Dillingham news director resigns after blog backlash

Posted by thevillage

Posted: July 27, 2009 - 2:12 pm

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UPDATE: Here's an excerpt from a phone interview with former KDLG news director Eileen Goode, talking about the blog that cost her her job:

And two of the e-mails I'm getting from Dillingham:

Birds of a feather
It is evident from the content of Eileen's blogs that she spent her time with the seamier citizens of Dillingham. There is crime and perversion in all societies and she seems to have spent her time exploring those. Perhaps birds of a feather do flock together.
There is a side to Dillingham that she apparently did not explore, the schools, the university, the churches, the organizations established here to serve the youth and elders and all those in between.
Poor Eileen, my heart goes out to her, she looked for love in all the wrong places.
-- Joanne Nelson, Dillingham

Every death a tragedy
There are so many things wrong with what Eileen Goode has said that is impossible for me to find the right words to express how I feel.
While I cannot deny that Dillingham has problems (the amount of drug, alcohol and domestic abuse cases is staggering), the insensitive and inconsiderate way that Goode has chosen to write about them is not the way one who considers themselves a good journalist should be writing.
The fact that she so ruthlessly diminished the tragedy of Kim McCambly’s death is cold and almost inhuman. Every life lost is a tragedy, especially when the death could have been prevented. What if a member of Goode’s family had passed away like that? Would she still feel the same way? I doubt it.
Although Goode “apologized” in her latest blog post, I do not detect the smallest hint of sincerity. The only thing I got out of the post (besides a monstrous headache from the large amount of spelling and grammar errors) is that people do not understand her writing style or humor; I’m sorry, was I supposed to find anything that she wrote funny? Because I didn’t. I enjoy satirical humor as much as the next person, but when it is filled with racial stereotypes about a community that I am a part of, I fail to see how that could be funny at all.
Like I said before, I cannot deny that Dillingham has problems, and sometimes people do need to be told to their faces, but if she cared about it as much as she claims she does…why not take action? Words can only go so far when trying to accomplish something. If she really cared and wanted to change things then she could have gotten out of her chair, shut down her computer and done something about it.
-- Shelley Savo, 18-year-old, lifelong member of Dillingham community

The news director at public radio station KDLG in Dillingham resigned from her job this morning after local backlash erupted against her personal blog: www.chillyhell.blogspot.com

In long, sometimes bizarre posts, Goode blogged about Battlestar Galactica, the pain of early morning radio shifts, and – for about 5,000 words – fantasizing about cutting her toe off. She also joked about sexual abuse and alcoholism and wishing for tragedy so she'd have news to report. Her description of a local 21-year-old's death, in particular, brought a firestorm of criticism over the past four days.

The first post on her blog, titled “Disclaimer,” begins:

"Welcome to Dillingham Alaska, a town made up of about 2,400 people who, quite simply, probably aren’t quite ready for mass production yet. There are many colorful local aphorisms applied to this town/area which I think more or less sum up the situation…
"-- Dillingham, a small drinking village with a fishing problem.
"-- Dillingham Alaska, we fish we fight and we f--k, in the winter, we fish somewhat less.
"-- What did the 10 year old Alaskan girl say after she was done having sex? Hey Grandpa, can you pass me a cigarette.

"By no means should this be interpreted to mean that I don’t like the place I live. Quite to the contrary, I love living in a place where I can be treated as a respectable personage simply by dint of being sober, employed and totally uninterested in having sex with relatives or children."

KDLG reaches as many as 7,000 people in the Bristol Bay region. It’s owned by the local school district and housed inside the high school.

Goode’s blog didn’t appear to have many readers until someone anonymously e-mailed excerpts around town on Friday.

KDLG station manager Rob Carpenter said he’s since received about three dozen calls and e-mails about the blog.

“I hadn’t seen it before and no one had ever contacted me about. I got it the same time everybody else did,” Carpenter said.

The Bristol Bay Times has a new story up here. When I called Goode's home today, the mail box was full.

UPDATE: I just interviewed Goode briefly on the phone and will post an audio clip later tonight. She stands by what she said, if not the way she said it.

Much of the criticism has centered on the way she wrote about the death of a local EMT in November. Just the day before, Goode wrote, she’d complained out loud about the lack of news and wondered if it was “too much much to ask for someone to die tragically.”

"As it turns out, no, that was not too much to ask. On Wednesday, the night before Thanksgiving, moments away from eating dinner at home, the phone calls started about the latest tragedy, a 21 year old girl who had frozen to death on the Tundra," Goode wrote.

"… I can think of something that is sort of unpopular to note, which is though what happened is sad, I wish locally people would stop calling it a tragedy."

Goode argues the death, and others, could have been prevented and that people are refusing to take responsibility for the town's many problems.

As the criticism mounted Friday, she wrote a response that you can read at the top of her blog. "I am sorry if my tone offends, that is just my writing style, and it while I do like comedy based on exaggeration it is not to everyone’s taste and perhaps I should have thought more carefully about my very serious job before writing some less than serious postings. Good enough," she said. "What I am not sorry for is what I said, because I do not believe I am wrong."

Here’s an excerpt from one of the many e-mails I'm this morning from locals angry with Goode.

"Eileen Goode’s blog was very painful for a lot of families in this community to read, especially for families that are still grieving over tragic losses and events," writes Shannon Swift, of Clarke’s Point/Dillingham. "I realize she does have the right to free speech but any person with a conscience would not have posted such hurtful things. After this blog went public to our community, she did not take it down. Instead she added, not an apology, but a response to the community which included a condescending validation of her actions."

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