Courtesy of Silicon Valley Community Newspapers, here are headlines from around San Jose this week.
Neighborhood watch being organized on Iris Court following the dog
poisoning… By Irene Kew
Beware teen-run charity scam… By Alicia Upano
Mixed reaction to the Vector Control District ballot… By Ruth Wamuyu
Deer carcasses found near a residential street mean mountain lion may be
near… By Anne Ward Ernst
Students get scholarships for turning around their floundering high school
careers… By Anne Gelhaus
Lincoln High students’ artwork on Downtown Doors project… By Mary Gottschalk
New barbecue joint opening at old drive-in site on The Alameda… By Mary Gottschalk
And of course, a cartoon by Decinzo.
Thank you for the cheap commercialization of sanjoseinside.com !
Its one thing to provide links to other news outlets websites, and quite another to post what is a blatant paid product endorsement in a blog. With all respect to David Cohen, his papers are better than that. You might as well team up with our local tabloid news, San José Magazine, and put some salacious photos of our local TV news anchors in the blog. It sells that rag – maybe it will sell your blog!
If you can’t come up with one posting per day, maybe this is not the right group to be running a blog. Maybe you could replace your posting with RSS feeds.
Or if the community newspapers has the only good news in town, maybe I’ll just change my home page to http://www.scvn.com
What about listing the news in the Times Newspaper Group papers? They tend to offer more balanced stories that are not so slanted. Additionally, their stories are not long editorials but true news stories that make you feel good about living in your community.
Please note that the web site for the “good news” Community Newspapers is either: http://www.community-newspapers.com,
OR the other older url: http://www.svcn.com
IT IS NOT SCVN…but SVCN…but use the community-newspapers.com…
What about news from other areas of San Jose? It looks like the Silicon Valley Community Newspapers focus their attention on the more affluent neighborhoods in San Jose. Are there any other local papers that could be included to give us a wider view of what is going on in more San Jose neighborhoods?
Maybe the name of this blog needs to be changed to San Jose OUTSIDE given the nature of a couple of the topics this week.
I know it’s tough to come up with material for anyone who writes a regular column, and even if it’s only one post a week, but it would be nice if we could continue to see some orginal stuff here instead of the borrowed items that have cropped up here more than once. This has become primarily a forum for Tom, and that’s not a bad thing at all, and if you look at the number of comments it’s clear that people respond to his posts here more than they do to any of the other writers because his material is original.
As for the SVCN, I find their “reporting” to have so much assumed knowledge that you don’t even get the necessary background information to know why it’s a news item in the first place.
Here are a couple of San Jose news web sites that seem to get zero attention from SJI:
http://www.el-observador.com/ – the El Observador newspaper
http://www.laoferta.com/ – La Oferta, which often features news stories about San Jose government from watchdog Pete Campbell.
I will have another story of my own that affects everyone in San Jose as well as the Valley. It involves all the usual dirty players in local politics. Stay tuned.
—eugene
“Community News” commented regarding the Times Newspaper Group:
I must point out that the writer’s two arguments are incongruous. If the Times papers have “true news stories” that are “not so slanted”, then how do they automatically “make you feel good”? “True news” newspapers report on both the good and the bad, not just the self-congratulatory feel-good fluff. I would give the writer about as much credibility as cable news…not much.
You see, the outer fringe of SJ is king. It must evolve into happening areas with many new communities. Downtown is no longer mentioned in any of the papers because downtown has no relevent to this area. The area is a disgrace loser so far until we can hopefully develop a funky district wherever it may be.
Kevin,
As a regular reader of San Jose Inside I don’t mind, and even appreciate, having noteworthy or interesting news articles pointed out. I also find the links very helpful.
But this week’s departure from offering a roundup from various news sources in favor of the exclusive focus on Silicon Valley Community Newspapers seems more like a promotion than a public service.
Were the articles cited the only news that you found to be of significance this past week? Were you trying to make some larger point about Silicon Valley Community Newspapers that was perhaps missed by me, and others?
I guess I don’t get it.
I have not one but two interesting Action News items.
From the SF Chronicle – the Governator’s stealth visit to SJ and his staged pothole
filling on a street that didn’t have potholes…
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/BATN/message/24678
Note the Chronicle reporter actually interviewed residents in the neighborhood – unlike the Merc’s “Mr. Roadshow” who failed to interview residents impacted from this staged production.
This leads to the item I wanted to talk about for this weekend’s news. Has anyone ever heard of SB 680? It’s a $5 vehicle license surchage (authored by Senator Joe Simitian, D-Palo Alto) for vehicles registered in Santa Clara County. The SVLG sponsors it and the money will be managed by VTA.
That’s just two of the reasons why my transit advocacy and watchdog group is againist this bill.
The bill is currently in the Assembly as of this writing.
If you don’t want another increase in the cost of living and/or doing business in the Valley, please urge your State Assemblymember and State Senator (as well as the Governator) and demand a veto to SB 680. Valley residents already pay enough in mismanaged sales taxes.
Web page for this is upcoming…
Eugene Bradley
Founder, Santa Clara VTA Riders Union
http://www.vtaridersunion.org/
More info on SB 680 (the ballot text) can be
found here:
http://www.aroundthecapitol.com/Bills/sb_680
—eugene
Thank you for posting this round-up. I just located to San Jose and it helps to have one place to go to get all of the news. I don’t know why these people are so harsh, the full summary wasn’t even posted on your home page. I look forward to the summary next week. Perhaps someone could post news from the other sources as well. I am an information junkie. . . KEEP IT COMING!
Hey Mark T.
I enjoy the local stuff on this blog, but find the non local stuff interesting too.
When I read the paper I don’t just read local section. You won’t learn anything new that way.
Keep writing different stuff bloggers. San Jose is nice but can bee a little boring. How many times can we discover that Gonzales is incompetent or that McEnery doesn’t like what he’s doing.