A blog by any other name ...

Anchorage radio mouth Dan Fagan has started an Alaska news/politics/opinion website/blog. It's called The Alaska Standard.

Here's what my buddy BJK over at the Press has to say about the new site:

 Alaska Standard’s slogan is “Raising the banner of journalism in Alaska,” of which Fagan says, “that’s in regard to shaking loose some of that bias and giving both sides of the story,” noting “I think we’ve got some great journalists in this state, but I do believe that bias is pretty obvious and injected into a lot of mainstream media outlets.”

In recent days The Alaska Standard’s stories have criticized the Anchorage Assembly’s approval of five-year contracts for labor unions, noted the Permanent Fund’s $10 billion drop in recent months, and taken the Daily News to task for perceived support of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez’s offer of heating oil to rural Alaskans.

While Flashlight doesn’t always agree with the opinions offered on The Alaska Standard, we have to applaud Fagan’s ambition, especially in the wake of the loss of the long-running conservative Voice of the Times website. And we enthusiastically agree with Fagan on one point: “I think the more, the better; everyone’s going to have their own little niche,” he says. “There’s a lot of opportunity out there.”

A cursory glance at The Alaska Standard reveals it to be ... well ... a blog.

Not that there's anything wrong with that.

It's filled with opinions, many of them unattributed, like the one in their article about the Anchorage Assembly that the  Assembly is an "arrogant, self-absorbed bunch of buffoons." 

Again ... not that there's anything wrong with that.

I agree with the Press's and Fagan's assessment that there's plenty of room in the marketplace of ideas for a site like this. It may fill the void left by the Voice of the Times (of which I was a big fan and daily reader) and it's always a good thing to have as many ideas and opinions out there as possible. That's the beauty of the "series of tubes" and blogs in particular. 

I love political blogs and read every one that's listed on the left side of this page.

I guess the problem I have is when ambitious sites like this declare their intention to "raise the banner of journalism" and pretend to be something they are not. 

Let me try to be clear on this, as I think I have a special perspective on this as both a journalist and as the former publisher of one of the first politically-oriented websites in Alaska. The argument that many bloggers, AM radio talk show hosts and "citizen journalists" seem to be making is that the mainstream media is so full of biased and political bent, it's up to them to put out information and reporting to counter it. 

And that's just fine. Put out your opinion. Get your thoughts into the marketplace of ideas. But remember one thing: there is, and always will be, a place for trained journalists, folks who spend all of their time chasing the stories that matter to their community and trying to present them in an unfiltered, unbiased way. Sure, journalists have political ideals of their own and sometimes it's difficult to keep those biases from creeping into stories. But every journo I know ALWAYS has that fact in mind and holds close to their heart the true purpose of their profession: to serve their community.

Journalists, unlike bloggers, always have their bylines attached to what they write and face consequences for getting facts wrong or for painting a story in a slanted way.

You are a blog, Alaska Standard, as are the rest of Alaska's political opinion blogs. Go with it. You are not trained journalists, you are sellers of a political idealogy. 

Not that there's anything wrong with that.

12 reasons to quit Daylight Savings Time in Alaska

Lynn Willis, the guy that runs this site - www.endalaskadaylightsaving.com - used to call in to my show frequently, especially when Daylight Savings Time rolled around. For the most part I agree with him that, in the Land of the Midnight Sun, it's hard to justify a need to change our clocks twice a year. I understand the main argument that it helps us carry on business with Seattle and the rest of the U.S., but it's still silly. Because of DST, sunset in Homer tonight was an hour earlier. Bummer.

Here are Lynn's Top 12 reasons to quit DST in Alaska:

1. Alaskans live in " The land of the Midnight Sun".

2. Instant time change disturbs sleep patterns which creates a state sponsored "jet lag".

3. There is no longer a compelling need to impact every Alaskan twice each year with this law.

4. With creation of the single Alaskan Time Zone in 1983  most of Alaska went  on  permanent DST.

5. When we advance clocks each year, we create" double" DST in most of Alaska which causes a two hour difference between "sun time" and "clock time" in the rail belt region including Fairbanks and Anchorage and three hours in Western Alaska communities and villages.

6. Advances in communication technology now allow business and personal contact 24/7 to anywhere in the nation or world.

7. Alaska will be in a different time zone with or without DST.

8. Alaska now does business with the Pacific Far East where DST is not used.

9. No Alaskan utility claims a savings of energy by use of DST which is why the Federal Government allows its use in those states that opt to use DST (Hawaii and Arizona don't use DST).

10. Changing every time keeping device in homes and businesses, including indoor mechanical heating/cooling/security systems, is expensive and time consuming.

11. DST doesn't affect the many devices now  using  photoelectric sensors that respond to ambient light,  not the time of day.

12. Thousands of Alaskans signed a petition asking to vote on this issue and polling data from Dittman Research and Hellenthal & Associates shows majority of Alaskans would support ending DST use in Alaska.

The best friend Sarah Palin ever had

 Tony Hopfinger, former Anchorage Press editor and a brilliant Alaskan journalist who now writes for Newsweek and operates the Alaska Dispatch site with Amanda Coyne, has a couple of interesting new Palin tidbits.

First, Hopfinger recounts a source telling him about a visit by Palin to the home of former Veco CEO and convicted felon Bill Allen. The source, a former Veco employee, says the meeting took place in 2001, the summer before Palin’s unsuccessful run for Lt. Governor (she lost to The Undertaker - Loren Leman). Palin received at least $5,000 in campaign contributions from Allen and his employees during that race.

According to Hopfinger’s source, Palin and Allen shared a bottle of wine during the visit. I wonder if she drove home?

Second, Hopfinger poses a question that came up in the newsroom here in Homer as soon as Palin officially called on Ted Stevens to resign.

Is Palin setting herself up to take Ted’s seat?

Such an act, the legalities of which are being pondered by the Department of Law, would be even more arrogant than Frank Murkowski appointing his daughter to fill his own seat in 2002.

Which brings me to a point of my own.

I have stayed out of the Palin fray for the most part since she was chosen as McCain’s running mate - partly because my role at the Homer News has only enough room for me to do stories like this on the subject, but mostly because I didn’t really have anything to add that wasn’t being said by someone else.

I’ve met Palin a few times and interviewed her on my radio program, going back to the 2006 Republican gubernatorial primary. She’s a charming person - affable, friendly and a good interview. She did, in 2006, strike me as someone who didn’t know enough about oil and gas issues (particularly the state of gasline negotiations at that time) to be a truly qualified governor, but she also struck me as someone with more than enough charisma to overcome her lack of substance and win – which she did, handily.

And, to be fair, she has come a long way on oil and gas issues in her brief time as governor, proving that she can be a quick study.

There is one thing, however, that I felt – and still feel – the national media is missing when it comes to discussing the enigmatic Sarah Palin:

Frank Murkowski.

Alaskans, regardless of political stripe, know that if there were no Frank Murkowski, there would likely be no Sarah Palin. Murkowski was the most unpopular governor Alaska, or maybe even the country, has ever had – so unpopular, in fact, that he came in a distant third in his own party’s primary in 2006. From the longevity bonus to secret gasline negotiations with the oil companies to the “Bald Ego” state jet, Frank Murkowski’s one term as governor was an unmitigated disaster.

By the end of it, he had approval ratings in the low teens and was almost universally despised. He has since disappeared from public view – save a couple of bizarre appearances – and will likely not return unless he is indicted by the Feds for his associations with Bill Allen and the CBC (his former chief of staff, Jim Clark, has already pled guilty).

It’s crucial to remember, I think, that Sarah Palin rode in on the shattered mess that was the Murkowski administration and was, simply, in the right place at the right time. It’s not that she had nothing to do with her own meteoric rise – she is truly focused and ambitious – but it took very special circumstances for her to get to where she is.

You could say the same thing for Sean Parnell who, if Palin does indeed find a way to take over Stevens’ Senate seat, is my best bet to become our next governor.