Alaska Democratic Party Convention - Saturday Late Afternoon and Evening -- The Alaska Press Keeps Up With The Pace of Change in Alaska Politics

The well-organized Alaska Democratic Party Convention gave the press a nook close to the podium, and - like March's GOP convention - accomodated both mainstream media and bloggers. The desk space was better than at the GOP event, and wireless access sketchier. That wasn't for lack of trying by the organizers. The all-metal building was kinky for the wireless signal, and that was never quite worked out, but if you could find a way to log on, there were five options.

Three of the options were only available for local Matanuska Telephone Association customers. I'm local and a customer, so I shared my login handle and password with dozens of reporters, bloggers and delegates over the past two days.

A few weeks ago, reporters from Alaska Public Radio Network, the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, the Anchorage Press and KUDO radio shared information and resources to bring to light the weird web redirects that appear to have emanated from a Jake Metcalfe campaign worker. The press collaboration ended that candidate's already flailing campaign.

At the Democratic Party's convention, bloggers and MSM reporters, or, in the case of Sean Cockerham from the Anchorage Daily News, reporter-bloggers, mixed at a couple of six-foot-round tables, set next to a riser for video cameras upon tripods.

Delegates and other convention attendees, as they went about their "fan-outs," credential verifications and other vetting procedures, were taking camera and phone pictures of each other, while bloggers and press wandered about doing the same. Speeches and announcements through the day were recorded in video and audio by a wide mix of chroniclers.

I totally missed the national concern of the importance of how our super delegate count would end. But Steve from What Do I Know? was on top of it. He had recorded the tedious final tallies of results that might inch Barack Obama forward toward the inevitable, posting it quickly at his blog. Then he tracked how national blogs homed in on this. Almost immediately.

David Shurtleff, from APRN had made audio recordings of Ethan Berkowitz's and Diane Benson's unprecedented speeches to the body. Since the whole speeches won't find a program niche at APRN, David sent the audio files to Steve, who managed to post them within minutes of getting the files.

You should listen to them. Ethan's speech is better than I had thought it to be upon first live listening. And so is Diane's. Benson's is perhaps the finest speech by a national level candidate, speaking on issues close to the concerns of women, in Alaska history.

Steve also was able to quickly post videos of excerpts of several important events within a half hour.

Sean Cockerham, from the ADN, managed to get in five blog posts and an article for the Sunday paper. His last Saturday blog post referenced FBI agent Mary Beth Kepner's visit to John Dean's speech. Kepner has talked to UAA Prof Steve Aufrecht's classes about ethical issues surrounding her work. As she caught up with Steve in a corner of Raven Hall, Alaska Report's Dennis Zaki filmed the talk, which he framed into a humor meme at his new DZ Blog.

The big cameras and manicured face people only showed up for the late evening U.S. Senate candidate statements and for John Dean's keynote address. Some of the latecomers, looking around at the debris on and under the two circular media tables, seemed to be thinking "WTF is going on here?"

Comments at Cockerham's ADN blog posts are already complaining that the liberal press should have been as sympathetic back in March toward Randy Reudrich in his fight against Sarah Palin's evil empire as they are being now, in their sympathy toward this dastardly liberal cabal emanating from Raven Hall in Palmer.

I wore four, or perhaps five hats at the convention: Mat-Su Democrat volunteer, delegate, Diane Benson table monitor, and blogger. For a while this afternoon, I got to be the butt of responses from both ex-candidate for U.S. House AK-AL seat Jake Metcalfe, and of current candidate for that seat, Ethan Berkowitz. They both complained about my post in which I dissed Metcalfe's wan 2006 help for Diane Benson's startling campaign, and unfavorably characterized Berkowitz's corrupt, dishonest, neo-con indentured money machine.

Metcalfe, a sore loser, told me, "You're lucky I'm not suing you!" I replied, "You should have fired that asshole last summer when you had a chance."

Ethan, when I pointed out that his acceptance of donations from war criminal Henry Kissenger's main business partner, and from a member of the Carlyle Group's board of directors is pretty frigging kinky, replied, "Do you cash your PFD?"

The only candidate to announce support of the Alaskans for Clean Elections Initiative was Diane Benson. I'm not surprised.

We have a way to go yet, folks. But we're gaining ground.