A summary of our October 2010 speaker, Dan Fauske
By Dianne O’Connell

Dan Fauske, President of the newly formed Alaska Gasline Development Corporation (AGDC), was the featured speaker during the October 7 meeting of the Alaska Professional Communicators, held at Kinley’s Restaurant. AGDC is a subsidiary of Alaska Housing Finance Corp., of which Fauske is CEO/Executive Director. The AGDC was mandated by the state legislature in the spring of 2010 to take over planning for an in-state gas pipeline. The goal is to determine the most economically feasible plan to deliver North Slope natural gas to Alaskans; deadline for the plan is July 1, 2011.

Speaking informally and affably, Fauske shared stories with the communicators about when he lived in Barrow in 1988, the time when three California gray whales were trapped in the Arctic ice. The local whalers normally hunt bowhead whales for food, but they took pity on these gray whales. The community worked tirelessly chopping ice blocks, jumping on them until they sank low enough to push under the edge of the surrounding ice. The point was to keep a channel clear so that the whales could breathe and eventually find open water. Community elders knew where the water was more shallow and warmer and also knew that the whales would not go there for fear of getting further stuck. A Soviet icebreaker joined the effort which became a five million dollar international media event.

Fauske’s remarks were relevant in that Hollywood film crews have been in Anchorage this past month making a movie of the story, “Everybody Loves Whales,” with Ted Danson and Drew Barrymore. Fauske said he’s curious how Hollywood will handle the role the native elders’ traditional knowledge played in the rescue effort. Plus, the Barrow area would be the starting point for the natural gas line.

Turning to his work with the AGDC, Fauske addressed several issues which have emerged during his team’s early months of study, including both the route of the proposed 24-inch bullet pipeline and the funding. The project is estimated to cost between $6 billion and $12 billion.

The proposed route will supply Fairbanks through a proposed pipeline route which would run west of the city, requiring a 43.7-mile 12-inch spur line to supply gas to the Interior city. The spur would cost about $235 million.

A question was asked about the probability of having the gasline follow the route to Valdez? A bullet line from the North Slope using the Glennallen route is longer, a significant consideration with pipeline construction costs of about $5 million per mile, Fauske says.

Furthermore, Fauske says the gas is needed where the population is – Southcentral Alaska and Fairbanks.

With regard to a state subsidy for the project, Fauske indicated that a subsidy of some sort seems likely.

“Without an anchor tenant, we will not make the project pencil out,” he explained. For the project to be feasible a couple of large industrial buyers and a possible one-time infusion of state investment so the tariff, or the transportation charge, for moving North Slope gas would be affordable by both consumers and industrial customers. Without some form of state contribution, gas moved 800 miles through the pipeline would cost about twice what consumers and industries now pay for Cook Inlet natural gas just forty miles away. With gas supply dwindling, this is an important issue.

Fauske also indicated that his team will present a range of options for meeting Southcentral and Interior energy needs in its report to the legislature and will primarily focus on the pipeline.

More about Dan Fauske

Dan Fauske has been the CEO/Executive Director of the Alaska Housing Finance Corporation since March 1, 1995. He directs the management of the self-supporting, public corporation with assets of $4.8 billion.

AHFC has 360 employees in 16 communities and owns 1,700 public housing units. The Corporation has returned $1.9 billion in annual transfer payments to the State of Alaska through cash transfers, capital projects and debt service payments.

Mr. Fauske serves on the governor’s gas line team and was appointed by the current Legislature to manage the In-State Natural Gas Pipeline Development Team.

Dan chairs the Alaska Council on Homelessness and has serves on the boards of directors of the Federal Home Loan Bank of Seattle and the National Housing Development Corporation. In 2002 he was appointed by Congress to serve on the Bipartisan Millennial Housing Commission.

Prior to his career at AHFC, he served as chief financial officer and chief administrative officer for Alaska’s North Slope Borough.

Dan holds a master’s degree in business administration from Gonzaga University.

A summary of our September 2010 speaker, Charles Wohlforth
By Kay Vreeland

Charles Wohlforth’s subtitle for his recent book, The Fate of Nature, is “Rediscovering our Ability to Rescue the Earth” and in his talk to the APC luncheon meeting September 2, 2010, he marked out the paths toward this rescue. Chief among these is being grounded in our communities and in the stories we tell about our world. Writers, especially journalists, create and define culture in large measure, and culture is the key to solutions of environmental issues. We have known for some time that we are using up our biosphere and know the solutions for preserving it, but we have not gone very far toward rescuing the earth. In the end, said Wolhforth, it is culture rather than science, engineering or technology that will lead to rescue.

Culture grows out of stories we tell and our trust in these stories. Wohlforth’s early journalism career was at the Homer News where he learned his readers accepted what he wrote as true, since he saw the subjects of his stories every day. He learned then what statistics continue to show, that we believe people around us are most trustworthy, and that the message of corporate and government elites has far less influence. How stories are presented to us affects our actions; sadly, the current sensationalist climate in journalism skews reality by creating the perception that many others are not working for the good of society.

The Exxon Valdez oil spill ignited Wohlforth’s passion for the environment by the happy coincidence that he had a four-wheel-drive vehicle that could take reporters from Anchorage and the Valley to the scene. As a journalist there, he learned that the government, the Coast Guard and the oil company stood in adversarial conflict and many bad decisions were made. The shutdown of scientific studies through project cancellation and enforced secrecy meant that true stories were hard to come by and we still lack a lot of clear answers to the mystery of ongoing ecosystem damage.

Moving oversight from hierarchical institutions into the hands of the local community through organizations such as the Prince William Sound Regional Citizens’ Advisory Council (RCAC) was successful in the aftermath of the 1989 oil spill. Unfortunately, although the recent Gulf of Mexico oil spill had different physical aspects, the initial response was the same. Local involvement means a big company cedes power, but in the latest spill scenario, community involvement and scientific contribution are needed for real solutions to emerge.

Alaskans are strongly connected to place, as Wolhforth’s background slide show of nature scenes around the state emphasized. This relation to nature is part of the network of values that gives meaning in life. Values reside in connection, not only to nature, but to family and community. As Wolhforth quoted from his book, “The [environmental] problem is unimaginable in scale, nonlinear in shape, and infinite in complexity, and so may be the solution - in the interlocking relationships of human societies. And the solution may also be small enough for a single person to choose, which is important, since individual people alone are capable of making choices.”

Individual choices create new cultural norms, and individual action contributes most to changing culture, as we’ve seen in shrinking family size, facing race questions or environmental ethics such as less littering, or rescuing the earth. Journalists contribute to creating the cultural norms we live by, and they need to use this power well and conscientiously. Wolhforth’s message is that the fate of nature lies in great part in their, and our, hands.

More about Charles Wohlforth

A summary of our May 2010 speaker, Sonya Senkowsky
By Kay Vreeland

Sonya Senkowsky, founder and current Webmaster of AlaskaWriters.com, a site offering a Web presence and networked community to Alaska writers, spoke to the May 6 APC luncheon on “How I Stopped Worrying & Learned to Love My Web Site.” She described, with explanatory slides, the process of creating a site that includes DIY Web pages for Alaskan writers. She also told of the unexpected professional benefits that can come from such a project, like the book offer that resulted in the recent publication of Alaska Then and Now: Anchorage, Fairbanks & Juneau (co-authored with Amanda Coyne).

Senkowsky is Creative Services Coordinator and Webmaster for Bristol Industries, LLC, an Anchorage-based company owned by Bristol Bay Native Corporation. In 1996, she began her Alaskan career as a features writer for the ADN. In 2000, to jump-start a transition to freelance biological sciences writer, she decided to create a Web site to introduce herself to prospective clients. She kept it simple: her resume, her writing samples, her travels, and her contact information. From there, she expanded into the Alaska Writers Homestead site, which she created herself after she found that only pre-made templates for retail stores, small businesses, or professionals, like doctors, were available for building a site. Because those wouldn’t work for her purposes, she fashioned her own template that has evolved into the complex site she runs today.

The heart of the AlaskaWriters site is an information page about each author who is a member; these pages make up the nexus centered on the Alaska Bookshelf page. Senkowsky created the template a member can use for a personal page to showcase their own content as well as give off-site links to their Web site, booksellers, or other relevant information. Outgoing, as well as incoming, links are essential for showing up at the top of today’s search engine results, and interaction with members’ sites keeps these links active and relevant. The whole process also strengthens and helps the larger writers’ community.

To make all this happen, a member simply signs in and updates their page on a Web form. The Alaska Writer Laureate, Nancy Lord, uses her page to change photos and add fresh information about her work; another writer wanted to find an agent via the site, and the page she created did, indeed, bring an agent to her. Another wanted to show editors her writing samples and to promote her book, and another’s goal was to promote her book with a photo of herself and of her book’s cover and a link to show how she was active in her writing career. Senkowsky’s husband’s book and CD set include an order form, a first for the site. Senkowsky herself was signed by a book publisher whom she repeatedly redirected to suitable writers and who, in the end, made the book deal with her.

As she planned her site with the idea that it be hers forever, Senkowsky knew she could not use free providers of Web page creation tools because if their company disappears, the site does, too. A personal domain is important for this reason as well. For licensing reasons, the main AlaskaWriters site is on Expression Engine, which interacts with a second content management system licensed for its use on individual author pages. A dynamic site, that is, one that is constantly updated, the AlaskaWriters community grows constantly with fresh content and new members.

Senkowsky looked back to tell of all her site has brought her: in her freelance business, Web design clients; in her writing life, exposure to the publishing community and early information about it; in her public life, speaking engagements; and in collaborative projects, work with people who came to the site with plans in mind, like Web site developer Susannah Gardner, whose Buzz Marketing with Blogs for Dummies (2005), Senkowsky contributed to via her site.

The most recent reward from her site is her current job. As she consulted with writers, she got a request from a CEO who wanted her to re-do their Web site to better serve the five companies in their industry and she agreed to take on the oversight of this project rather than its actual site design. As the project grew she moved into a fulltime job with Bristol Industries and has developed their writing and creative services department. This, along with publication of her recent book, shows some of the wonderful unanticipated consequences of her first small personal Web site started six years ago.

Always happy to share her expertise with others, Senkowsky invites everyone to check out the free-application Google site she created in preparation for this presentation, “5 Web Facts for Writers.” Here she explains basic Web vocabulary, pre-planning, how to build a site, the need for a host and a domain name (your URL), a decision whether to make a static site or a blog, the proper care and feeding of a site, and tips on promoting the site, including using social media (Twitter, Facebook). In conclusion, her advice, especially to those who are overwhelmed with the prospect of making and running a Web site, is to slow down and take it one step at a time, like she has done so successfully.

More about Sonya Senkowsky

A summary of our February 2010 speaker, Tracy Sinclare
By Arlene Lidbergh-Jasper

Tracy Sinclare, best known locally as a weekend meteorologist with KTUU, began her presentation at Alaska Professional Communicators’ February luncheon with an ice-breaker. “It’s much easier to talk to a camera than to a room full of people,” she said. “At KTUU, it’s just me and the camera.” After we all laughed, she told us about yet another world not often exposed to the public: Her experiences with the local chapter of Romance Writers of America (RWA), and what she has learned about the art of writing romance novels.

Tracy’s family moved to Anchorage in 1972 when her father was transferred to Elmendorf Air Force Base. Her love for writing began at home and then developed during junior high school.

In Tracy’s family, all her siblings were readers except her; she preferred to listen to stories first. If she liked a story, then she would read the book. However, in 7th grade she read Victoria Holt novels, bodice rippers with deep dark heroes. Next, she read contemporary romance—even in geometry class. By 11th grade, she was writing romances during trigonometry classes. During her last year in high school, when the seniors dressed up as what they would be in 20 years, she showed up as a romance writer wearing a long gown and floppy hat with pen and paper in hand.

For about 16 years, Tracy said, she had great story ideas and read her work to her best friends. In 1992, she joined the Romance Writers of America (RWA) and finished her first book but never submitted it. In 2002, just before her 20th class reunion, she would publish Silver Dagger. Since then she has written 15 novels and eight short stories, each in the range of 50,000 to 80,000 words.

Tracy also pursued professional communication training by more traditional routes. She received her B.A. in English and Broadcasting from Gonzaga University in 1986, and her B.S. in Broadcast Meteorology from Mississippi University in 2007.

She has stories in her head all the time, Tracy says. She doesn’t write linearly but jumps around. Characters reappear from book to book, including in the dragon-themed romance novels she writes as a series, which she says sell really well. One such series is up to five books and another is up to seven. She has no agent, and explained that in the romance genre, it is common for a writer to sell his or her first book without an agent.

Romance novels are a $1.37 billion industry, she told us. It’s three times as popular as religion with eight billion. In 2008 there were 7,311 romance novels published, with total readership calculated at 748 million. Romance books hold more than 50 percent of the mass market in paperback fiction. Women are the book buyers 90 percent of the time. This is one genre that is written for women by women.

When people mention to Tracy Sinclare, “I never have read any of your books,” her response is usually “you are not my target.” Her target audience: 31 to 59 year-old women, who “like to read about relationships and how much care you put into them. And, of course, we need a hero and heroine.”

Tracy then mentioned an essay by Jennifer Crusie, “Let Us Now Praise Scribbling Women,” reprinted on Crusie’s blog, which gives its praise in particular to women who write romance. She paraphrased: The last line these women write is that the heroine lives happily ever after. As girls, they read Sleeping Beauty, who got everything she’d ever wanted because she looked really good unconscious. Then there was Snow White, who got everything she wanted because she looked really good unconscious. Or there was Cinderella, who should be given some credit for staying awake through her whole story, but who got everything she wanted because she had small feet. Girls have been taught to be more passive to get the “crown in the castle.” But in romance novels, women are active participants—and there is a hunky man. Romance books, Crusie concludes, create an “emotionally just universe.”

And then there are the “TSTLs, Too Stupid to Live Heroines,” added Tracy. “My stories are character-based, and I like happy endings.” But there must be a believable pace even in the happy-ending storyline, she said. In re-writing Silver Dagger, Tracy said, she realized that the heroine can’t take her clothes off too early in the book until the love is established. Tracy writes under a pen name and is not public about her works in her home state–but shared her time with us to encourage other romance writers.

She recited a list: “You might be a writer if, before you get on a plane, you make sure you have several books to read and pen and paper in case your computer battery dies; you might be a writer if you hold conversations with the voices in your head, but your friends aren’t recommending that you up your medication; you might be a writer if, when relaxing at a spa, you open the locker and think, I could stuff a body in there. OK, that makes you a writer—or a psychopath!” And finally, “You might be a writer if you understand when I say, ‘My characters won’t do what I want!’”

Tracy highly recommends belonging to a writing group. “Like the group MENSA for people with high IQs,” she said, “joining a writing group does give you support. You want a writers’ group that understands you,” she said. “It’s important to work with people who are working in the same genre.” A number of writing groups in town meet once a month. The romance writers meet at Jitters in Eagle River and schedule a craft talk once a month with the other three weeks given to the members’ critiques. She only attends the craft talk, which helps motivate her to want to write. Her self-evaluation: “I’m a good storyteller and an OK writer.” The Alaska chapter of the RWA is at www.akrwa.org.

A short Q&A period followed. Did she use a dedicated writing computer, i.e., one not connected to the Internet and used only for writing? “No,” she said. She writes on a normal computer in evenings and on days off, an hour a day with four pages an hour on average.

Tracy was then asked about Nora Roberts, a favorite of one woman’s mother and many others in the room. “What separates Nora from the pack?” Tracy answered. “I’ve met her at national conferences, and she is so popular that it’s hard to weave through the crowds of people, just to hear her. She is successful, writing for a number of years, has a fan base, and started when there were bodice rippers. She got in on the ground floor. Nora Roberts writes in different genres: romance, paranormal—and her toughest character is a female cop with a dark past. The In Death series is written under her pen name of J.D. Robb.”

A summary of our January 2010 speaker, Steve Lindbeck
By Kay Vreeland

Steve Lindbeck, President and General Manager of Alaska Public Telecommunications, Inc. (APTI), spoke to Alaska Professional Communicators Thursday, January 7, 2010, about his experience as “An Alaskan in the Media Revolution,” explaining the challenges faced by Alaska public broadcasting in today’s rapidly changing media landscape.

Lindbeck is responsible for leadership and oversight of APTI, a media organization that includes KAKM-TV, KSKA-FM and the Alaska Public Radio Network, and which reaches audiences throughout Alaska. Having moved into public broadcasting in 2007 after a 30-year career in journalism and public affairs, he sees links between the decline of print journalism in Alaska and the vigorous role of public broadcasting in the new media revolution.

However, he noted, nobody knows where the fast-paced changes are leading us.

Lindbeck started his career in newsrooms in 1971 as a cub local sports reporter at West High School. Information was scarce in Alaska because of reporters’ distance from the main sources. By the early 1980s there were two vibrant and competitive newspapers, whereas today there is only the slimmed-down Anchorage Daily News. Although there was the rise of Channel 2 as the dominant local news channel, there was no public broadcasting and no Alaska public radio network.

The dramatic changes in information delivery we have seen since that time are nothing like the change we’re going to see, said Lindbeck. A new digital way of life in media may be glimpsed today in politics in the revolution of the Obama campaign going online, which Lindbeck compared to the Kennedy campaign’s utilization of television.

A recent conference at Google headquarters named swift response to consumer preferences as the key to survival in the digital age; consumers reveal these preferences as they read, view, click, and comment. This is only one aspect of today’s media life. The iPhone has an “app” (short for “application”) to record and play back programs from NPR. Cloud computing, blog conversations, Twitter news delivery, Kindle, Wikipedia, the upcoming computer Tablet, and the “disintermediation” of social media are all showing that information is not scarce, but infinite. Media owners have less power, and audiences are more fragmented. Advertisers are changing allegiance, and many computer users seem to be content competitors against the 80 percent of original reporting that is found in daily newspapers.

As print journalism declines, online tools make news and information delivery richer than ever through access to source documents, interaction with readers, expansion of good writing on blogs, and Internet journalism. Among the good trends emerging are larger audiences and more people engaging with media. In which direction will all this go? And, how will the Internet generate revenue: non-profit and philanthropic models, or public broadcasting models?

Where does public broadcasting fit in? It has a strong brand identity. People value it. It operates with trust, quality and authenticity. There is a genuine affection and market for it. And, as distribution channels compete, public broadcasting provides local and community news and connections, said Lindbeck. As the world fragments, people are hungry for community involvement. The real question, said Lindbeck, is how public broadcasting can ride this wave.

In Alaska, KUAC in Fairbanks, APTI in Anchorage and KTOO in Juneau are working to combine and unify operations with community involvement, under a working title of “Alaska Public Media.” Calling the new unified statewide public broadcasting organization project a “transformation,” Lindbeck said that its vision statement sees it as the leader in news, education and public affairs, as well as a community builder in Alaska. Although based in the news and programming values of NPR and PBS, its central mission will lie in the Alaska content that it produces.

In conclusion, asking where all this is going, how to use the new tools and how not to be left behind, Lindbeck framed the changing broadcasting climate as an evolution analogy: We are in the position of the dinosaurs after the big asteroid hit the earth, he said. We’re going to have to figure out how to become mammals, or birds, in order to survive. That’ll take a lot of imagination, experimentation and the courage to change, but it is a very exciting time, Lindbeck concluded. It’s an adventure for everyone involved.