Last week the San Jose Mercury News bought out the contracts of 47 people and reduced their editorial staff.
Many longtime employees left the newspaper, including Leigh Weimers.
The business section reported that Knight Ridder was looking into selling the Mercury News.
The Mercury News is undisputably the most powerful institution in our community. The Pulitzer Prize winning newspaper has been recognized for their professionalism and their high ethical standards for jouralism.
But there are clear indications the newspaper industry is in decline. Circulation is in decline. When most people can get instant news via internet and television, the daily newspaper has become a venue for those who seek a deeper analysis of news we already know about.
Financially, Craigs list, ebay and other internet companies are fast replacing the classified ads. Cable Television is more cost effective and reaches a more targetted demographic—so the financial challenges will continue to exist.
The result is alarming. The cutting of longterm employees will result in less institutional knowledge of our area, in fewer local stories, in less coverage of politics and the Mercury will have to adapt to the major challenges of Cable and the internet.
As the major watchdog of our community, a weakened Mercury News, with new potentially out of town owners (Tony Ridder is a local), a potential corporate mentality that trumps journalistic integrity is the potential future we face.
Anyone who has seen “Good Night and Good Luck” knows this is the same challenge that was faced by the television news industry in the past. Journalistic integrity was lost to corporate profits and the need to entertain.
What will be left in quality newspapers like the Mercury News follow the same path?
Todd Bertuzzi is an all-star caliber right-winger for the Vancouver Canucks. He was a force in last night’s NHL contest with the Sharks in H-P Pavilion. But the 2004 All-Star shouldn’t have been on the ice.
He should have been at home with his wife and two children watching the game on television wondering if Steve Moore will ever be cleared to play hockey again, at which time and only at that time would Bertuzzi have the chance to return to the sport.
Many sports are violent in nature, but when bodily harm is inflicted during an act penalized by the officials of the sport at the moment of the act … the resulting suspension should match the time it takes the injured individual to recuperate from their injuries and return to their game. If the injured athlete is out for a season before returning, the penalized party should be suspended for the same amount of time. Once the injured party returns, and the penalized athlete then serves his sport’s regular suspension and fine … then and only then could the person resume their sport.
Case in point with Mr. Bertuzzi…
It was on March 8, 2004 that Bertuzzi sucker-punched Moore from behind and drove him face-first into the ice … breaking Moore’s neck. Moore fractured three vertebrae in his neck and incurred a concussion on the play and continues to undergo physical therapy in hopes of returning to the form that made him an NHL player with the Colorado Avalanche.
Moore may never play again.
Bertuzzi? He was suspended by the NHL for 17 months, but due to last season’s lockout, missed only 17 regular and playoff games total. He forfeited nearly half-a-million dollars in the process, but is back on track earning his $5 million salary this year.
Bertuzzi even faced up to 18 months in prison after Vancouver authorities charged him with assault. But, his guilty plea amounted to a sentence of probation and community service.
Bertuzzi is playing hockey. He is an assistant captain for the Canucks. He is on the Canadian Olympic squad. He is little worse for wear from the incident with Moore.
Moore, on the other hand, keeps his hopes that someday the doctors will clear him to play again and that the Avalanche give him the opportunity to resume his career. The odds are long against that.
Justice has not been served in the “Court of Sport.” Hockey is not alone in their methods of penalizing malicious attacks during games.
All sports should mandate that when bodily harm is inflicted during an act penalized by the officials of the sport at the moment of the act … the resulting suspension should match the time it takes the injured individual to recuperate from their injuries and return to their game.
If this were so, Todd Bertuzzi would have been home last night, watching the Canucks beat the Sharks and wondering if he would ever get the chance to play hockey again … just as Steve Moore has been doing ever since March 8, 2004.
You can’t entirely blame corporate profits for the demise of newspapers.
People hold ‘journalists’ with the same low regard as lawyers and politicians. And rightly so. Biased and ‘fake but accurate’ reporting have contributed heavily to the demise of traditional media.
Secondly – yet another newspaper that reports news you can get on the internet is redundant – so why would you pay for it?
And it looks Knight Ridder is repositioning themselves accordingly. From the Fly…
“The nation’s second-largest newspaper company, which also owns the Merc, added another newspaper trophy wife last week with its acquisition of the Silicon Valley Community Newspapers, a group of eight weeklies in Los Gatos, Saratoga, Cupertino, Sunnyvale, Campbell and San Jose. In February, Knight-Ridder also acquired the Daily News Group: Palo Alto Daily NEWS, Los Gatos Daily NEWS and three more papers on the peninsula.”
Richard, I too am sorry to see the decline of the local paper. Although I gave up my subscription about 12 years ago, it was nice to review the week with the Sunday edition.
This situation may however open up an opportunity for a small, local publication to thrive.
It would be nice to read about local issues instead of the news entree of the day. That, in combination with lower advertising rates ( no unions to appease ) could make for a viable paper.
I have often felt that there is a lot of local news that needs to be reported, both good and bad. If a local paper was not controled by an international corporation with its own ax to grind, and its own political slant, then maybe people would buy it and actually read it.
If not, well back to the internet but, wait a minuet, that’s where I am now.
Rich, the Mercury already employs writers who are not familiar with the area. So often I see stories that refer to San Carlos “Blvd.” or contain other mistakes that reflect the writer’s lack of familiarity with the area.
It looks like with any sale of Knight Ridder we’ll be headed towards another Channel 11 situation where focus on San Jose disappears.
On another subject, I am in the LA area on business this week. I went out to dinner with locals last night and talked briefly about San Jose and the feeling among these people was, if you’re the 10th largest city in the country, when are you going to start acting like one? I couldn’t agree more. If anyone read Mark Purdy’s column recently on the whole ball park issue, he really nailed it on the problem with “leadership” in San Jose consisting of people who can’t shake the small agricultural town atmosphere they grew up with. It’s time to get people into leadership roles here who will take a world-class approach to solving the image problem.
Although I do use the Internet for news and information I really enjoy reading the morning paper, and currently subscribe to both the Mercury News and the SF Chronicle.
While this is subjective, it appears to me that the quality of the Mercury has been declining for the last few years. I have noticed that the Chronicle consistently has longer articles with more detail than the Mercury. If I want short, simple stories then I will use the Internet, but I expect the paper to have more depth and detail.
With that said I am ready to cancel my subscription to the Mercury News. Not because of the news quality, but because of the poor home delivery service since Labor day. Apparently, the route was taken over by a new delivery person who appears to not be very conscientious about their job. This person just throws the paper out of the car as they drive by the house. Most of the time the paper does not even make it to the sidewalk. If it is enclosed in the plastic bag the bag is ripped and the paper is half-out. If this happens when it starts raining I will cancel the Mercury. I have used the Mercury’s web comment section on delivery a few times but nothing has changed.
Before, the original delivery person would place the paper next to the garage door, as the Chronicle delivery person does every day. This is what I expect from home delivery, since it keeps the paper out of the rain and makes it harder for someone walking down the sidewalk to “find” a newspaper. Or use it as a kickball as the kids sometimes do on their way to school.
I realize that in the overall scheme of things this is next to zero in importance, but if the newspaper industry expects to survive then they need to follow basic business practices and improve customer service. Taking the customer for granted is the path to failure.
Exactly right Mark T – having out of towners reporting on San Jose happenings does not work. Though, the Merc has very little local news anyways so why would people subscribe when they can get all the world, nation and state news elsewhere.
The Merc needs to have that local focus back to get more readership and don’t you think that their lack of coverage of local politics over the past few years has let our local leaders off the hook for many things?
The Merc scenario is very similar to what has happened at City Hall. The out-of-town boss (Gonzo) comes in and finds institutional memory is a threat to his leadership style so he systematically goes about removing as many senior employees as possible. He does this by either forcing them out through his vindictive, bullying management “style” or just makes life so miserable for them they pack-up and leave. Then, he goes about replacing them, in most cases, with people who are not from the area and many who still do not even live in San Jose.
Oh well, I guess if it’s good enough for the Merc, it’s good enough for City Hall.
The website Grade the News at http://www.gradethenews.org/ has an article and list of the staff leaving the Merc.
Does it really make a difference in the Merc’s reporting that Tony Ridder is a local? If so, the 29 other papers published by Knight Ridder in places where he doesn’t live, owned by an “out of towner”, must be substandard.
Knight Ridder’s recent purchases show a shift in focus to extensive local news coverage for the more affluent areas while dropping the Viet Mercury and Nuevo Mundo. It is too bad that most San Jose neigborhoods do not have the same level of coverage of local events that Knight Ridder’s Palo Alto Daily provides Palo Alto residents.
1) Has the mayor/city council released the Norcal e-mails yet?
2) Information is power. The citizens of San Jose lack power, in part, because the Mercury News has failed to cover the issues that affect our city. Their coverage of political issues is too often “thin” and “late.”
* Did you know that a portion of the city’s streetlights are turned off at night in order to save money?
* Did you know that less than one million dollars are spent each year to resurface the roads? (I’m not kidding).
* Did you know that “The Most Liveable Cities” award that the city government brags about was essentially “purchased?” ($10,000 was sent to the sponsoring entity!)
* The debt service schedule for the Taj Mahal city hall is over $900 million. For the next 35 years, an average of $26 million will have to be produced to pay for the bonds!
* And did you know, that the city government plans to move the senior lunch program from the Alma Senior Center against the wishes of the patrons? (The seniors don’t know either, don’t upset them).
Thanks Eugene, I forgot in my above blog to mention another great reason for the MN to disappear. New rumor has it that the City Redevelopment Agency has its eyes on the Knight-Ridder property as a site for a new sports complex.
New rumor says it will be BIG… home for a baseball team, a football team, a soccer team, a la crosse team.. Well you get the picture.
Nice location too. Right on the Guadalupe River which would allow boats to dock and ferrys to off-load fans.
Realize this is only a rumor but why not, every other site in San Jose has been touted as a sports arena area.
While market forces and new media technologies play roles in the downsizing of the Mercury News, impartial observers have noted its hostility toward persons or institutions based on race, neighborhood, and partisan identification for years.
The Mercury News has not provided both sides to most community issues for years.
An example is one Pete Campbell brought up, and that is the cost of debt repayments to pay for The New City Hall. The Mercury News avoided discussing the true cost of the money borrowed to build The New City Hall like the plague, and continues to do so.
We did see the Mercury News provide such an analysis of the Governor’s $15 billion bond proposal a year or so ago, and also an analysis of the county’s plan to borrow to build an entertainment facility at the fair grounds. So it does know how to provide this analysis.
But when it comes to one of the costly gew-gaws it prefers, or even the finances of redevelopment, the Mercury News closes up like a clam on the true cost of the money borrowed to pay building costs.
Because of this lack of fundamental honesty on issues across the board, the editors and reporters at the Mercury News deserve the fate they face.
the true rumor is that the city braintrust (try and figure out who that might be) wants to expand the arena, blow the top off it and replace it with a retractable dome and make it an all purpose sports stadium/arena/concert hall/ bart portal/ and city hall annex.
The other rumor that is circulating is that the silly dome at silly hall will be used as a miniature golf course and that the city is actively pursuing a miniature golf professional franchise. It is said that the miniature minds working on this proposal are so excited they can hardly putt straight. Remeber you read it here first.
San Jose has traditionally been ill-served by its local media. Since KR took over the Merc they have been more interested in a being a “Bay Area” newspaper, rather than a SAN JOSE paper (notice that “San Jose” was dropped from the masthead many years ago. Local radio is abysmal – no local news/talk that focus’ on the hocus-pocus in local gov.t. and lousy local tv that for decades no one watched. There you have it folks, the impotent media of the nation’s 10th largest city – one of the contributing reasons why SJ remains a ‘cow town’.
You would think City Hall would set an example for the rest of the city by turning off some of their office lights at night. I think they leave more lights on than any other downtown business.
Novice—Let’s go, but instead of Quetzie how about using the paintball guns to give Cith Hall a splash of much needed color? The Albino Building (no offense to our fellow Albino’s) is in dire need of some color and humanity. We can’t do much about the humanity but can’t we do something about the color?
Red? For the 1+billion’s worth of red ink for the building cost
Black? For the mood of the taxpayer schmucks footing the bill for the golfball
Green? For how envious the rube’s in Alviso and Milpitas must be of our shiny new golfball building
Rainbow? To showcase the compassion and uber-tolerance of the building inhabitants
I agree with many of the posts here. It’s a sad day when SJ’s only big newspaper has too little local news worthy of being the 10th largest city in the nation. It’s an even sadder day when that paper’s parent company buys many of the smaller community papers in the Valley. These are one of many reasons I do not (and will not) subscribe to the Mercury News.
In the long term, we need to increase support of “independent” publications like Metro, La Oferta, and El Observador. In addition, we need to have a network of blogs and other web sites that cover all San Jose and Silicon Valey issues like transportation, politics, and other issues. Such sites need to tell “the other side” of controversial issues like proposals for BART and a new baseball stadium, rarely heard (if ever) in the local mainstream press.
Maybe you should report things that people are interested in. Maybe “investigative reporting”? You could start with the San Jose Labor Commissioners office!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Last week the San Jose Mercury News bought out the contracts of 47 people and reduced their editorial staff.
Many longtime employees left the newspaper, including Leigh Weimers.
The business section reported that Knight Ridder was looking into selling the Mercury News.
The Mercury News is undisputably the most powerful institution in our community. The Pulitzer Prize winning newspaper has been recognized for their professionalism and their high ethical standards for jouralism.
But there are clear indications the newspaper industry is in decline. Circulation is in decline. When most people can get instant news via internet and television, the daily newspaper has become a venue for those who seek a deeper analysis of news we already know about.
Financially, Craigs list, ebay and other internet companies are fast replacing the classified ads. Cable Television is more cost effective and reaches a more targetted demographic—so the financial challenges will continue to exist.
The result is alarming. The cutting of longterm employees will result in less institutional knowledge of our area, in fewer local stories, in less coverage of politics and the Mercury will have to adapt to the major challenges of Cable and the internet.
As the major watchdog of our community, a weakened Mercury News, with new potentially out of town owners (Tony Ridder is a local), a potential corporate mentality that trumps journalistic integrity is the potential future we face.
Anyone who has seen “Good Night and Good Luck” knows this is the same challenge that was faced by the television news industry in the past. Journalistic integrity was lost to corporate profits and the need to entertain.
What will be left in quality newspapers like the Mercury News follow the same path?
Todd Bertuzzi is an all-star caliber right-winger for the Vancouver Canucks. He was a force in last night’s NHL contest with the Sharks in H-P Pavilion. But the 2004 All-Star shouldn’t have been on the ice.
He should have been at home with his wife and two children watching the game on television wondering if Steve Moore will ever be cleared to play hockey again, at which time and only at that time would Bertuzzi have the chance to return to the sport.
Many sports are violent in nature, but when bodily harm is inflicted during an act penalized by the officials of the sport at the moment of the act … the resulting suspension should match the time it takes the injured individual to recuperate from their injuries and return to their game. If the injured athlete is out for a season before returning, the penalized party should be suspended for the same amount of time. Once the injured party returns, and the penalized athlete then serves his sport’s regular suspension and fine … then and only then could the person resume their sport.
Case in point with Mr. Bertuzzi…
It was on March 8, 2004 that Bertuzzi sucker-punched Moore from behind and drove him face-first into the ice … breaking Moore’s neck. Moore fractured three vertebrae in his neck and incurred a concussion on the play and continues to undergo physical therapy in hopes of returning to the form that made him an NHL player with the Colorado Avalanche.
Moore may never play again.
Bertuzzi? He was suspended by the NHL for 17 months, but due to last season’s lockout, missed only 17 regular and playoff games total. He forfeited nearly half-a-million dollars in the process, but is back on track earning his $5 million salary this year.
Bertuzzi even faced up to 18 months in prison after Vancouver authorities charged him with assault. But, his guilty plea amounted to a sentence of probation and community service.
Bertuzzi is playing hockey. He is an assistant captain for the Canucks. He is on the Canadian Olympic squad. He is little worse for wear from the incident with Moore.
Moore, on the other hand, keeps his hopes that someday the doctors will clear him to play again and that the Avalanche give him the opportunity to resume his career. The odds are long against that.
Justice has not been served in the “Court of Sport.” Hockey is not alone in their methods of penalizing malicious attacks during games.
All sports should mandate that when bodily harm is inflicted during an act penalized by the officials of the sport at the moment of the act … the resulting suspension should match the time it takes the injured individual to recuperate from their injuries and return to their game.
If this were so, Todd Bertuzzi would have been home last night, watching the Canucks beat the Sharks and wondering if he would ever get the chance to play hockey again … just as Steve Moore has been doing ever since March 8, 2004.
You can’t entirely blame corporate profits for the demise of newspapers.
People hold ‘journalists’ with the same low regard as lawyers and politicians. And rightly so. Biased and ‘fake but accurate’ reporting have contributed heavily to the demise of traditional media.
Secondly – yet another newspaper that reports news you can get on the internet is redundant – so why would you pay for it?
And it looks Knight Ridder is repositioning themselves accordingly. From the Fly…
“The nation’s second-largest newspaper company, which also owns the Merc, added another newspaper trophy wife last week with its acquisition of the Silicon Valley Community Newspapers, a group of eight weeklies in Los Gatos, Saratoga, Cupertino, Sunnyvale, Campbell and San Jose. In February, Knight-Ridder also acquired the Daily News Group: Palo Alto Daily NEWS, Los Gatos Daily NEWS and three more papers on the peninsula.”
Re: # 1
Richard, I too am sorry to see the decline of the local paper. Although I gave up my subscription about 12 years ago, it was nice to review the week with the Sunday edition.
This situation may however open up an opportunity for a small, local publication to thrive.
It would be nice to read about local issues instead of the news entree of the day. That, in combination with lower advertising rates ( no unions to appease ) could make for a viable paper.
I have often felt that there is a lot of local news that needs to be reported, both good and bad. If a local paper was not controled by an international corporation with its own ax to grind, and its own political slant, then maybe people would buy it and actually read it.
If not, well back to the internet but, wait a minuet, that’s where I am now.
San Jose Inside’s – Match famous movie sayings to your favorite local politicians contest
1.“This job would be great if it wasn’t for the f*****g residents.”
2.“I really have nothing to say, but I want to say it all the same.”
3.“Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain.”
4.“I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.”
5.“I love the Power. It’s so bad.”
6.“She just goes a little mad sometimes. We all go a little mad sometimes.
7.“I can’t.”
8.“Everything is different, but the same… things are more moderner than before… bigger, and yet smaller…
Rich, the Mercury already employs writers who are not familiar with the area. So often I see stories that refer to San Carlos “Blvd.” or contain other mistakes that reflect the writer’s lack of familiarity with the area.
It looks like with any sale of Knight Ridder we’ll be headed towards another Channel 11 situation where focus on San Jose disappears.
On another subject, I am in the LA area on business this week. I went out to dinner with locals last night and talked briefly about San Jose and the feeling among these people was, if you’re the 10th largest city in the country, when are you going to start acting like one? I couldn’t agree more. If anyone read Mark Purdy’s column recently on the whole ball park issue, he really nailed it on the problem with “leadership” in San Jose consisting of people who can’t shake the small agricultural town atmosphere they grew up with. It’s time to get people into leadership roles here who will take a world-class approach to solving the image problem.
Although I do use the Internet for news and information I really enjoy reading the morning paper, and currently subscribe to both the Mercury News and the SF Chronicle.
While this is subjective, it appears to me that the quality of the Mercury has been declining for the last few years. I have noticed that the Chronicle consistently has longer articles with more detail than the Mercury. If I want short, simple stories then I will use the Internet, but I expect the paper to have more depth and detail.
With that said I am ready to cancel my subscription to the Mercury News. Not because of the news quality, but because of the poor home delivery service since Labor day. Apparently, the route was taken over by a new delivery person who appears to not be very conscientious about their job. This person just throws the paper out of the car as they drive by the house. Most of the time the paper does not even make it to the sidewalk. If it is enclosed in the plastic bag the bag is ripped and the paper is half-out. If this happens when it starts raining I will cancel the Mercury. I have used the Mercury’s web comment section on delivery a few times but nothing has changed.
Before, the original delivery person would place the paper next to the garage door, as the Chronicle delivery person does every day. This is what I expect from home delivery, since it keeps the paper out of the rain and makes it harder for someone walking down the sidewalk to “find” a newspaper. Or use it as a kickball as the kids sometimes do on their way to school.
I realize that in the overall scheme of things this is next to zero in importance, but if the newspaper industry expects to survive then they need to follow basic business practices and improve customer service. Taking the customer for granted is the path to failure.
Exactly right Mark T – having out of towners reporting on San Jose happenings does not work. Though, the Merc has very little local news anyways so why would people subscribe when they can get all the world, nation and state news elsewhere.
The Merc needs to have that local focus back to get more readership and don’t you think that their lack of coverage of local politics over the past few years has let our local leaders off the hook for many things?
The Merc scenario is very similar to what has happened at City Hall. The out-of-town boss (Gonzo) comes in and finds institutional memory is a threat to his leadership style so he systematically goes about removing as many senior employees as possible. He does this by either forcing them out through his vindictive, bullying management “style” or just makes life so miserable for them they pack-up and leave. Then, he goes about replacing them, in most cases, with people who are not from the area and many who still do not even live in San Jose.
Oh well, I guess if it’s good enough for the Merc, it’s good enough for City Hall.
The website Grade the News at http://www.gradethenews.org/ has an article and list of the staff leaving the Merc.
Does it really make a difference in the Merc’s reporting that Tony Ridder is a local? If so, the 29 other papers published by Knight Ridder in places where he doesn’t live, owned by an “out of towner”, must be substandard.
Knight Ridder’s recent purchases show a shift in focus to extensive local news coverage for the more affluent areas while dropping the Viet Mercury and Nuevo Mundo. It is too bad that most San Jose neigborhoods do not have the same level of coverage of local events that Knight Ridder’s Palo Alto Daily provides Palo Alto residents.
Dear San Jose:
1) Has the mayor/city council released the Norcal e-mails yet?
2) Information is power. The citizens of San Jose lack power, in part, because the Mercury News has failed to cover the issues that affect our city. Their coverage of political issues is too often “thin” and “late.”
* Did you know that a portion of the city’s streetlights are turned off at night in order to save money?
* Did you know that less than one million dollars are spent each year to resurface the roads? (I’m not kidding).
* Did you know that “The Most Liveable Cities” award that the city government brags about was essentially “purchased?” ($10,000 was sent to the sponsoring entity!)
* The debt service schedule for the Taj Mahal city hall is over $900 million. For the next 35 years, an average of $26 million will have to be produced to pay for the bonds!
* And did you know, that the city government plans to move the senior lunch program from the Alma Senior Center against the wishes of the patrons? (The seniors don’t know either, don’t upset them).
Pete Campbell
Thanks Eugene, I forgot in my above blog to mention another great reason for the MN to disappear. New rumor has it that the City Redevelopment Agency has its eyes on the Knight-Ridder property as a site for a new sports complex.
New rumor says it will be BIG… home for a baseball team, a football team, a soccer team, a la crosse team.. Well you get the picture.
Nice location too. Right on the Guadalupe River which would allow boats to dock and ferrys to off-load fans.
Realize this is only a rumor but why not, every other site in San Jose has been touted as a sports arena area.
While market forces and new media technologies play roles in the downsizing of the Mercury News, impartial observers have noted its hostility toward persons or institutions based on race, neighborhood, and partisan identification for years.
The Mercury News has not provided both sides to most community issues for years.
An example is one Pete Campbell brought up, and that is the cost of debt repayments to pay for The New City Hall. The Mercury News avoided discussing the true cost of the money borrowed to build The New City Hall like the plague, and continues to do so.
We did see the Mercury News provide such an analysis of the Governor’s $15 billion bond proposal a year or so ago, and also an analysis of the county’s plan to borrow to build an entertainment facility at the fair grounds. So it does know how to provide this analysis.
But when it comes to one of the costly gew-gaws it prefers, or even the finances of redevelopment, the Mercury News closes up like a clam on the true cost of the money borrowed to pay building costs.
Because of this lack of fundamental honesty on issues across the board, the editors and reporters at the Mercury News deserve the fate they face.
Willy
the true rumor is that the city braintrust (try and figure out who that might be) wants to expand the arena, blow the top off it and replace it with a retractable dome and make it an all purpose sports stadium/arena/concert hall/ bart portal/ and city hall annex.
The other rumor that is circulating is that the silly dome at silly hall will be used as a miniature golf course and that the city is actively pursuing a miniature golf professional franchise. It is said that the miniature minds working on this proposal are so excited they can hardly putt straight. Remeber you read it here first.
San Jose has traditionally been ill-served by its local media. Since KR took over the Merc they have been more interested in a being a “Bay Area” newspaper, rather than a SAN JOSE paper (notice that “San Jose” was dropped from the masthead many years ago. Local radio is abysmal – no local news/talk that focus’ on the hocus-pocus in local gov.t. and lousy local tv that for decades no one watched. There you have it folks, the impotent media of the nation’s 10th largest city – one of the contributing reasons why SJ remains a ‘cow town’.
In reference to #11 (Pete) –
Just an observation…
You would think City Hall would set an example for the rest of the city by turning off some of their office lights at night. I think they leave more lights on than any other downtown business.
26 million a year? And for what? To look at an Epcot-wannabe pseudo-golfball building?
How about we have some fun for a fraction instead?
Let’s cordon off downtown, give everyone paintball guns, and let’s have a royal game of capture the flag!
Place the flaq on top of Quetzie and title the event “Escape from San Jose”.
Who’s with me? Let’s do it!!
Novice—Let’s go, but instead of Quetzie how about using the paintball guns to give Cith Hall a splash of much needed color? The Albino Building (no offense to our fellow Albino’s) is in dire need of some color and humanity. We can’t do much about the humanity but can’t we do something about the color?
Flavan you are on it. But what colors?
Red? For the 1+billion’s worth of red ink for the building cost
Black? For the mood of the taxpayer schmucks footing the bill for the golfball
Green? For how envious the rube’s in Alviso and Milpitas must be of our shiny new golfball building
Rainbow? To showcase the compassion and uber-tolerance of the building inhabitants
I agree with many of the posts here. It’s a sad day when SJ’s only big newspaper has too little local news worthy of being the 10th largest city in the nation. It’s an even sadder day when that paper’s parent company buys many of the smaller community papers in the Valley. These are one of many reasons I do not (and will not) subscribe to the Mercury News.
In the long term, we need to increase support of “independent” publications like Metro, La Oferta, and El Observador. In addition, we need to have a network of blogs and other web sites that cover all San Jose and Silicon Valey issues like transportation, politics, and other issues. Such sites need to tell “the other side” of controversial issues like proposals for BART and a new baseball stadium, rarely heard (if ever) in the local mainstream press.
gentelman.. everyone knows what must be changed to make better situation:P
SJ is a cow town!
Maybe you should report things that people are interested in. Maybe “investigative reporting”? You could start with the San Jose Labor Commissioners office!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I too agree to most of you here that SJ being there in the local paper has made everyone sad for him including me.