Friday, June 10, 2005
 
God Bless Marty Blum. As most of the more regular readers of this site know, about a month ago I took a job in San Francisco and Jen and I had to move. This was after some months of being super-distracted by another project; in short, this space has been neglected. This is one of the basic problems with weblogging. If you're only doing it when the spirit moves you, it's going to be pretty inconsistent.

But events have transpired this week that merit comment. First though, a little history.

A few weeks ago, after a year and a half of keeping this site going, I was finally awarded a mention by name on the editorial page of the News-Press. I forget the exact wording of it, but the two, er, points Mr. Armstrong made were that this site was written by a small player (guilty as charged!) and that it was "just opinion." The irony of the latter charge is particularly sharp, as one of the original rationales for starting this project was to counterbalance the occasional vaccum of facts that News-Press editorials are seized with. Looking back, I think I've been reasonably successful at doing this, at least at times. The best posts here have been less heavy on the pure opinion and more heavy on the facts.

In the larger debate about blogging vs. real journalism, a kind of rule of thumb has emerged: a journalist is someone who picks up the phone. In a few cases, I've either picked up the phone or done some research or had the kind of inside experience that being an ordinary member of the Santa Barbara community could provide. That's where the value-add from blogging comes from, and I think the thousands of visits here indicate that I've been at least modestly successful at delivering on that promise.

When there's one main news source, an unfortunate dynamic tends to develop: it becomes nearly impossible for anyone in power or anywhere near it to critique that source, for fear of being an endless target. And as the NP article about the Mayor's letter indicated, there's never going to be any shortage of consultant types cautioning you to play it safe, to take no risks in your campaign and make sure you stay below everyone's radar. I don't know if he meant for it to sound this way, but John Davies' quote makes it sound like he wouldn't know an act of poltical courage if one walked up and bit him on the ass.

But that, I would say, is exactly what this is: an act of profound political courage. The Mayor has taken a great risk in sending that letter. But this was a risk that I would say, and I know many people in town agree, very badly needed to be taken.

The background that was missing in the story the NP ran about itself was the truly astonshing, community-wide, deep, broad dissatisfaction with the News-Press editorial direction. I have some measure of this because over the past year, I'd become something of the person that people would go to when they were unhappy about something that had appeared there. This happened to me hundreds of times, probably thousands.

This dissastisfaction showed up in some suprising ways, too. Knocking on doors and calling voters during campaigns, I heard dissatisfaction, puzzlement and even occasionally anger at the News-Press. So it wasn't just coming from the hardened activists.

The alternative that was most often proposed was to just keep quiet, to suffer the slings and arrows as they came. I certainly see the merits of this; as the adage goes, never pick a fight with someone who buys ink by the barrel. The problem with this approach is that Santa Barbara just plain deserves better. Santa Barbara deserves an editorial page that isn't obsessed with comforting the comfortable and afflicting the afflicted. It deserves an editorial page director who will fight against the slide towards a plantation economy, who understands that spending half of a family's income on housing isn't healthy, who understands that government can and does solve problems competently and efficiently. The town at least deserves someone who can write an editorial without resorting to name calling.

So now the Mayor has used her bully pulpit to give voice to this dissatisfaction. She's doing everything she can to make this a better place. Just don't count on reading about it in the News-Press.


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