News stories this week literally run the gamut from small to big. From a little dog who helped his owner recover to high-rise buildings expanding the city.
In the Willow Glen Resident, Ruth C. Wamuyu tells the story of Pooch the dog and the “dogged determination” that reunited him to his owner after a car accident. The neighborhood will keep its fire station as a result of a budget compromise, Irene Kew reports. Another story by Irene Kew details the scrutiny that the Willow Glen Neighborhood Association is giving to the renovation of Willow Glen Elementary School, to determine if traffic is affected.
In larger matters, literally, the City Council voted Tuesday on two measures that have the potential to dramatically change development in North San Jose, allowing high-rises and a massive amount of growth as Janice Rombeck describes in the Mercury News.
I think I like the story about the dog better.
JNAT,
I agree, the new merc format sucks. I’m switching to the chronicle. Will miss the local news.
The old Merc used to print a local peninsula section for readers North of San Jose. With the new Merc I am wondering if peninsula readers will now get the same paper as San Jose readers. One clue this might be the case is the Merc introduced a new peninsula columnist, Patty Fisher, to San Jose readers. Is the claim of expanded local coverage just a combination of the San Jose and peninsula local sections? I welcome the coverage of the peninsula but feel that San Jose is poorly served by the Merc. Knight Ridder (parent company of the Merc) already provides extensive coverage of the peninsula with the free Palo Alto Daily News now with morning and afternoon editions.
The nice thing about the Merc’s new style is that you can basically toss the entire paper except the front page and have a brief synopsis of everything in the first section: internation, national, state, local, and editorials.
I wouldn’t want to be an advertiser who doesn’t get in section A, no one will see their ads – except for maybe the folks at the recycling center (oooppps, didn’t mean to drag up old garbage debates!)
Only in San Jose would the Council vote to allow MORE traffic congestion at our intersections. We really do live in Wonderland.
As for the Merc, which seems to be having the same identity crisi that San Jose has, the new format seems to be based on several flawed demographic studies:
Only one person reads the paper at a time, eliminating the “…do you want the front section or the local section?’ discussion;
If you want to read local news, then start searching for it;
If you want to read a particular columnist, memorize what day and what page they will be on;
If the paper isn’t broken we’ll fix it anyway.
No wonder so many people are looking to other sources for their news.
In agreement here that the new & improved Merc format isn’t improved at all. The “calendar” section on Monday was absolutely pathetic—why Monday? Who are those readers who supposedly had been requesting all of these changes? Local news was fine in its own section, and that all needs to be brought back. Purse Edition is right about nobody seeing the ads if they’re not in the front section. The rest of the paper is useless. And now the weather is in the sports section? Weather impacts everyone, not just the anglers or other sporting types among us.
I too noticed the new Peninsula columnist. Anybody remember how short-lived Sue Hutchison’s column on life in SF was? And since when has anything in Leigh Weimers’ painful little column been front-section news? You’d think they’d learn. Change is tough to get used to, but this change was totally for the worse and I’ll never warm up to it. Clearly they are taking their cues from USA Today with their front page graphics now.
As for Downtown #2: was light rail ridership ever mentioned in the Environmental Impact Report? Keep in mind that 1/2 the SJ city council also sits on the VTA Board of Directors, who ultimately decide the fare and frequency of public transit in that corridor.
Also keep in mind that the development requires a light rail or bus transfer to the proposed BART corridor. Many studies on public transit use indicate that ridership lowers with each public transit transfer that has to be made.
As for the “redesigned” Merc: I will add it as another reason to give that rag a wide berth. In my book, any paper whose opinion pages continue to blindly endorse taxes and fees that continue to drive small businesses and jobs out of the Valley is not worth a serious read.
Sorry to repost, but has more relevance here.
It’s classic how there’s been plans to urbanize north San Jose, allowing it to be more dense, and effectively mixing industrial, commercial and residential zones. If that isn’t a clear sign that the city has given up on downtown, I’m not sure what is.
Why not just convert Moffett Field into Mineta SJC? Then we can get our beautiful 60-70 story buildings to complement our major league baseball field. I’m sure Mountain View can handle it. Whatever happened to the Boston Properties development which was supposed to happen, anyway?
I can’t necessarily comment on the Merc b/c I haven’t seen the Merc’s new format, but this discussion is depressing. I have always said that the Merc was great because it was a large, progresive paper which reflected the opinions (except for Skip Bayless), news and events of SAN JOSE and the residents of SAN JOSE.
Sure, there’s money to be made catering to people in the East Bay/Peninsula, but how saturated is that market already? I feel the Merc had it right all along with the different bureaus and different area editions (Peninsula, Santa Cruz, etc.), but sounds like they managed to alienate their local readers by switching formats.
Now that the Mercury has dumped most of its local coverage by folding it into one page of the front section, I’m glad this site and the weekly papers are around to keep tabs on what’s really happening locally.
Sounds to me like the intent is to create a new downtown and let the original one become some kind of “old town” scene. Not to say there’s much of the “old” left downtown anymore, but they’ll likely go the contrived route like they did at the history park and mess things up even further. It’s just their way of doing things on the Council.
#8. Skip Bayless? I always do!
LETS JUST SAY THE COUCIL IS AS GOOFY AS THE MERCURY. THEY BOTH WANT TO TRY AND REDO SOMETHING THAT WAS THERE AND FINE ALREADY.THE MERCURY SHOULD HAVE KEEP THE LOCAL SECTION AND EXPANDED ON IT. YOU CAN GET NATIONAL AND WORLD NEWS EVERYWHERE. MAKE THE WHOLE SECION LOCAL INCLUDING THE FRONT PAGE. AS FOR NORTH SAN JOSE THAT IDEA SUCKS.
Why do so many people over here hate on the North San Jose plan? The plan is not trying to “replace” any downtown. City hall, the arena, the arts & SJSU will keep downtown the cultural hub of San Jose. And I don’t believe any politician could be so naive as to ever forget that… The plan is simply allowing one of Silicon Valleys most renowned corridors to concentrate & intensify growth without the outdated limitations that were set decades ago. Growth is inevitable and our local government needs to encourage development that creates a more stimulating urban environment for its new breed of workers, than the old school & boring development that is currently in place. And by focusing this development in one large area that already has a founding distinction in a lucrative global industry, we are making the best of an inevitable situation. Traffic is going to get worse with or without the plan. But San Jose’s significance in the high-tech world could definitely suffer if we didn’t capitalize on the current & especially future demands for growth. In the Golden Triangle, Santa Clara is the only city that doesn’t have the same strict limits on growth and traffic in that part of the Triangle is as bad as anywhere else and nobody would mistake it for a first or second “downtown”… Its just what the high-tech business parks of tomorrow are gonna look like, whether their in San Jose, Austin, Boston or Mississippi…
What about the outdated limitations of SJC?
The city is almost done with the international terminal and looking to renovate terminal C, but what’s the use? The runway (wait, are there two now?) can’t support a 747, let alone all the behemoths that will follow it. Put one in Santa Clara, have the runway facing east/west, and call it good. Denver International only cost $5B.
Then we can have the tall buildings downtown we crave.