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.

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While my classmates were swept up in the throngs in Times Square Tuesday night, I was huddled around a woodstove and a radio with a gathering of Democrats in Alaska to hear the election returns. Everyone had watched President-elect Obama’s acceptance speech on TV just moments earlier and were exhilarated and tearful…and turning their hopes to the statewide returns, which came rolling in shortly thereafter.

But things didn’t turn out as the Alaska Dems had hoped. The challengers to Rep. Don Young and Sen. Ted Stevens didn’t generate enough votes to beat these longtime Republican leaders, even with the incumbents facing corruption scandals.

As New York transplant Jane Eidler said, “I’ve been living in Alaska for 33 years, and they have been my representatives.”  It seems that the risk of choosing new leadership was too great for a state that relies so heavily on federal dollars – money that Young and Stevens have reliably funneled into the state for years.

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Point Barrow, AK

Dear Colleagues:

I will be in Alaska for elections! I used to live in Sitka for many years, working at the community radio station, KCAW. It was glorious and I’m excited to go back, especially since the nation’s eye has turned to The Last Frontier lately.

My first task is to find former New Yorkers living there and interview them for an election walk-up piece. Yes, there really are transplanted New Yorkers living in the great white North (even though proper bagels do not exist anywhere outside the Lower 48).

This is for our News Service, and I’d like your input:  What would you like to ask an Alaskan New Yorker about the upcoming elections? Or about politics in general?

Please comment below or contact me directly with your ideas.

Thank you!

Valerie

p.s. That’s a little picture of me with a hummer in Barrow, at the edge of North Slope. It was midsummer at about 11:30 p.m., and the temperature was just below freezing. Behind me is sand, imprinted with polar bear bellies.

Forgive me as I toss one more post on the heap of Sarah Palin musings.  (I’m excited to read Philip Gourevitch’s piece in the New Yorker about her blazing emergence from the murk of Alaskan politics. Please comment if you’ve read it!)  I’m trying to form a story idea about Alaskan women in politics, since there’s a chance I’ll be in Alaska around election time.

I think this piece on CNN yesterday makes a good attempt to depict the range of Alaskan women.

The main point is clear – there’s not just one type of woman up there. There’s not just one type of anyone up there. Politics in Alaska are just as polarized as in the rest of the nation. There are conservationists vs. contractors. Commercial fisherman vs. charter fishermen. Subsistence hunters vs. aerial wolf shooters. And on and on.

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