Tuesday, August 09, 2005
What a wonderful world we live in. Through the magic of the internet, one can experience that magical feeling of nausea that only the editorial page of the News-Press can deliver anywhere in the world. Editorial chief Travis Armstrong took a break for a while, but recently he's been back with a vengeance, albeit an increasingly desparate one. The most recent antics over there include digging through an (apparently leaked) copy of the Mayor's email account.
This has to be yet another new low. It has been calculated that an average 2k email costs 1/500th of a cent. If she'd borrowed a pencil from the office for a couple of nights, that would have cost the taxpayers more.
We here at Heeyah! can't let this moment of crossing the Rubicon and pulling the bus right into the downtown loonyland parking lot go by without marking it in some way. I've been casually compiling my personal list of the worst, most low down rottenest things the News-Press has done since I've been following this, and in honor of this most unauspicious occasion, it's time to run it.
The top 10 lousiest, low-down things the News-Press has done since 2002
10. Going 0 for 3 in the 2003 SB City Council race and endorsing Arnold "Worst Governor Ever" Schwarzengger. It's fine to be wrong, but to be that wrong and that completely out of touch with your readers ought to be a little embarrasing.
9. Name calling. Who can forget "taxin'" Jackson, and "SB CAN'T". Such wit! No wonder they like Governor Schwarzenegger so much!
8. Attempted annointing and kingmaking, like endorsing Bob Pohl five times, while hardly mentioning the glaring conflict of interest they had with Pedro Nava.
7. Using data that was completely fabricated and counterfactual in one of their five endorsements of Bob Pohl.
6. Generally being completely out of touch with the political community: In the two years I was involved I probably went to 200 meetings, and I saw News-Press staff at exactly one of them. Instead, they prefer to get all their information from one or two leaky pipes, their annointed ones.
5. Afflicting the afflicted and comforting the comfortable. Putting quotes around housing "crisis" in an editorial made me so crazy I couldn't bring myself to respond.
4. Repeated, vicious and baseless attacks on local elected leaders, such as Susan Rose, Hannah-Beth Jackson and Congresswoman Capps, and now Mayor Blum. (funny coincidence that so many of their targets are women, isn't it?)
3. Engaging in letter jockeying: not publishing letters & reactions, holding op-eds and then running them when they would most embarass the author, and refusing to print rebuttals.
2. Dumpster diving Mayor Blum's email account, finding nothing and running with it anyway.
1. Aligning with the nastily racist and anti-democratic Coalition for Sustainable Planning.
I had high hopes of affecting some kind of positive change in the leadership at that paper. I know Ms. McCaw and the vast majority of the people who work at the News-Press are good people, there's just something not quite right over there. They probably need an exorcism more than a firing or three, but they should go for the firings anyway since it's hard to find a good exorcism priest.
In the meantime, it is time for me to move on. This will be my last post in this space, at least for a while. I hope something good happens with the News-Press soon, and there are new channels that might yet make that happen. Santa Barbara is a beautiful place and full of a lot of really good people, but that editorial page is like an anchor bumping along the bottom and catching every once in a while: it can't quite hold things in place, but it can sure slow things down. Hopefully someone's going to have the good sense to heave it in soon.
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.
Tuesday, April 05, 2005
Monday, March 21, 2005
Count the mistakes in today's News-Press editorial. The News-Press should run this morning's editorial on the back of a children's cereal box, like one of those "count the things that are wrong with this picture" games.
Rather than attack the fundamental premise of the living wage ordinance - that it is wrong to balance the city's budget on the backs of the working poor, especially in a city as wealthy as ours - they instead roll out a series of poorly researched (even by News-Press editorial page standards), elitist and utterly predictable lines of attack on the ordinance and the organizations that are participating in the coalition that's formed behind it.
What's the message here? That they agree with living wage proponents on not balancing the budget this way, unless the money is passed through a nonprofit first? That doesn't seem much like a particularly sharp approach to public policy.
As a backdrop for this conversation, keep in mind that living wage laws have been passed in hundreds and hundreds of communities across the country. Not a single one has experienced the fire and brimstone predicted by the assorted special interests that line up to oppose these efforts. The SB for a Living Wage website has lots of answers, and links to even more information.
But apparently the News-Press can't be bothered to do even a cursory study of the evidence that's out there. Much better to borrow a page from Bill O'Reilly - Who's looking out for you? - and score a few points with their increasingly tiny circle of allies while taking cheap shots at the grassroots groups that want to see this happen. A little research would've shown that great care has been taken by the drafters of the initial ordinance to balance the special needs of non-profits with the realization that non-profit payscales are an issue that our community has the capability of addressing.
Two errors are particularly glaring. The first is the accusation that the LW campaign is unwilling to compromise. I'm not going to speak for the campaign here - I am not a spokesperson, I've just been to a few of the meetings and pitched in on some of the work. The problem is that this is a completely unsubstantiated opinion. The News-Press has no idea whatsoever has transpired so far or what the opinion of the group on compromise is. They haven't even tried to talk to anyone about it!
The other error is saying that this is PUEBLO but under another another name. This is perfectly counterfactual. SB4LW is a currently legally unincorporated group of people and organizations that have come together out of an interest in seeing this little corner of injustice in our town righted.
These are serious problems. My understanding of libel is that is untruths with malicious intent, which certainly seems like a possibility here. A fifteen second conversation with the spokespeople could've cleared this up, but again, the NP would rather run unresearched bullshit than actually ask coherent quesitons.
As for the overall levels of policy knowledge of the SB CAN and PUEBLO board and general memberships, why exactly is this an issue? Are only those with the leisure time and necessary educational background to study these issues in depth allowed to express their opinion before our elected representatives? How many planning and policy experts do News-Press favored groups like the Coalition for "Sustainable" Planning turn out typically, one might wonder. Perhaps the News-Press would like to suggest that a citizenship knowledge and public policy test should be administered by elected bodies before those who wish to testify before them are permitted to do so.
The issue of non-profits paying living wages is an important and sensitive issue, and maybe the only thing the News-Press gets right in this entire piece is that there should be a community dialog, which makes their ineptitude even more disappointing. If the main venue where this dialog might occur can't resist chiming in with their megaphone before they've done even the slightest amount of research, how can we hope to have a reasonable conversation?
As there are a half dozen corrections that would be needed to bring this piece anywhere near the boundaries of reality, they should retract it altogether as soon as possible.
I caught Crossfire this afternoon - Ralph Nader was on and was suprisingly smooth and entertaining. He gets along with Novak, which is almost too bizarre to think about. The topic du jour was (you guessed it) Terri Schiavo. There's plenty of blather about this on the net and I'm not going to add to it except for this: the word I kept expecting ole' Ralph to bring up, and one that I feel like hasn't been said enough yet is totalitarianism. I think that's exactly what this is. As a reminder from dictionary.com ...
- Of, relating to, being, or imposing a form of government in which the political authority exercises absolute and centralized control over all aspects of life, the individual is subordinated to the state, and opposing political and cultural expression is suppressed: “A totalitarian regime crushes all autonomous institutions in its drive to seize the human soul” (Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.).
Friday, March 18, 2005
It's plug day. I just checked out Daraka's continuously excellent hoverbike. (and I've finally added this to the blogroll column over on the right, along with BlogaBarbara). There's a link to the new and cheerfully very yellow Santa Barbara for a Living Wage site, but check out the post with the text of Joe Armendariz's latest missive in particular. We have our own little Grover Norquist, right here on the South Coast.
At the risk of buying into one the "taxpayers this and taxpayers that" frame of his, fine, let's approach this as taxpayers. I pay taxes, and the government I want is one that is proactive, perhaps even extremely proactive, about social justice issues. I don't want my government, the government I pay for too, balancing its budget on the backs of the working poor. It is that simple.
Rejoice, ye disciples of Diogenes and ye se seekers of that kind of truth which is so rarely found on the pages of the News-Press! For unto our worthy community is bestowed a new fountain of wisdom and commentary. Behold, BlogaBarbara!
Seriously, this is a good thing. There is a great and important tradition of anonymous political speech in this country and it's wonderful to see someone doing it here. And to answer the obvious question since I've been posting so infrequently here of late: no, I have nothing to do with this. I've been focusing 110% of my energies on SpeakOutCalifornia. But I'm glad someone is doing it, and I'm looking forward to some good reads whenever the NP flies off the handle.
Wednesday, March 02, 2005
Wednesday, February 16, 2005
If you want a real ownership society, vote Democratic. There is a long but important article by William Greider over at The Nation that explains (among otherthings) why Phil Angelides is a heroic reformer. From The New Colossus
- "Angelides, for instance, articulates--actually resurrects--old wisdom about the nature of economic development. Public investment and private enterprise are not at war with each other, as the right has taught people to believe. They are mutually reinforcing and the key to insuring equitable opportunities for all (if you doubt this, check out the history of the world's sixth-largest economy--California).
