In late 1989, organizers of the 1990 Goodwill Games in Seattle asked the Communications Exchange Program to put together a conference for media professionals. The event focused on exposing the Soviets to Western media practices and surmounting obstacles to East-West communication.
One of the recommendations of that conference was to establish an "alumni newsletter." As a result, the CEP created a quarterly publication called GlasNews that continues the work of the 1990 Goodwill conference. GlasNews is delivered free to the Goodwill participants as well as about 300 other media leaders in the United States and the former Soviet Union. It is also available via the World Wide Web. The issues are also stored, along with accounts of the October 1993 crisis in Russia, at the Eskimo FTP site.
Our exchange programs have continued since the Games as well, benefiting journalists from Moscow, Tashkent, Vilnius, Vladivostok and other regions of the former Soviet Union.
Among the board members of the CEP:
- Chairman David Endicott has served as press secretary to U.S. Senator Slade Gorton, R-Wash., and as acting president of the Seattle-Tashkent Sister City Association. He is director of corporate communications and public affairs for First Choice Health Network, Washington state's largest statewide managed healthcare company.
- Vice Chairman Alan Boyle is foreign desk editor for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and a contributor to Moscow News. He participated in the U.S.-Soviet Emerging Leaders Summit in 1988 and 1990, as well as the 1990 Goodwill Communications Conference. He represented the Paris-based International Federation of Newspaper Publishers (FIEJ) at a conference on information technology for newspapers in April 1995 in Madras, India, and presented a paper titled "Finding the Path." He is also managing editor of GlasNews.
- Vice Chairman Marina Orlova is a former anchorwoman for several television programs in Moscow, including "Utro." She now produces and hosts "Russkii Chas," a Russian-language cable TV program shown in the Seattle area.
- Mikhail Alexseev, former Kremlin correspondent for News From Ukraine and an analyst and commentator for The Seattle Times; Bruce Amundsen of US West Communications' Seattle office; and Carol Rogalski of Communications Northwest.
To contact the CEP: