Fairbanks Daily News-Miner sports reporter Eric Goold and photographer Eric Engman have teamed to bring first-hand coverage of the 2006 Yukon Quest International Sled Dog Race to the Interior. News-Miner chief copy desk editor Julie Stricker
Eric Goold, a 32-year old sportswriter, has been with the News-Miner off-and-on since August of 2001. Goold graduated with a Bachelor's Degree in History from the University of Colorado-Denver in 1998 and then earned a Master’s Degree in Creative Writing from Kansas State University in 2000.
Various experiences as a writer and editor for high school and college newspapers combined with his passion for prep football and led him to the job writing sports at the News-Miner.
Goold is an avid dog person and enjoys spending time with his 2 year-old Husky mix, Isabel. He lives in the Goldstream Valley, where he is working on a novel about his experiences living in the frozen and frigid and magnificent state of Alaska.
Eric Engman, a 35-year-old photojournalist, has been a member of the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner staff for nearly seven years. Engman graduated from the University of Pittsburgh with a bachelor's degree in journalism in 1993. From 1993-95, he attended Syracuse University, where he earned his master's degree in publications photography.
Internships and full-time work sent him from his first job at the Syracuse Newspapers to newspapers in Michigan, Indiana and then back to New York before making the journey to Fairbanks in the spring of 1998.
His love of documenting people's everyday lives as well as his love of outdoor activities such as camping, canoeing, hunting and fishing has led him to settle in Fairbanks. He is now a land owner and house builder along with his wife, Becky, whom he has been with for more than nine years.
Engman continues to strive to benefit the community through his storytelling images.
Julie Stricker, a 40-year-old journalist, has been a copy editor at the News-Miner for the past 11 years. She and her husband, Rod, have been running dogs for nearly a decade and have a 25 dog kennel, a cat and a 2-year-old daughter.
Julie graduated from the University of Florida in 1989 with a bachelor's degree in journalism. She worked as a freelance sports, business and features writer at the Gainesville Sun while in college, and as an editor in Winter Haven, Fla., and at The Anchorage Times and the Anchorage Daily News before moving north to Fairbanks.
Julie has completed a couple of mid-distance races on the runners, but enjoys being a handler and hopes to pass on her love of the dogs to her daughter, Edie, who already has her own sled.
The Yukon Quest International Sled Dog Race began in 1984. The thousand-mile race commemorates the path taken by prospectors in Alaska's gold rush days from the Klondike to the Alaskan interior. Much more information about the race can be found at the official Yukon Quest Web site.
News-Miner Web coordinator and professional Web designer Jon Bourne designed and maintains this year's Yukon Quest coverage Web site for the News-Miner. A 3-year employee of the News-Miner, Jon is a lifelong Fairbanksan. He has studied computer science at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, and came to the News-Miner in 2003. Jon currently resides in Fairbanks with his wife and daughter.
This Web site operates entirely on open-source software. From high-level blogging software to the very operating system powering the server, every last byte is processed using software that is freely available to anyone who cares to use it.