While we’ve had reason to complain about the disappearance of some online news and opinions lately—Voice of the Times folding and now-Senate-employee R.A. Dillon’s blog An Alaskan Abroad closing shop—there are some ambitious projects filling the vacuum they’ve left.

AlaskaDispatch.com, run by Flashlight’s friends and former Presslings Tony Hopfinger and Amanda Coyne, launched in August, shortly before the announcement of Governor Palin as John McCain’s vice presidential pick. Since then it’s been an invaluable repository of news and opinion from writers around the state, including Congressman Don Young, Young’s failed challenger Democrat Ethan Berkowitz, talk radio host Andrew Halcro, former U.S. Attorney Wev Shea, attorney and historian Don Mitchell, and former Alaska Public Interest Research Group director Steve Conn, among others. Already Alaska Dispatch has been name-dropped in the New Yorker, The Atlantic’s website, Huffington Post, and Keith Olbermann’s Countdown program on MSNBC.

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Now there’s another Alaska-centric online news outlet, launched by conservative talk radio and television host Dan Fagan, called The Alaska Standard. The similarities between Fagan’s site’s name and national conservative magazine The Weekly Standard are likely purposeful; The Alaska Standard offers news and commentary with a right-wing bent, listing contributors such as Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski, just-elected state Representative Charisse Millett, fellow conservative radio jock Mike Porcaro, and Republican pollster Dave Dittman, just to name a few.

“We’re going to have people who are liberal post and help too,” Fagan tells Flashlight. “It’s not exclusively conservative, but obviously, I’m putting the thing on and I have a clear conservative bent. I think that’ll be reflected in coverage, but we hope that ideology won’t blind us to the point where we leave out facts or distort the truth just to promote our ideology.”

Nonetheless, the philosophy behind the site (which lists Fagan as its publisher and Associated Builders and Contractors President Rebecca Logan as editor) echoes the right on at least one point: the demonization of the mainstream media.

“Normally it seems that the mainstream media ignores a lot of stories and only tells half the story, so we’re just trying to get in there and give it both sides,” Fagan says.

The Alaska Standard’s slogan is “Raising the banner of journalism in Alaska,” of which Fagan says, “that’s in regard to shaking loose some of that bias and giving both sides of the story,” noting “I think we’ve got some great journalists in this state, but I do believe that bias is pretty obvious and injected into a lot of mainstream media outlets.”

In recent days The Alaska Standard’s stories have criticized the Anchorage Assembly’s approval of five-year contracts for labor unions, noted the Permanent Fund’s $10 billion drop in recent months, and taken the Daily News to task for perceived support of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez’s offer of heating oil to rural Alaskans.

While Flashlight doesn’t always agree with the opinions offered on The Alaska Standard, we have to applaud Fagan’s ambition, especially in the wake of the loss of the long-running conservative Voice of the Times website. And we enthusiastically agree with Fagan on one point: “I think the more, the better; everyone’s going to have their own little niche,” he says. “There’s a lot of opportunity out there.”

bjk@anchoragepress.com