Saturday, April 19, 2008

Saturday Alaska Progressive Blog Roundup - April 19, 2008

I spent most of yesterday, and I'll be spending several hours today at the Alaska Press Club's J-Week 2008 Conference at the Anchorage Senior Center.

The picture at left is of Pulitzer Prize winning columnist, Leonard Pitts. Jr. reading from an essay by Irma Bombeck, during his talk about creating a narrative voice. His talk was one of the day's highlights.

So was the discussion in mid-afternoon on combating racism in Alaska - more accurately, Anchorage - broadcast media. The three panelists for this event, which had been scheduled late in the week, were Nellie Moore, John Active, and Jeff Cohen, the founder of the national media watchdog group, FAIR (Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting).

This discussion was spurred by the incident last week of those two creepy jerks from California, and their racist comment about Alaska Native women. The community's reaction to this was part of the discussion. But concern about radio commentators' involvement with former Anchorage assemblyman Paul Bauer, and continuing and deepening concern about anti-Islamic hate speech on talk radio from Eddie Burke and Dan Fagan, drove much of the hour's comment from audience and moderators alike.

Cohen, who has been fighting this kind of garbage for years, had some suggestions for using the anti-Alaska Native comments and the community's reaction, as a platform from which to challenge Clear Channel Radio, the owner of the offending station, to offer some sort of community programming.

I got to meet two progressive Alaska bloggers, Theresa, from My Fairbanks Life, and Ishmael Melville from Kodiak Konfidential. Today, I get to meet Libby Casey, from Radio Icebox.

I also got to meet Dan Fagan, who came over to introduce himself after he had finished participating as a panelist in a forum on Global Warming and the media. He told me he reads Progressive Alaska every day, with a strange look I couldn't quite decipher.

I've got to head back into Anchorage for the second full day of the conference, and for tonight's song recital at the Discovery Theatre, featuring Kate Egan, Marlene Bateman and Juliana Osinchuk. They'll also be launching their new CD.

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