Read More and Enjoy

Anchorage--

Just because I wrote more than 2,000 words on what happened at the sentencing of ex-State Rep. Beverly Masek for taking bribes doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t read other coverage of that event. In fact, I’ll make it easy for you.

Amanda Coyne has nice Iditarod-related bits in her article at the Alaska Dispatch. Coyne also got an interview with a man who was an old friend of both the former state legislator and her ex-husband Jan Masek, who emerged as something of a villain during his former wife’s sentencing yesterday. You can find Coyne’s story at http://www.alaskadispatch.com/news/politics/2103-masek-gets-six-months-for-taking-bribes-from-oilman on the Internet.

Rich Mauer has the straight news coverage of the sentencing at the Anchorage Daily News at http://www.adn.com/news/politics/story/947518.html on the Internet, and it features quotes he scored from Jan Masek, now living in Panama. Not surprisingly, Jan Masek did not admit to being a monster who drove his ex-wife into alcoholism and bribe-taking. "All my life I never put (a) hand on Bev, even when she got drunk," Jan Masek said in an e-mail to Mauer. "I think this is (a) great insult….She start drinking in Juneau, with nice Republican rednecks."

But if you read only one thing about Beverly Masek’s sentencing in addition to my own blogging, it should be Julia O’Malley’s column in the Anchorage Daily News. It’s called “Masek excuses sound hollow, sentence disappoints,” and you can find it at http://community.adn.com/adn/node/143733 on the Internet. The piece addresses the questions of accountability and fairness I raised in my post last night, and does so with a literary flourish (the defense “painted a picture of her that seemed fragile, like a besotted Victorian heroine wandering the halls of the capitol.”)

All this media traffic cop stuff reminds me of a point I’ve frequently wanted to make. Anybody should reads this blog should subscribe to at least one daily newspaper. If you’re going to stay informed over the long run, you can’t always expect to rely on idiosyncratic bloggers like me who write for free.