I finally made it, Thursday, to see a taping of Shannyn Moore's Moore Up North show at Bernie's Bungalow. It was a delightful afternoon and people were sitting outside at Bernie's.
Shannyn Moore is one of the Alaska bloggers who got a nod for their work in the new Vanity Fair piece on Sarah Palin.
"The Anchorage Daily News no longer has a beat reporter assigned to Palin. Owing to newsroom cuts, the paper has no staff to spare, and editors reportedly see Palin as “a nonentity” in Alaska now—a phenomenon primarily of concern to the rest of the country (collectively referred to as “outside”). The blogs that keep closest tabs on Palin include Palingates, Mudflats, the Immoral Minority, and Shannyn Moore: Just a Girl from Homer. Andrew Sullivan’s Daily Dish and Arianna Huffington’s Huffington Post serve as the main conduits of information from the blogs to the mainstream media. . .
All attend to Palin’s every move with a focus that could be called obsessive, and all are given, in varying degrees of intensity, to juvenile outbursts that can rival C4P at its worst. . . Still, without these blogs, the world would have much less information about Palin’s life right now.
Of the group, only Shannyn Moore, an Anchorage radio and TV personality, has any experience as a journalist."
Anyway, I found the 'studio' upstairs and walked in as Moore was interviewing Andrew Halcro, former Republican state legislator and gubernatorial candidate.
They were talking about the recent US Senate election. Halcro discussed issues he had with the Republican primary winner Joe Miller. They talked about the possibility of Murkowski running, but given that people have to spell the name right, he thought a write-in campaign would be impossible to win. Moore asked him who he's going to vote for if it's between Miller and McAdams. He paused briefly and then said, "Scott McAdams." Then he added something like, "With all due respect to McAdams, I'll vote for the lesser of two evils." [UPDATE Sept 6: You can watch the video now here.]
When Halcro's segment was over, three pilots from the union representing UPS pilots whose positions are being cut, spoke with Moore about the economic impact of these cuts on Anchorage.
This really is one of those special little home town events - a local television news show filmed in a restaurant/bar and played on KYES, quite possibly the only independent family owned television channel left in the US.
You can keep tabs on when to see the filming at Moore's blog: Just a Girl from Homer.