Fundamentals of Interactive Journalism

Did I get your attention? (I’m totally capitalizing on Sarah Palin and Ted Stevens keeping people interested in Alaska. But I promise this will be my last Alaska post, because you’re probably tired of them.)

This week a film that I’ve had a hand in for years finally premiered – and it was worth the wait. In November 2005, my friend Ellen Frankenstein invited me to help her with an ambitious project called “Open Arms,” a documentary about women hunters in Alaska. Thus began a three-year odyssey, which for her is a testament to the value of following a story, and for me is a good lesson in patience.

Ellen Frankenstein films on remote Kruzoff Island.

We went out to Kruzoff Island with two friends and filmed a winter hunting trip in a seriously remote neck of the woods. (Think – no electricity and LOTS of spare batteries.) That trip affected me so deeply that I transformed my diary scrawlings into a piece for the Alaska Public Radio Network program “AK.”

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After a while, Ellen felt that the film was moving away from the “women” angle and was more about ethical eating in remote and rural areas, so she re-titled it “Eating Alaska.” She went all over Alaska learning about the way people eat, from Native Alaskans to New York transplants. And she explored what all those terms like “food miles” and “locavore” really mean to communities that have to fly milk and butter up from the Lower 48 at a crazy expense (a gallon of milk in the village of Barrow typically goes for about $9).

Ellen and her colleagues in the documentary world passed different cuts of the film back and forth, commenting and philosophizing about the way it was evolving. After I moved to New York I’d sometimes get a new DVD in the mail and would eagerly pop it in and phone her with my feedback. I have yet to see the final cut, but it premiered in Fairbanks and Sitka last week, and it was received very well. I was credited as an associate producer. Here’s a trailer:

The moral of this story is; if you have a good idea, pursue it like crazy. Too often we give up on sparks of inspiration because the road ahead looks so long. But what makes us good journalists is the tenacity to follow through on issues, and the flexibility to let the story take us where it may.