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- Backwoods Debaters Kick Butt
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- Shana Sheehy
There are more than 300 rural villages in Alaska, most of which are disconnected from the state's limited road system. Whitestone is a community of 180 located in the interior part of the state and happens to be accessible by car. It's foundation is not cultural, it's religious and woven into every aspect of Whitestone life. All 18 high school students who live in this tiny rural committee participate in Debate, Drama and Forensics - or DDF - an academic high school sport. And athough their numbers are few, their impact is mighty. They make the journey to Anchorage to compete in four tournaments a year. And each time they come, the urban kids are wary. Whitestone kids kick butt in debate, and they do it each and every time.
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Piece Description
There are more than 300 rural villages in Alaska, most of which are disconnected from the state's limited road system. Whitestone is a community of 180 located in the interior part of the state and happens to be accessible by car. It's foundation is not cultural, it's religious and woven into every aspect of Whitestone life. All 18 high school students who live in this tiny rural committee participate in Debate, Drama and Forensics - or DDF - an academic high school sport. And athough their numbers are few, their impact is mighty. They make the journey to Anchorage to compete in four tournaments a year. And each time they come, the urban kids are wary. Whitestone kids kick butt in debate, and they do it each and every time.
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Richard Paul
Posted on August 22, 2005 at 11:12 AM | Permalink
Review of Backwoods Debaters Kick Butt
This was a story about a debate team, so why didn't we hear any debating? The great thing about radio is that it can bring you to the place you’re learning about. When a reporter doesn’t take advantage of the primary benefit of the medium, I believe the story suffers. In this piece, for instance, we are told and told and told by the reporter that this debate team is good. If the reporter had demonstrated this, the piece would have been less talky (this is a very talky piece) and might have given us more of the students’ humanity.
There are some other things about this piece that struck me as odd. Though this is a story about a group of kids who live in a particular community, at one point there is a back-and-forth between two kids who DON'T live in this community that seems to go on longer than any of the sound bites in the piece WITH kids from the community. This back-and-forth also has nothing to do with the topic of the story. It’s just two kids flirting with each other. The community being profiled is described as very strictly religious. So the sound of two kids who are not from the community flirting seems an odd choice, as does the use of the phrase “kick butt” in the title. One wonders what the elders of the community would think about either of these things. There is also some writing about the community that sounds like it was taken from a press release. We are told, for instance that newlyweds "dwell" in their own homes. Dwell?
I believe this could have been a very interesting story.