeing.

I don't agree with Palin on social issues and political philosophy because I am a fiscal conservative and social liberal.

Some people have picked up on my irritation, but most are mistaken as to its cause. I am very frustrated about the incessant "spin" and "image control" that permeates campaigns. What gets me is when people claim to be—or are portrayed as—something that they aren't!

What would happen if you ran into Palin in the street?

Sarah and I always had friendly social conversation. I don't know what would happen if I ran into Sarah Palin on the street now because it appears that running for VP has changed her. She is being "handled" now. For my part, I would apologize for my use of the word "hate.” (See my addendum to my email for an explanation of this.)

How do you know anything?

I have been a Wasilla resident since 1981. In 1996-97, during Palin's first year as Mayor, I went to many City Council meetings because I was the author of a new chapter in the City of Wasilla Municipal Code, and it took about a year to shepherd this new code through the City Council. (It passed unanimously). Prior to and after that, I went to meetings sporadically: when there was something on the agenda of interest to me and around election time.

Can you verify the truth of what you wrote?

Your request for facts to check is appropriate and fair. I have been interviewed by many (three dozen???) newspapers, and NBC, CBS, ABC and CNN (but not FOX yet). I have supplied them with all the names of the individuals involved in each of the situations I describe so they could fact-check what I wrote. I suggest that you go to the following sites to check out what the mainstream media has reported. (I am so impressed with the reporters I've met; they are literally working around the clock to get to get up to speed and to prove/disprove the things I wrote about.)

I have become aware of some factual, grammatical, and personal errors in my email which I have shared with several fact-checking websites. You be the judge if these errors are substantial and significant. These errors are addressed below and in the addendum to my email which is posted on the Anchorage Daily News website referenced above and is included below.

THE MOST COMPREHENSIVE WRITE UP OF SARAH PALIN is in Wikipedia at:

_ HYPERLINK http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarah_Palin

I've read many Palin biographies since she was named, and this is one of the most complete, but it is rather lengthy:

_ HYPERLINK http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/oct/10/uselections2008-sarahpalin1

A shorter story dense with facts and information about Sarah Palin's first six months as Mayor can be found at:

_ HYPERLINK http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/politics/2008163431_palin070.html

Another story about her mayorship can be found at:

_ HYPERLINK http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2008/09/17/palin_mayor/

A more comprehensive look at her terms as Wasilla's Mayor and her 20 months as governor can be found in a NY Times story that appeared 9/14/08, and can be accessed at the website below:

_ HYPERLINK http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/14/us/politics/14palin.html?_r=1&hp=&adxnnl=1&oref=slogin&pagewanted=print&adxnnlx=1221415398-aXQkakmNv2hz9SVPQ1KEuw

This is a fact checking site that covers many Palin topics of interest:

_ HYPERLINK http://www.samefacts.com/archives/campaign_2008_/2008/09/palin_v_reality.php

To read what Sarah Palin has said on various hot topics, you can go to

_ HYPERLINK http://www.ontheissues.org/sarah_Palin.htm#Immigration

I'm sorry, but I cannot validate any of the many other quotes that have been attributed to Palin that people have asked me about.

Politifact and Factcheck have checked out my revenue and expense numbers for the City of Wasilla. You'd think that numbers would be the easiest thing to check: NOT! I said general government expenditures rose 33%, Politifact says 55% and Factcheck says 23%. I said tax revenues increased 38%, Politifact said 43% and Factcheck said 29%. You can check out their reports for yourself at:

_ HYPERLINK http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/705/
_ HYPERLINK http://www.factcheck.org/askfactcheck/what_about_that_anne_kilkenny_e-mail.html

ABOUT THE LIBRARY BOOK BANNING ISSUE. . . .

Below is a link to a segment from Good Morning, America on Sept. 10, 2008, which
covers the attempted book banning and attempted firing of the librarian.

It is accurate to the best of my knowledge; however, I can't confirm or deny that the named books were the target(s).

_ HYPERLINK http://www.acakadut.com/videos/v-VcdqcXZ1jqU/Ross-on-Palin-ABC-09-10-09.html

Did the Mayor ask the Librarian about removing books from the Wasilla Public Library?

Yes. Members of Palin's church had been pushing for the removal of some books for sale at bookstores, were checking books out of the library and not returning them to remove them from circulation, and were redacting sections of books that they found offensive. I was a witness to one of the occasions on which Mayor Palin asked the Librarian about removing books from the collection. My recollection was that Mayor Palin stated that there were books in the library that shouldn't be there, and she asked the Librarian what the procedure was for removing books from the collection.

Stories in the Anchorage Daily News & Frontiersman newspapers report that Mayor Palin asked such a question. Snopes reports that the McCain campaign also acknowledges that she did this.

Was there a list of books?

Not as far as I know. I've always said I didn't know of any, Gov Palin says there was no list, and the list in circulation looks bogus because some of the books on it weren't even published at that time. In recent weeks, many people I respect have come forward to say that the members of Palin's church who were pushing book banning were focused on books about homosexuality; I find this believable, but cannot confirm it.

Were any books removed from the Library?

No. Not as far as I know. The City also says books were never removed. If you read carefully what I wrote, you will see that I said that she "attempted" to censor the collection, not that she actually was able to.

What does Palin say?

Conflicting things. At the time that all this happened, Palin acknowledged to both of the local newspapers that she had asked the librarian about removing books from the library; she said that her questions were "rhetorical". After she was named the VP candidate, the campaign acknowledged that Palin had asked about removing books. However, ABC News broadcast video of her telling Charles Gibson that all of this was an "old wives tale" and on 10/24 she told Brian Williams, " . . .my alleged attempts to censor books: of course, that never happened."

What remains in dispute?

Mayor Palin's motives for discussing censorship of the library collection remain in dispute. Palin claims her questions were rhetorical. Her question sure didn't sound rhetorical to me!

A rhetorical question elicits an explanation in response, and after an explanation is received the question doesn't need to be asked again, but this question was, by Palin's admission, asked more than once. A challenge elicits a defense; the librarian responded defensively. Now, too, it seems that Palin disputes that she ever asked the librarian about removing books from the collection.

Palin also says that the community reaction to her attempt to fire the Librarian had nothing to do with the fact that she fired the Librarian one day and rehired her the next.

What about Palin's approval rating?

The reason for Palin's past high approval ratings in Alaska and her ability to draw people to campaign rallies are similar. Governor Palin is a very attractive, warm person, with lots of charisma. People who have met her on the campaign trail or know her only socially generally like her. It is in her official roles that she becomes the pit bull in lipstick.

Few people have the time to observe government in action. She used to work at the largest TV station; media coverage here had been pretty complimentary prior to her announcement as McCain's running mate. It was thanks to reporters from outside that we learned how she claimed per diem while living in her own home because she didn't want to live in the governor's mansion.

Local polsters are predicting that her approval rating in Alaska will be below 50% by the election if current trends continue. Recent news that she uses personal BlackBerries for transacting state business so she won't have to supply copies of her emails has many questioning her claim to "open and transparent" decision-making and governing. Her claim that she was "vindicated" in the Troopergate report (see below) has people questioning her intelligence and/or veracity. Her approval rating has dropped 20 points since 9/2, to 62%, and even in Wasilla there is widespread disenchantment about her.

What do other Alaskans say?

A pro-Palin story by an Alaskan can be found at:
_ HYPERLINK http://urbanlegends.about.com/library/bl_deb_frost_on_palin.htm

This link is to a story by an Alaskan who is not a Palin fan:

_ HYPERLINK http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2008/10/11/sarah_palin_alaska/print.html

On Sept 13, 2008, pro- and anti-Palin rallies were held in Anchorage and the anti-Palin rally was the larger; some say this is because there had been many pro-Palin rallies already.

Reporters tell me that they are having a very hard time finding anyone in
Wasilla who will speak on record in support of Palin: this is the exact opposite of how it was here 3 weeks ago. The following story may shed light on why this is so.

_ HYPERLINK http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-na-troopergate21-2008sep21,0,829160.story

What about aerial wolf-hunting in Alaska?

I personally oppose aerial hunting for sport. The recent aerial wolf hunting issue on the ballot was not about sport hunting. It was about whether or not only State Fish & Game employees would be allowed to shoot wolves from planes when there are emergencies and packs of wolves are roaming through villages, threatening kids and eating alive family pets while they are chained, or when there is the danger people will be unable to find adequate meat due to excessive wolf preditation.

It is hard for people who have not been to Alaska to grasp how remote and inaccessible many of our small villages are; aerial hunting is the only practical way to address such emergencies in the bush. This was NOT a hunting issue; it was a prey management issue. I think it highly unlikely that Palin has participated in any aerial predator management hunts.

What about Palin’s funding for students with special needs?

It is true that the Alaska State Legislature increased funding for Special Needs education this year; this was on the recommendation of a special education task force that Palin set up. When Palin took office in 2006, the state was spending about $27,000 a year per child. The budget she signed this year raised that funding to about $49,000 per child. In three years, the amount will rise to about $74,000, which is roughly equal to the yearly per-child cost of educating special needs children.

So, yes, there was an increase; however, since the increase in funding for educating students with special needs doesn't yet cover the cost, there will be no improvement in services. And, given the inflation we are seeing, by the time the amount of funding covers the current cost, the cost will be higher! (The deficit in funding is made up by shifting funds for general education to special needs education.)

Since having declared herself an advocate for children with special needs, I expect Palin will start taking a leading role in improving services and funding.

The reduction in the Wasilla property tax rate didn't reduce education funding. School funding is the responsibility of the State Legislature. The Borough (county) contributes about 25% from BOROUGH property taxes. City property taxes pay for city government and services, not schools.

What about charging rape victims for tests?

Yes, during Palin's mayorship it was the policy of the City of Wasilla to have rape victim's insurance pay for their rape tests. When this was brought to the attention of a member of the State Legislature, he authored legislation, which was passed, making this practice illegal. At that time, the media reported that Palin's Police Chief fought this legislation, saying it would cost the City $4,000 to $15,000 to pay for rape tests.

I don't know why Police Chief Fannon said it would cost $4,000 to $15,000 unless he had already billed women that much; however, the City is saying that it can't find any evidence anyone was ever charged. (Unfortunately, former Police Chief Fannon is not answering questions.) Mayor Palin reviewed all department budgets line by line; I find it hard to believe that Palin wasn't aware of this issue, especially when Cheif Fannon was being quoted in the press about it.

I find it amusing that campaign operatives who couldn't even have found Wasilla on a map a not long ago now profess to know all about what was going on here during Palin's mayorship up to 12 years ago!

This is a link to a video on the rape kits issue:

_ HYPERLINK http://www.wasillaproject.com/

Why do Alaskans favor drilling in the pristine areas of Alaska?
Does Sarah?

Like most Alaskans, Sarah Palin accepts the necessity of drilling in ANWR.

Let's put drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) into perspective. If Alaska was superimposed over the lower 48 states, the Aleutian chain would extend west into the Pacific Ocean beyond San Diego, the southeastern panhandle would be in northern Florida, and I'd be somewhere in the midwest. So, do I object to drilling in northern Minnesota? No. Put this way, do you?

Do I want the drilling pad to be kept as small as possible? YES! Prudhoe Bay IS ugly: very, very ugly! But what's our choice? The reality is that drilling isn't pretty, but we need oil. Where else are we going to get oil? Shall we pay through the nose to get it from foreigners?

The Anchorage Daily News characterizes Palin as "a very pale shade of green." Some say that the only thing green about her is her lack of experience.

What about Wasilla’s Multi-use Sports Complex?

Mayor Palin has taken credit for having built the Wasilla Multi-use Sports Complex, so it seems to me that she should take the responsibility for its costs. When Palin ran for Mayor part of her platform was infrastructure improvements and small government. The Mayor controls the agenda of the City Council. She put bonding for a sports complex on the agenda and she encouraged the Council to pass it so that the voters could vote on it.

She did this knowing that passage of these bonds would make it impossible for the City to bond for any other project (like the sewage treatment plant) for many years. The bonds and increase in sales tax passed with a margin of under 20 votes. Palin then directed the construction of this complex before clear title to the land had been obtained; settling the title issue has cost us about $1.3 million so far.

How would you characterize Palin in one sentence?

I consider Palin a very successful, extremely attractive and charismatic social conservative who has campaigned on—or put aside—her core values as was politically expedient and who has overseen expanded government and budgets that were financed with tax increases, borrowing and earmark appropriations.

Other various questions

•Yes, Palin received $17,000 "per diem" for living in her house rather
than in the Governor's mansion. This was legal.

•Yes, the AP reports that the taxpayers of Alaska paid over $21,000 for travel expenses to send the Palin children to events.

•Wasilla has a strong mayor form of government; the mayor is full-time and
is paid $75k (now, $64-68 then), significantly more than the local average
income. The Administrator Mayor Palin hired to run Wasilla (pop. 4,800-5,400)
was also full-time and paid well by local standards ($50k).

•In 2006, Palin won 114,697 (48.33%) to 97,238 (40.07%) for governor in a three-way race.

•I've been repeatedly asked if I could verify the accuracy of a racist, sexist comment that is being attributed to Palin. I cannot either confirm or deny that she made this crude comment.

•Her husband (Todd Palin) was a member of the Alaskan Independence Party (not Sarah); she did attend the AIP convention in 1994. AIP party officials have retracted their statement that Palin was a member at one time.

•Yes, Palin’s husband is part Alaska Native (Yup'ik Eskimo)

•Palin’s children attend public schools. Wasilla High's enrollment is approaching 1,300.

•According to Wikipedia, Sarah Palin attended four colleges and took five yrs to complete a Bachelor of Science degree in Communication-Journalism in 1987. For more info on her college years go to:

_ HYPERLINK http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2008/09/05/palin_well_traveled_during_her_college_years/

•Yes, the Palins were members, until 2002, of the evangelical and non-denominational Wasilla Assembly of God church, where some speak in tongues. This church was the largest church in the area at the time and among the most politically involved; however, it was/is not a part of any of the local church-sponsored organizations (Food Bank, Valley Christian Coalition, Family Promise, etc.). Now she attends the non-denominational evangelical, though not Pentecostal or charismatic, Wasilla Bible Church.

While in Juneau, Palin attends an Assemblies of God church. More information about her church affiliations can be found at:

_ HYPERLINK http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122048406528596987.html?mod=special_page_campaign2008_leftbox

•No, the photo of Sarah in a bikini with a rifle is not real; it was a photoshop job.

•She said "no thanks" to the "Bridge to Nowhere" only after Congress had abandoned it and had agreed to let Alaska keep the $223 million anyway. The money went into the State's transportation budget pot.

•The deal with the jet is that Palin TRIED to sell it on ebay, but it didn't sell, so she sold it through a broker, at a loss.

•Yes, I did use KidsVoting one year (1996), but after that developed a more specialized and localized program which also covered local and state offices and was based on Alaska Voter Registration documents and used actual sample ballots.

About Ethics

•It's true: the man she blew the whistle on when she chaired the Alaska Oil & Gas Conservation Commission, Randy Ruedrick, is STILL the state chair of the Alaska Republican Party. No party reforms have been made.

•It was the FBI that brought indictments against Alaska’s corrupt legislators; Palin had no role in this whatsoever.

•The ethics legislation which was passed was championed by a bipartisan coalition led by the State Senate President, Lyda Green, a Republican and an early mentor of Palin with whom Palin now spars and has sought to unseat.

"Troopergate"

Troopergate is about an abuse of power and violation of Alaska's ethics law. This spring Palin fired Alaska's top cop, Walt Monegan. He served at her pleasure and she had every legal right to fire him. An independent legislative investigator, however, determined that prior to the firing, Palin, her husband, and members of her staff abused their power by pressuring Monegan to fire Palin's sister's ex-husband, a State Trooper.

The report says that Palin "knowingly permitted a situation to continue where impermissible pressure was placed on several subordinates in order to advance a personal agenda," that she violated the ethics law, and abused her power. The independent investigator's report was released by the Legislative Council of eight Republicans and four Democrats. A review of the investigator's report can be found at:

_ HYPERLINK http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/11/us/politics/11trooper.html?_r=1&th&emc=th&oref=slogin
Had Palin initiated reforms, rather than attacked one rogue trooper, there would have been no "Troopergate." A piece about what Palin could have done—but didn't—to reform the troopers can be found at:

_ HYPERLINK http://www.adn.com/opinion/comment/story/560649.html

My errors and omissions (Factcheck identified these AFTER I reported them.)

•Contrary to some reports, Palin did not endorse ANY of the candidates in the race for Mayor of Wasilla after she was term-limited out. I should have identified Faye Palin (one of the candidates) as Sarah Palin's STEP mother-in-law.

•Laura Chase, Palin's campaign manager when Palin first ran for mayor, has convinced me that Palin had intended from the outset to hire an Administrator and was not "pushed to hire this administrator by party power-brokers", as I stated.

Forwarding/editing/blogging

Yes, you may forward my email to your friends and others who you think might be interested in its contents; thank you so much for asking! PLEASE DO NOT CHANGE IT OR EDIT IT IN ANY WAY, and that also means please DO NOT remove my name and email address!

If you want something shorter, write your own white paper and put YOUR name on it.

This may seem strange, but I'd rather you plagiarized me than quoted me out of context.

I remain very conflicted about giving permission to post my email on a website. I don't have time to check out all the blogs and websites that have requested permission to post it. Yet, I don't want to penalize the considerate and conscientious people who ask when so many (800+ I'm told) have not.

So, I am not going to give permission, but I am also not going to do anything if someone posts it without my permission. How you introduce what you post will influence how it is read. I tried to write a balanced piece; I hope you will respect that intent. I would prefer that you post the Addendum as well if you chose to post my original email.

I hope that I have adequately answered your questions and been a help to you in deciding which ticket you want to vote for. In this imperfect world there are no perfect candidates--unless one wants to run for office oneself!

Bottom-line is: Is Sarah Palin the person you want second in line for the presidency and able to handle our present financial crisis and two wars, if necessary?

I encourage you to get involved in the campaign of whichever candidate you support. The best decisions are made when people are informed and everyone participates. Hope lives so long as good people don't give up doing what they can to make this a better world. As someone who emailed me said, "It takes each of us to make a difference for all of us."

Anne Kilkenny
November 5, 2008

More info on David Cohn, banquet keynote speaker

2009-02-22T22:26:00.026-09:00

The image at left is off David Cohn's online resume. Click through to find clips of his work, his social media experience, and the citizen journalism and crowdsourcing efforts he has been involved with.

"Our mission is to make sure that journalism survives the death of so many of its institutions."-- Spot.us founder David Cohn

Spot.us is a nonprofit project of the Center for Media Change launched by David Cohn. He explains it:
We are an open source project, to pioneer “community funded reporting.” Through Spot.Us the public can commission journalists to do investigations on important and perhaps overlooked stories. All donations are tax deductible and if a news organization buys exclusive rights to the content, your donation will be reimbursed. Otherwise, all content is made available to all through a Creative Commons license. It’s a marketplace where independent reporters, community members and news organizations can come together and collaborate.
Cohn further explains the concept via YouTube video from the October, 2008 News Innovation conference at City University of New York.
Digidave, his ongoing blog about journalism and where it's headed.
David Cohn interviewing Leonard Witt of Representative Journalism.

Alaska Press Club J-Week March 26-29, 2009

2009-02-20T08:29:00.003-09:00

This just in! Here's the latest on J-Week...

DATES:

Thursday, March 26th: Evening Reception
Friday, March 27th: Daytime Workshops, Evening Panel Discussion
Saturday, March 28th: Daytime Workshops, Awards Banquet.
Sunday, March 29th: Morning Workshops hosted at local news media outlets.

LOCATION: Most workshops and the banquet will be held at the Anchorage Senior Center. But a few workshops will be hosted at local news media outlets.

J-WEEK THEME:

ALASKA JOURNALISM IN TRANSITION: Finding New Ways to Make a Difference in Your Community.

Alaska journalists, like their counterparts across the nation, wonder what the future holds. How much of journalism as we know it today will exist tomorrow? How do we keep from becoming dinosaurs, yet evolve to keep alive the values that help us make a difference in the communities we serve? Many of this year's workshops will explore how to turn today's challenges into opportunities. Come to learn, reflect and recharge. And then go home to make a difference in your community.

WORKSHOP FEES: J-Week is FREE to Alaska Press Club members. Annual membership is $25 for working journalists. Daily Rate: $30 a day for non-members. $10 for students enrolled in high school or college. No charge for Anchorage Senior Citizen Center members.

BANQUET: Doors open at the Senior Center at 6:45pm. $30.00 in advance. Tickets at the door and for non-members: $35.00. To reserve tickets, email: rhonda9hats@mac.com.

BANQUET KEYNOTE: DAVID COHN. Written for Wired, Seed, Columbia Journalism Review and The New York Times. Founder of Spot.us, a non-profit that explores new models to pay for investigative reporting and public service journalism that has fallen by the wayside as mainstream media struggles to stay in the black.

PRESENTERS LINED UP SO FAR:

RICK BOWMER. Veteran photojournalist who works out of the AP Bureau in Portland. Bowmer has made the jump from still photography to incorporating video in AP?s multi-media efforts.

BILL DRUMMOND. Professor at University of California at Berkeley Covered the civil rights movement at the Louisville Courier-Journal. At the Los Angeles Times, worked as a local reporter, a bureau chief in New Delhi and Jerusalem and later a Washington correspondent. Founding editor of NPR?s Morning Edition. Currently researching ways to reduce stress in newsrooms.

ROBERT MEYEROWITZ. Snedden Professor at UAF. Former editor of the Anchorage Press. Worked for the Associated Press in Nicaragua and covered the civil war in El Salvador for National Public Radio.

CLARK MISCHLER. Well known Alaska photographer will present a workshop on photography basics, thay even experienced photojournalists say they find helpful.

LISA MARGONELLI. Writes about the global culture and economy of energy. Her book about the oil supply chain, Oil On the Brain: Petroleum's Long Strange Trip to Your Tank, was published by Nan Talese/Doubleday in 2007.

DEBORAH POTTER. Former television network news correspondent and founder of News Lab.

ED SCHOENFELD. News Director of Coast Alaska. Back for an encore. Will be developing sessions tooled to the needs of Alaska?s radio journalists.

PATRICK YACK. Current Atwood Fellow and leader of Florida?s highly successful open meetings and records movement.

More speakers, workshops and information to follow soon.

J-Week is coming up in March

2009-02-20T05:23:00.003-09:00

The dates are set for March 26-28 (Thursday through Saturday), 2009.

Tune in for more details about J-Week.

In the meanwhile, you can join us in the social mediasphere on:

Twitter

Facebook

MySpace

Friend, follow, fan!

Obama, Bush, Clinton & Lincoln inaugurals as word clouds

2009-01-21T21:44:00.004-09:00

A friend sent me this link to ReadWriteWeb,which created a word cloud of the Obama inaugural address, and provides it alongside Bush's, Clinton's and Lincoln's inaugurals. Words used the most appear largest.

It's amazing what pictures technology can paint.

Deadline extended

2009-01-20T10:47:00.002-09:00

The deadline on the Alaska Press Club annual contest entry has been extended until Wednesday, Jan. 28. Again, have your entries postmarked. We need to have them in hand on Friday, Feb. 6.

You can also bring them to University of Alaska Anchorage, Department of Journalism and Public Communications, in the Professional Studies Building, Room 203F. Call me first to make sure I'm here, 786-4194. I'm not here Monday or Wednesday afternoons.
Thanks.

First Amendment Award renamed after Alaska journalists

2009-01-20T00:51:00.000-09:00

Written by Susan B. Andrews and John Creed

Note to readers: Do you have someone in mind for a First Amendment Award for 2009? Nominations close on the same day as our contest deadline on January 21, 2009. Please email nomination letters to board secretary Kathleen McCoy at kmccoy@gci.net.

KOTZEBUE-Alaska’s largest press association has renamed its esteemed First Amendment Award after two crusading journalists who changed the course of state history in the latter half of the 20th Century

In 1962, Tom Snapp and Howard Rock started a modest statewide newspaper, Tundra Times, which would prove central to the run-up and then passage nine years later of the largest Native American land claims in U.S. history.

The Alaska Press Club board in early December voted to re-name its annual First Amendment Award after these two courageous newspapermen.

The late Tom Snapp, a Korean War veteran and native of Virginia who would never lose his lilting southern drawl, first came to Alaska to visit his sister with no plans to stay. As a journalist, Snapp took a keen interest in Alaska, including Native issues. The late Howard Weyahok Rock grew up in the remote Inupiaq Eskimo village of Point Hope in Northwest Arctic Alaska, located a couple hundred miles up the coast from Kotzebue. An Army Air Force veteran, Rock served in North Africa during World War II.

Rock was a lifelong artist who knew little about journalism when he and Snapp launched Tundra Times in Fairbanks in the early 1960s. But only if Rock would be the paper’s editor and publisher, said Massachusetts philanthropist Dr. Henry S. Forbes, a descendent of American author Ralph Waldo Emerson, would Forbes capitalize the project.

Snapp, Rock Joined Forces

Snapp agreed to train Rock in newspaper publishing. The pair created the first issue of Tundra Times after setting up shop in Snapp’s sister’s trailer in Alaska’s small, rough-hewn Interior city of Fairbanks, where the paper would publish throughout Rock’s editorship but eventually move to Anchorage.

In the fight for passage in the U.S. Congress of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act of 1971, Tundra Times grew into a potent and unifying voice for Alaska Natives. Rock’s little newspaper picked up enormous political clout in the 1960s throughout Alaska and in Washington, DC.

ANCSA recognized Native land claims and made way for construction of the trans-Alaska oil pipeline from Prudhoe Bay to Valdez. Signed into law by President Richard Nixon on Dec. 18, 1971, ANCSA granted Alaska’s Indians, Eskimos and Aleuts title to 44 million acres of land. For lands lost in the settlement, Natives received $962.5 million to capitalize some 206 village corporations and 13 Native regional corporations, which today continue to wield considerable social and economic influence in Alaska.

Neither Snapp nor Rock ever made much money for themselves in the journalism profession. Indeed, they were lucky to cover living expenses-if that-as they dedicated themselves to shoe-leather, against-the-grain journalism in an era when reporters still filed their stories using manual typewriters. The age of computer and Internet ubiquity, round-the-clock news cycles, and a media-saturated society was still decades away in Alaska as elsewhere in the 1960s, 1970s, and even into the 1980s.

Making History

The two journalists had history on their side. They worked feverishly in their craft at a time of dramatic social and economic change in Alaska and nationwide. That afforded them the opportunity to shape, not just report on, major events in Alaska history.

Fearlessly, they advanced the values so crucial to a functioning democracy and more equal society, particularly freedom of the press and freedom of speech, two of the five freedoms guaranteed in the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

Lael Morgan worked for Rock and wrote a short history of Tundra Times as a 1972 Alicia Patterson Foundation fellow.

“Starting a Native paper at this time was very rough because there was distrust against us,” said Rock for Morgan’s 1972 article. “It took a lot of nerve, really. We had things thrown through the door at night, and I was threatened with beatings and things like that, but somehow we just kept right on going.”

“We got into all kinds of trouble along the way,” added Snapp. “One thing, the utility company asked for a much larger deposit because none of the incorporators had a credit reference. Once when I placed a long distance call that cost more than $100, the operator called back and told us we had to come down and pay the bill at once . . . in the middle of the night!

“Then there was the cost of printing. Outside I’d paid $3,000 for printing 32 times a year. Here, for 24 issues, they wanted $28,000.

“We were stepping on some awfully big toes,” said Snapp.

First Amendment Nominations Now Open

The Alaska Press Club board believes Tom Snapp and Howard Rock embody the kind of spirit and belief in journalism and democracy the press club seeks to spotlight in fellow Alaskans every year. The organization seeks to recognize courageous journalists or non-journalists who are fearless when promoting or exemplifying First Amendment values.

The press club inaugurated its First Amendment Award in 2007 by recognizing Alaska’s premier First Amendment attorney, D. John McKay, after McKay’s decades of advancing and defending press freedom and freedom of speech on behalf of countless Alaskans and media organizations.

In 2008 the now-former Anchorage Daily News political cartoonist Peter Dunlap-Shohl took home the club’s second First Amendment Award.

Who will be 2009’s First Amendment Award recipient? The Alaska Press Club is soliciting any and all interested Alaskans to participate in this decision. You do not have to be an Alaska Press Club member to nominate individuals or organizations for the 2009 Snapp Rock First Amendment Award. Click here for the details.

The Alaska Press Club will present the Tom Snapp Howard Rock First Amendment Award at its annual awards dinner on Saturday, March 28, as the final event of the club’s annual journalism conference, often called “J-Week.” In 2009, J-Week is scheduled for March 26-28 at the Anchorage Senior Center. Journalists, student journalists, bloggers, citizen journalists and the general public are welcome to attend any and all conference activities, including the awards dinner.

Virginia’s Tom Snapp Meets Alaska’s Howard Rock

Like many who migrate to the Far North from the Lower 48, Tom Snapp never expected to make Alaska his home. Snapp was merely visiting the state while on break from journalism graduate school at the University of Missouri. But the local paper was desperate for a reporter, so he hired on. By November 1961, Snapp found himself covering a statewide Native conference in Barrow, Alaska’s farthest north settlement. Coincidence or not, Rock and Snapp were roommates in Barrow.

Toward the end of the Barrow meeting, Snapp kept hearing his own name popping up amid the Yup’ik and Inupiaq languages being spoken at the conference. As a newspaper reporter, Snapp was more than curious about his name getting repeated over and over.

Native leaders were discussing the possibility of Snapp working with Rock, certainly an accomplished artist but decidedly not experienced in journalism. But Rock had been destined for distinction since birth.

Village Shaman Predicts Newborn’s Fate

Indeed, when Rock was born in a sod igloo in Pt. Hope in 1911, “a shaman predicted that this boy would become a great man,” writes Rock’s biographer Lael Morgan.

That prophecy was thought curious among villagers, given that Rock was born a frail child who preferred art and books over the community’s mainstay for survival, hunting and fishing. In fact, Rock would go on to study art at the University of Washington where he would develop admirable artistry and writing skills.

Nevertheless, his most enduring legacy would not take flight until he was a middle-aged man in his early 50s.

At the Barrow conference in 1961, Eskimo leaders wanted Snapp and Rock to start some sort of publication focusing on Native issues. Native leaders did not believe the Alaska press was giving their issues a fair shake when mentioned at all.

For example, in the late 1950s and early 1960s in Alaska, the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission and its head, Edward Teller, were pushing a bizarre scheme called Project Chariot. The AEC wanted to blow out a deep-water harbor between Kivalina and Pt. Hope in Northwest Alaska by detonating up to six thermonuclear bombs.

The people of Point Hope fiercely opposed Project Chariot. They feared such a potent nuclear blast-many times more powerful and than the atomic bombs the Americans dropped on Japan during World War II-would contaminate traditional fishing and hunting grounds with radioactive waste while causing unimaginable, devastation to their traditional homeland.

Not to mention the potential for radioactive fallout to be carried by prevailing winds hundreds if not thousands of miles from the blast site.

Powerful Forces Back Project Chariot

Nevertheless, representatives of major institutions in Alaska passionately endorsed Chariot, including: business, political and religious leaders; Anchorage Times publisher Bob Atwood ("It is a wilderness with no trees, no nothing!” wrote Atwood. “Nobody would want to live there."); Fairbanks Daily News-Miner publisher C.W. Snedden; and former University of Alaska President William R. Wood, whose administration fired two professors after they publicly opposed Chariot as dangerous and wrong-headed. (One of the professors, William O. Pruitt, in order to find work in his field, was forced to emigrate to Canada, where he eventually became a citizen and prominent scientist.)

In news and editorial pages both, Alaska’s press cheerleaded Chariot. In those days, Alaska Native viewpoints received scant attention in the state’s existing press.

According to author Dan O’Neill’s history on Project Chariot called The Firecracker Boys, News-Miner reporter Albro Gregory repeatedly referred to the homeland of the Inupiat in and around the proposed Chariot site as “this bleak outpost.” In the Aug. 21, 1959, issue of the News-Miner, Gregory proclaimed, with no evidence beyond AEC’s claims in its press releases, that “these Natives, largely living a primitive life, would not be disturbed by the proposed action or suffer future ill effects.”

The reporting and editorializing by Alaska’s traditional press on Project Chariot had compelled Alaska Natives and a budding environmental movement in Fairbanks, led by pilots/conservationists Celia Hunter and Ginny Wood, to find alternative ways to circulate another point of view.

“When the top blew off the reactor at the Soviet Union’s Chernobyl nuclear power plant in 1986, the explosion released 40 million to 86 million curies, according to one estimate,” writes O’Neill. “But the Project Chariot detonation, at its smallest configuration of 280 kilotons, would have vented fission products into the atmosphere totaling 1.5 billion curies . . . That much radiation would equal the amount vented by seventeen to thirty-eight Chernobyl accidents.”

Project Chariot became a major motivator to establish a statewide newspaper outside Alaska’s existing political and economic power structure. In October 1962, less than a year after the Barrow conference, Snapp and Rock launched Tundra Times, which Rock would edit and publish in Fairbanks until his death in 1976.

Snapp Instructs Rock

Snapp and Rock struck a deal when launching the Tundra Times.

“I said that I would train Howard in all phases of journalism, but after a year and a day I would leave, and that’s what happened,” Snapp explained in a 1989 documentary on Rock’s life called Portraits of Leadership: Chief Katlian and Howard Rock.

“After a little while, he was better than I was on make-up (page design) . . . with his artist background,” Snapp said. “The make-up was very good in that paper.”

As a Tundra Times reporter, Snapp wrote about the environmental dangers of Project Chariot. After Snapp left the Tundra Times, he continued in various journalism ventures in Fairbanks until in 1970 he launched the All-Alaska Weekly, a feisty independent paper that would grow into a fearless, often hard-hitting local institution over the next 17 years.

Tundra Times never quite regained the same prominence it enjoyed under Rock after his death in 1976. (He died within days of putting out his final issue.) As Alaska modernized, other technology such as radio and satellite television began offering more communications option beyond print journalism, especially in rural Alaska. Other regional newspapers sprouted as well.

Consequently, the need for a Tundra Times-like statewide newspaper gradually lessened and finally officially died in 1997 after a 35-year run, according to the website of Barrow’s Tuzzy Consortium Library, where the newspaper’s archives are kept.

Remembrance

In declining health, Snapp sold his beloved All-Alaska Weekly in 1987. A series of publishers tried to make a go of the paper until each ran out of operating funds, including Tom Alton (today an editor at UAF’s Alaska Native Language Center); Brian Rogers (currently University of Alaska Fairbanks interim chancellor); Andy Williams (former News-Miner city editor); and Joe Sitton (former state legislator). Snapp’s paper finally folded in the early 1990s.

Once an unstoppable fireball of energy, in later life Snapp suffered health problems including heart disease, diabetes, and a series of strokes. Snapp died in 1995 at age 66. He was about the same age as Rock when he passed away after a battle with cancer nearly 20 years earlier. Yet never to be forgotten.

Susan B. Andrews and John Creed are journalism/humanities professors at Chukchi College, a Kotzebue branch of the University of Alaska. Creed is president of the Alaska Press Club board.

Check out this journalist's blog for some inspiration

2009-01-19T23:50:00.008-09:00

This personal blog by journalist Suzanne Yada is worth a look see for its professionalism and forward-thinking. She was working as a copyeditor in Visalia, CA., then decided to go back to school at San Jose State University to become better at journalism. She is now a journalism major and a business minor. Two of her posts, offering New Year's resolution advice to student journalists, got batted around on Twitter, where I first saw it. Here's the links to her two posts:

Resolutions for journalism students, part 1, BECOME INVALUABLE.
Resolutions for journalism students, part 2, NETWORK LIKE MAD.

Reading her tips for student journalists makes any working journalist rethink his or her own toolkit.

I also think her site is worth taking a look at for its architecture. Note the links to social networks, and her link journalism below that. I'll find out more about Publish2, where her links to articles about the changing field of journalism are posted. She's inspiring in an age when we can use some of that.

More Twitter

2009-01-14T10:46:00.014-09:00

Don't miss the specific Columbia University School of Journalism podcast for journalists interested in Twitter, referenced in the blog post below this one. It's fresh, just uploaded to their site on Jan. 8. And once you know what Twitter is, there are sites out there to help you master this new tool.

Here's a site called Twitips devoted to explaining Twitter, including useful Twitter etiquette, how not to waste time on Twitter, good Twitter apps for iPhones etc etc.

Also, here is another Web site with a post devoted to Twitter apps, like how to post photos. I'm new here, can't recommend, but have no doubt some speed demons have already been here. And here's an ever more basic, from-the-ground-up explainer on how to get started on Twitter.

A briefing for journalists on Twitter

2009-01-14T09:23:00.011-09:00

If you've heard a lot about Twitter but can't figure out why anyone would bother, here's a link to a recent podcast from Columbia University School of Journalism, defined as a "briefing for journalists on Twitter."

Here's their print intro to it:

The popular micro-blogging service is used by many journalists. We hear how it helped in covering the Mumbai attacks; provided a way to communicate during an LA earthquake; and even helped free an American student from an Egyptian jail.

But there's still a lot of confusion and skepticism about it among most journalists:

How can journalists use it in their day-to-day work?

What are best practices for journalists?

Whose work is worth, in Twitter terms, worth "following?"

Find answers to all of these questions via this webcast featuring several technology journalists and Twitter experts.

So again, here is the link to listen to the podcast -- it is 90 minutes or so, so you might want to download it to iTunes, put it on your iPod and take a walk while you listen.

Sunshine Week needs volunteers

2009-01-11T19:17:00.001-09:00

Sunshine Week, the annual spotlight on open access to government documents, needs some volunteers to gather information about what documents are available online.
Please contact me at paola@uaa.alaska.edu.
Thanks.

Annual contest

2009-01-08T09:41:00.003-09:00

The annual contest's deadline is Wednesday, Jan. 21. You have to have your entries postmarked by that date. We'll sort entries in early February and get them off to judges very soon because the conference is March 26-March 28 this year, earlier than last year. See the press club's site for details.

Geo Beach hosts new series on the History Channel

2008-04-24T20:09:00.003-08:00

Geo Beach, perhaps best known for his column, hosts the new weekly series "Tougher in Alaska with Geo Beach" on the History channel, airing nationally on Thursdays at 10 p.m. ET/PT.

Beach, a former logger, firefighter and commercial fisherman, also narrates each hour-long episode and receives credit for additional writing and cameras.

During his journalism career, Beach has won both the Alaska Press Club's award for best radio commentaries for his NPR commentaries and the Suzan Nightingale Best Columnist Award for Large Publications for his "Top o' the Planet" columns in the Anchorage Daily News.

"Beach demonstrates an exhaustive knowledge and understanding of Alaska," says former Los Angeles Times and NPR reporter Bill Drummond, a professor at the School of Journalism at University of California - Berkeley.

More details at http://www.history.com/minisites/tougher-in-alaska

Check out Jill Homer's blog about snow cycling

2008-03-03T20:48:00.002-09:00

Jill Homer is an Alaska reporter based in Juneau. She is doing the Iditarod Trail Invitational.

Her blog is arcticglass.blogspot.com/

KRUA interviews UAA Chancellor Fran Ulmer

2008-01-17T16:23:00.000-09:00

University of Alaska Anchorage Chancellor Fran Ulmer will be on KRUA-FM 88.1 Friday morning at 8 taking callers' questions. Call 907-786-6805 to be live on the air and chatting with the chancellor.

Postmark deadline for Press Club contest

2008-01-17T16:21:00.001-09:00

Monday, Jan. 21 is a federal holiday (Martin Luther King Jr. Day) so get your entries postmarked by Tuesday, Jan. 22.

Thanks.

Alaska Professional Communicators' annual contest

2008-01-17T16:16:00.000-09:00

See how your work compares with the best!

Have you done something at work this past year that you're proud of? Ever wonder how it would stack up against the best in Alaska and in the nation? Then the Alaska Professional Communicators' 2008 contest is for you.
Alaska Professional Communicators, formerly Alaska Press Women, is made up of both women and men in journalism, writing, broadcasting, public relations, and related fields. For more than 30 years the organization has offered a contest in many categories of communication, with winning entries going to the national competition run by the National Federation of Press Women.
Again this year, the contest will be open to all Alaska resident communicators, not just APC members. The contest includes 78 categories for print journalists, book authors, broadcasters, researchers, and more. There's a separate Collegiate Contest for undergraduate college students.
Winners get feedback from recognized experts from outside Alaska, as well as certificates and recognition from their peers. Entry fees are low--$20 for APC members, $30 for nonmembers.
The deadline for entering most categories is Feb. 8.
Books and related categories are due Jan. 31. Complete contest information.

A worrisome story about the newspaper industry

2008-01-09T12:45:00.000-09:00

Miami Herald outsources some advertising production to India

Bob Martinson

2007-12-14T09:19:00.000-09:00

Hey Paola, I finally got onto this. It wasn't recognizing my address until now. The Outdoor reporting judges will come from Outside Magazine and they are excited about doing it, Bob.

SPJ has a useful blog about FOI issues

2007-11-21T11:24:00.000-09:00

Check the SPJ FOI Blog, tell people in the state about it, and send me news from Alaska that I can get posted there.

Alaska Broadcasters Goldies Announced

2007-11-08T23:21:00.001-09:00

Here are the journalism-related winners from the Alaska Broadcasters Association Goldie Awards given out on Saturday. For a list of all winners, journalism and otherwise, click here.

Radio News Story Division 2

KBBI
“Caribou Hills Fire Update”
Mike Mason – News Director

Radio News Story Division 1

KBYR
“Governor Palin Appointments”
Kathy Phillips – News Director & Anchor

TV News Story Division 2

KXD
“The Alaska Gasline Inducement Act”
Giacomo Accardo – Reporter & Producer

TIE TV NEWS STORY DIVISION 1*****
TV News Story Division 1

KTUU
“FBI Raid”
Steve MacDonald – Reporter
Brad Hillwig – Photographer

TV News Story Division 1

KTVA
“MatMaid: Trytten Dairy Farm”
Grace Jang – Reporter
Ken Fankhauser – Photographer

Radio News Feature Single Division 2

KYUK
“Steam Heat – The Yupik Way”
Angela Denning-Barnes – News Director

Radio News Feature Single Division 1

KFQD
“KFQD Newscast”
John Owens – Newscaster
Joron Bourque – Reporter

TV News Feature Single Entry Division 2

KTVF
“Guitar Man”
Chelsey Schell – Reporter/Videographer/Editor

TV News Feature Single Entry Division 1

KTUU
“Bethel JROTC: The Right Stuff”
Rhonda McBride – Reporter
Scott Jensen – Photographer & Editor

Radio News Feature Series Division 2

KCAW
“Starring: An Alaskan Tradition”
Melissa Marconi Wentzel – Reporter

TV News Feature Series Division 1

KTUU
“Soldier Baby”
Jill Burke – Reporter
Kyle Stalder – Photographer & Editor

Radio Breaking News Story Division 2

KFMJ
“Prince Rupert, B.C. Flooding”
Stuart Whyte – Reporter
Anita Hales – News Director & Reporter

Radio Breaking News Story Division 1

KENI
“Condominium Fire”
Kurt Haider – Reporter
Doug McCullough – Producer

TV Breaking News Story Division 2

KXD
“Fire”
Tracy Gladden – Anchor & Reporter

TV Breaking News Story Division 1

KTUU
“Park Place Apartment Fire”
Megan Baldino -- Reporter
Daniel Hernandez – Photographer

Radio News Program Division 2

KMXT
“Alaska Fisheries Report: June 7, 2007”
Casey Kelly – Host & Producer

Radio News Program Division 1

KFQD
“Newsday AM”
Mike Pataky – Host
Billy Hackett – Co-Host/Producer

TV Evening Newscast Division 2

KTVF
“Fairbanks Evening News”
Billie Sundgren – News Anchor/News Director
Bob Miller – News Anchor
Darryl Lewis – Sports
Mike Shultz – Weather

TV Evening Newscast Division 1

KTUU
“KTUU – Late Edition”
Channel 2 News Team

Radio Public Affairs Program Division 2

KNOM
“Sounding Board – Domestic Violence & Sexual Assault”
KNOM News & Public Affairs Department

Radio Public Affairs Program Division 1

KNBA
KNBA Public Forum
“The In-migration of Rural Alaska”
Dixie Hutchinson – Host & Producer

TV Public Affairs Program Division 1

KTUU
“Ironwoman: The DeeDee Jonrowe Story”
John Tracy – Executive Producer
Scott Jensen – Producer/Photographer/Editor

Radio Sports News Story Division 2

KFMJ
“Laci Shoots – Announcers Go Wild!”
Bob Norton – Sportscaster
Clark Slanaker – Sportscaster
Bob Kern – Talent

Radio Sports News Story Division 1

KWHL
“Bob & Mark @ the Iditarod”
Bob Lester – Host
Mark Colavecchio – Host
Matthew “Alice” Collins – Producer
Jen Shevlin – Program Director

TV Sports News Story Division 2

KTVF
“Media Night Racing”
Darryl Lewis – Reporter & Editor
Ty Keltner – Videographer

TV Sports News Story Division 1

KTUU
“The Kusko 300: The Biggest Little Race”
Rhonda McBride – Reporter
Scott Jensen – Photographer/Editor

Radio Live Sports Event Division 2

KNOM
“ Iditarod Finish”
Paul Korchin – News Director & Announcer

Radio Live Sports Event Division 1

KFQD
“April 24: Aces vs. Condors”
Jack Michaels – Sportscaster
Chad Harrison – Producer

TV Live Sports Event Division 2

KFXF
Fox 7 Sports Presents College Hockey
“Notre Dame at Alaska”
Tanana Valley Television – Production
Carlson Center Video Production – Production
UA Department of Athletics – Executive Producer

TV Live Sports Event Division 1

KTUU
“Iditarod Start”
John Tracy – Executive Producer
Trent McNelly – Technical Producer
Tracy Sinclare – Producer
Shirley Enzor – Director

TV Best Use of Video Division 1

KTVA
“Fairview Park Revitalization”
Scott Favorite – Photojournalist

Radio Uniquely Alaskan Program Division 2

KVAK
“Valdez Fishing Report”
Laurie Prax – Interviewer
Sarah Brewer – Interviewer
Nelli Vanderburg – Interviewer
Yvette Morales – Interviewer

Radio Uniquely Alaskan Program Division 1

KNBA
“Listen to the Elders”
Phillip Blanchett -- Producer
Loren Dixon – Producer

TV Uniquely Alaskan Program Division 2

KXD
“Alaska Climate Change”
Giacomo Accardo – Reporter & Producer

TV Uniquely Alaskan Program Division 1

KTUU
“Iditarod Airforce”
Megan Baldino – Reporter
Scott Jensen – Photographer

Rhonda is staying on the Press Club board

2007-11-06T17:24:00.000-09:00

Hi,
Rhonda is the Alaska Press Club's vice president and is organizing the 2008 conference. She will stay on the board through April, in case you were wondering.
She's been doing a great job thus far.

Will there be anyone left?

2007-10-30T22:34:00.000-08:00

Well, with the announcement that Rhonda McBride is going to work for the state, I count at least four Alaskan journalists in the employ of Governor Sarah Palin.

I feel like starting a pool as to who'll be next....
.

Any interest...?

2007-10-13T22:29:00.000-08:00

I've been talking with some other bloggers around the state, a few of them reporters (past and present), about pitching a blogging seminar for next year's J-Week.

I'm thinking it might contain some nuts-and-bolts about how to get started as well as discussion on bloggers-as-journalists and the stickiness that arises when a reporter blogs.

Any interest?

Contest results

2007-10-05T09:05:00.000-08:00

If an entry says there are no results as of press time, it could be the results never arrived to the judge, or the judge did not return comments on time or at all. That happened with two big categories in the 2006 contest. If that happened to you and I'm not aware of it, please notify me as soon as possible.
More often, the judge just didn't get results back in time for the awards banquet, but they are returned and winners get their certificates.
I hope that helps.

A question about award judging...

2007-10-03T14:40:00.000-08:00

I got this e-mail this morning from a reporter who asked that I post it for discussion. I didn't have any answers for her, given this blog is all I do for the Press Club.

Feel free to chime in with the comments section and we can get a conversation going. Just keep it civil -- we all know how easy it is for internet comments to get insensitive and out of hand.

Hi Jay,

I just had a question that … concerns the Press Club awards. Every year there are categories that say "no results available as of press time" or something like that. If we pay entry fees and send in stories, it seems fair that we should at least get results, if not by the time of the banquet, certainly at some point. As far as we know, there are still no results for those categories.

Can you give us some insight? This question came up a lot, the question of what constitutes "good" reporting. The judges who say "none of these stories warranted an award" seems short sighted and frankly, ignorant, given that our logistics are so different in Alaska.

Ok, all of this rambling is to say, people are starting to feel that it isn't worth paying the entry fee to get absolutely no feedback, or to be criticized by people who have never tried to report in rural Alaska. Constructive criticism is great, but to slam a whole slew of reporters from small Alaska stations seems counter productive.

Links and questions...

2007-10-01T23:20:00.001-08:00

On the right I've put links to some Alaska news outlets, but it's not complete; please let me know of other news outlets I overlooked or don't know about. I'm especially foggy on commercial broadcast outlets with news in Southeast and Fairbanks (and may have missed some in Anchorage). Just reply to this post or e-mail me at jay.barrett@kmxt.org.

Regarding blogs... The New York Times and Anchorage Daily News have jumped into blogs with both feet, so blogs by reporters seems like a no-brainer. But what about independents? The question kind of gets to the heart of if bloggers are journalists. There are blogs more about commentary and punditry than about news... should their like be listed?

Questions, questions. I'm sure there'll be more.

###

Our blog

2007-10-01T14:01:00.000-08:00

I am looking for suggestions of what to make of our blog. Ideas are recent controversies or problems. For example, last week the Sitka Sentinel dealt with an issue about how the assembly had construed the open meeings law. They went into executive session, but never came out and voted on what they had discussed, which is what is supposed to happen.
I would like to see discussions and postings of events. Another recent example: Jim Avery, a University of Oklahoma professor of advertising who has done a lot of research and creative work around the world, was in Anchorage last week. We could have posted that and gotten more people from journalism or even from the business side of journalism to attend.

I'm excited about this blog, but our mission now is to tell people about it.

I'd also like to get more photos of Alaska journalists in action on the site and links to Alaska journalism Web sites or other media blogs.

Thanks!

2007-10-01T12:19:00.000-08:00

Jay,

Thanks for creating this Alaska Press Club Blog. Hopefully, we'll be able to use it to keep folks up to date about J-Week... and discuss journalistic issues that affect us all.

Thanks for stepping up to do this.

Rhonda McBride

Welcome

2007-10-01T01:14:00.000-08:00

Welcome to the new Alaska Press Club blog.

Paola will be posting here soon with what direction she'd like it to take, and I think it'll include having members post as well. Feel free to share your ideas in the comment section.

-- Jay

###

The Alaska Press Club

Take this survey, please!

J-Week 2010 Radio Track

THURSDAY, May 6 – APTI

FRIDAY, May 7 at APTI

FRIDAY, May 7 afteroon – Radio track moves to UAA

SATURDAY – Radio track continues at UAA

J-Week writing workshop leader provides story links for session

Alaska Press Club list of presenters for J-WEEK 2010

NY Times Blog, Bay Area, says this region is ground zero for nonprofit journalism

Poynter Institute visual journalist offers free workshop in Anchorage on April 16

Being an entrepreneurial journalist: more free training

Free Investigative Business Journalism workshop, Portland, May 7

Poynter visual journalist Sara Quinn will be visiting Atwood Professor

All expenses paid seminar on covering the 'Green Economy'

This is entry week for Alaska Press Club

Feb. 4 is deadline for Alaska Professional Communicator's 2010 contest

Alaska Press Club 2010 news

APC Board discussing Spring 2010 conference dates

2009 APC Board to meet Saturday, Aug. 29, 2009

Press Club Meeting: Board & Officers Election

Liveblogging J-WeekPanel DiscussionRural Alaskans on the Move

Liveblogging J-WeekPanel DiscussionOpen & Transparent Government: Fact or Fiction?

Liveblogging J-Week:Lunch with Anne Kilkenny

Liveblogging J-WeekNew MediaCommunity Funded Journalism

Liveblogging J-WeekPhotojournalismVideo vs. Still Photographs: A Walk in Two Worlds

Tom Snapp's family attends press club conference

AUDIO PODCAST: Gasline 101

AUDIO PODCAST: Beyond meetings, making goverment coverage come alive

AUDIO PODCAST: Panel - Photojournalism, Going to Extremes

Shout out to Erik Hill, ADN photographer who demo'd Sound Slides

AUDIO PODCAST: Lisa Margonelli - Mapping the maze of oil and gas

Thank the volcano gods, the keynote speaker made it out of Seattle, bound for Anchorage

AUDIO PODCAST: Robert Meyerowitz - The art of intimacy

AUDIO PODCAST: Clark Mishler-Elements of Photography

AUDIO PODCAST: Panel - Are we ready for the next big one?

Liveblogging J-WeekAlaskan Issues: Gasline 101

Liveblogging J-WeekAlaskan Issues:Mapping the Maze of Oil and Gas

Liveblogging J-Week: Rolling With the Punches

Liveblogging J-WeekPhotojournalism Panel

J-Week LivebloggingAlaskan Issues:Covering Native Corporations: It’s the People’s Business

J-Week LivebloggingAlaskan Issues Panel: Are We Ready for the Big One?

Conference Update 2: One presenter stranded, another offers teleconference session

Redoubt rumbles, J Week adjusts

Jay Rosen offers 12 links to think about status of journalism

Peter Dunlap-Shohl: Limits make you creative

More on Anne Kilkenny

More info on David Cohn, banquet keynote speaker

Alaska Press Club J-Week March 26-29, 2009

J-Week is coming up in March

Obama, Bush, Clinton & Lincoln inaugurals as word clouds

Deadline extended

First Amendment Award renamed after Alaska journalists

Check out this journalist's blog for some inspiration

More Twitter

A briefing for journalists on Twitter

Sunshine Week needs volunteers

Annual contest

Geo Beach hosts new series on the History Channel

Check out Jill Homer's blog about snow cycling

KRUA interviews UAA Chancellor Fran Ulmer

Postmark deadline for Press Club contest

Alaska Professional Communicators' annual contest

A worrisome story about the newspaper industry

Bob Martinson

SPJ has a useful blog about FOI issues

Alaska Broadcasters Goldies Announced

TIE TV NEWS STORY DIVISION 1*****TV News Story Division 1

Rhonda is staying on the Press Club board

Will there be anyone left?

Any interest...?

Contest results

A question about award judging...

Links and questions...

Our blog

Thanks!

Welcome

TIE TV NEWS STORY DIVISION 1*****
TV News Story Division 1