OPINION: From the Editor: How to report on your boss 101 and other adventures in Alaska journalism

January 20th 3:15 am | Carey Restino    

When I was in journalism school, the instructions were very clear. Never accept anything from a source - not a lift to a baseball game, not a free drink, and certainly not a chance to ride on a C130 all the way to Nome so you can see the historic arrival of an icebreaker to one of Alaska's Arctic communities.

OK, that last case study might not have been straight from my college textbooks, but it certainly applies. After all, how can you report objectively about a situation when swimming in gratitude for one of the experiences of a lifetime?

But in Alaska, where flights to remote villages can cost more than you get paid weekly as a journalist, the lines are blurred. So when the chance to ride on the U.S. Coast Guard plane came up, I jumped at it. So, apparently, did the rest of the Alaska press core, who were mostly in attendance Sunday as we bundled up, navigated our way through military base security gates and boarded the cavernous plane. As we waited to board the plane, we were informed that one of the many reality TV shows was filming on the flight.

One political staffer referred to the experience of riding in a C130 as something like being in a Conex cargo container while it's being beat on by two-by-fours. Oddly, none of his coworkers wanted to go on the trip after that. I thought the description was a bit overkill, but I would definitely bring my chainsaw ear protection next time. Earplugs just didn't quite cut it.

And if the Coast Guard was trying to sweeten the press core to its plight to get more icebreakers, it stopped short of the red carpet treatment. While dignitaries and elected officials sat in plush leather seats with headsets so they could talk to each other, we sat in polyester and used a combination of hand signals and screaming. We knew our place.

Another interesting flying factoid about traveling in one of these planes — there's no visual clues as to where you are. I found myself trying to guess when we were in fact off the ground. Either our pilot was incredibly smooth or these planes handle differently than commercial aircraft because I had a pretty hard time telling when we took off. Landing was a different story. No question about that. The landing gear's deployment sounds sort of like the plane is coming apart. Tubes hiss and boxes make disconcerting noises. Then - bam! You are on the ground.

After arriving in Nome, the press was shuffled through the world's cleanest helicopter hanger to a press conference, where everyone patted each other on the back for a job well done. Then it was off to see the ships, which were pretty hard to miss sitting right on the horizon beyond town.

I know it's incredible that the ships made it to Nome. I know, especially from reading the blog posts of some of those on board, people who have been captains of ships for decades, that this was an epic journey. But there was something almost comical about these ships sitting right there on the edge of town, gangplanks extended down to the ice below. It seems ridiculously unnatural that people could simply walk out over the ice to them - like they might as well have been floating in air.

Pretty soon, members of the press started drifting off, much to the frustration of those in charge of keeping them in line. The town must have seemed inundated with Gortex-clad cameramen to the locals.

Then I had what I suspect might be an increasingly common experience in the Arctic. I bumped into people I knew — my boss' in-laws, who I stayed with on my recent trip to Kotzebue. They had flown down to see the ships. We visited briefly while taking in the scene below, then off they went. It's pretty incredible, however, to travel hundreds of miles to a place you've never been and almost immediately bump into someone who knows what you take in your morning coffee.

At the grocery store, I had another interesting experience while selecting the most palatable lunch in the deli case. A resident came up and just started making conversation. He mentioned that his daughter, a staffer for the Lt. Gov. Treadwell, was on the C130, too. So later, I got to tell her I'd met her dad. We chatted about the scene. By the end of the conversation, I knew I'd probably bump into him again the next time I came through Nome. The Arctic, I'm starting to see, is just like the rest of Alaska. It's the biggest small town in the world.

Speaking of which, this week presented another interesting fuzzy-line situation in journalism in Alaska. I got to grill my boss. See, Jason wears a lot of hats, including one that puts him in the center of the whole bringing-Russian-tankers-to-Nome thing. He's really the source that needed to speak to some criticisms regarding the whole operation. I had to ask him some tough questions, like whether this whole operation had evolved into Nome being used as a political pawn in the effort to get more icebreakers in the Arctic. I also had to ask if the means justified the ends.

This isn't the first time I've felt the uncomfortable pinch of familiarity with a source who needed to be grilled a bit. My typical approach is just to admit this is my job and that if I didn't ask these questions, I wouldn't be doing it properly. Sometimes people are still offended. Such is life. It certainly seems like a blatant conflict of interest, and surely it would never fly in those highfalutin big papers, but somehow, it has never wound up impacting the stories I have written. If I avoided writing stories about everything I have had a connection to, I would have written virtually nothing. Perhaps readers will have a hard time believing that I didn't sweeten things up for my boss. I guess that's unpreventable. But I'd rather do the story than avoid it all together, which I think would look a lot worse. If a year from now it turns out that the man who signs my paycheck was involved in a scandal of epic proportions, you can bet I'll be first in line to ask questions. Right after he finishes writing his opinion piece for the week.