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Here. I don't know how useful it is, but it's at least an attempt at open government.

It's what you are going to be hearing and reading for days after the horrific killings in Virginia.
The media is going to swamp you with talking heads analyzing Cho Seung-Hui's motives, past history and psychological makeup.
Since the man was a resident alien, you will hear about immigration. You will also hear how or what police should have or could have done differently on a campus some 2,600 acres. You'll also hear those who want to ban guns or increase gun ownership.
And in the end, all that noise will never answer the question of why a 23-year-old could have decided that murdering dozens was the right way to leave this world.

I went to a talk by David Wallis the other day on the scarcity and slow demise of the cartoonist. I'll post more on my thoughts on that later.

Just because they're applying, doesn't mean they know what's coming.

Reader Kyle also thinks we should have printed the story about the Glendora teens arrest before the election, so he joins Foothill Cities who feels the same. Another person who sent an e-mail backed my stance, so maybe I'll get a late push.

No bias. No favor.
It’s a mantra we journalists try to live by. And around election time, the standard guides us as we decide which stories to publish before Election Day and which ones to publish afterward.
Every year in the weeks heading up to the day people vote, tips of skullduggery flood our phone lines: Candidates or their supporters misusing campaign contributions, lying about their accomplishments or other candidates’ histories and destroying lawn signs. These are just a few of the usual accusations.

Hiring citizen journalists.

A fascinating article about the city of Cudahy, to the southwest of us, by LA Weekly's Jeffrey Anderson mentions Baldwin Park Councilman David Olivas, and not in a good way:
"The methods of Beltran, Leal and Olivas left a mark on their former law partner Jesse Jauregui, who broke all ties with the group in 2001. Jauregui has this — and only this — to say about his old colleagues: “I’m glad to no longer be a part of Tammany Hall–style politics. How far it goes, I do not know. It became a seamy situation.”
The legal maneuvering that led to new leadership in Cudahy was part of a larger strategy, says former Cudahy councilwoman Araceli Gonzalez, a child of Mexican immigrants. “They were very outspoken,” says Gonzalez of the lawyers who advised Cudahy and Bell Gardens. “They were telling people they were going to take over these cities and put Latinos in power.”
Olivas, now in his own law practice while wearing two hats — as Cudahy city attorney and councilman in Baldwin Park — argues that the move to anoint Perez as Cudahy city manager was about Latino self-determination, and that change in leadership in small southeast L.A. County cities was for the better."

One city I'm familiar with and has always been forthright with its documents also posts its meeting's online. Unfortunately, I'm still trying to figure out how to post it to the blog.

Azusa City Council candidate forum on youtube.

Cool photo and here's the story.

What if we fired all our reporters tomorrow and depended on volunteers and community newsletters for our information? I a big believer in citizen journalism, and there are already blogs slowly covering the happenings in parts of the San Gabriel Valley. But they complement the newspaper, they can't replace it. There are stories, such as the ones we are doing about Gary Miller, that take time: piles of document reading, multiple phone calls and continual rewrites. Local breaking news may be a perfect spot for local residents armed with videos and phone cameras. An all-volunteer
army benefits the military, but it would be disastrous for the news.

Foothill Cities has some interesting links to videos and stories from Sierra Madre, Glendora and and Claremont.

I keep searching for local bloggers, and I'm wondering if I should start start a blogroll when I find them. Here are a few: Foothill Cities, written by a local resident, and another one by Amanda Wray, a Web designer and writer, has Living in Monrovia. I got to Wray's site a few weeks back because of Jay Rosen at Pressthink and his blogging about placeblogger.com . I remembered it today when I saw it on Foothill cities.

My cousin Marshall Tracy sent me a note about this the other day, but this was the first time I had a chance to look at it.
It's intended to stop corruption and *had a section that would have made hash of that little known First Amendment:
"political bloggers who make or spend $25,000 per quarter and who encourage readers to contact their elected representatives would be forced to register as lobbyists--or face up to 10 years in prison."

* - This is what happens when you're late to catch up. It appears that the section was deleted late Thursday.

Nope. But we could have done some cooler stuff online for our public record audit of law enforcement agencies. The Sacramento Bee had an interactive map. My only complaint: they should have allowed users to just rollover the dots for information.

Apparently Jorge Garcia, the suspect in the killing of LA County's sheriff's Deputy David March has been transferred to West Valley Detention Center in Rancho Cucamonga, San Bernardino County. He was in Orange County. It may be one among many moves since Sheriff Lee Baca has said he won't be held in LAC.

Art Buchwald, celebrated humorist, died Wednesday. He was 81 and sick for a the past few months. In a video interview, he starts of saying "hi, I'm Art Buchwald and I just died." That's an interesting way to go in our appetite for news.

Us.
- Why not? The Star Ledger in New Jersey has already started a station on the Web, akin to Youtube except specifically for the New Jersey area. The Garden State has to get their news from New York-based stations, which means it's NYC-centric. It's a smilar problem that we have here in the Valley. TV rarely covers stories out here, so there is a need. We already have a twice-daily Webcast that we hope to eventually use for breaking news as well.

The Star's Mission, "New Jersey needs a television station to call its own. Programmed by New Jerseyans, for New Jerseyans. TVJersey has no broadcast towers, no satellites. It doesn’t even have a studio. But it has you. And what you produce, we’ll promote. Just tag your videos on youtube with tvjersey, and we’ll find them. (We’re going to start using some other services soon.) We might find them even if you don’t. And you can always send us ideas and links at video [at] tvjersey dot com. Together, we’ll build the TV station we deserve."

"What you're seeing is a radical new way of doing journalism. We're back to the time of the lonely pamphleteer or the tramp printers in the Europe," said Philip Meyer, Knight Chair in Journalism professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill...
I close every semester by saying, 'I've just taught you journalism as it was practiced in my day. The journalism in your day is going to be different,' " Meyer said. " 'It's up to you to invent it, please don't mess it up.' "

There is more knowledge outside the news room than inside. Part of our problem is that we are so used to talking to our readers, we have a hard time truly listening. Some of you graciously reacted to my column today with some solid suggestions. I can't promise that we'll implement them, but I do promise to listen to them.

Here's part of an e-mail from Ernie Black from Valinda:

" I wonder why some companys make the wrong choices, trying to guess what the customers want and what they need. But they never ask why we no longer buy their product or why we went somewhere else to shop. They never want to hear what is wrong."

The complete message follows -

Newspapers are falling in love with blogs, sometimes hurting the newspaper.

Getting paid to blog about the people you're blogging about by the people you're blogging about. Nice gig if you can get it, but it ain't journalism.

Update: Micah Sifry believes it's much ado about nothing, while Jeff Jarvis believes there should be a clear line between journalism and advocacy.

Google now estimates that the average blog is read by one person.

Arnold Schwarzenegger is expected to make 2007 the year of healthcare. The Sacramento Bee has a blog dedicated to hearing from experts about solutions. It's moderated by the dean of California political blogs Dan Weintraub

Iraq: civil war or sectarian violence
What do you call a problem like escalating sectarian violence in Iraq?
“A civil war,�? said Matt Lauer on the Today show on Nov. 27. NBC brass had discussed it, he told viewers, and had come to the bold and publicity-generating—if not exactly jaw-dropping—conclusion that democracy is maybe not flourishing quite the way we planned.
The other two broadcast networks, equally boldly, have not followed suit.
“It was their decision to make and their process,�? said Jon Banner, the executive producer of ABC’s World News. “We constantly discuss editorial matters here—all the time, every day. How that decis ion got made there I have no idea, nor do I want to guess.�?
“To be honest with you, I think it’s a political statement, not a news judgment,�? said Rome Hartman, the executive producer of the CBS Evening News. “We deal with the events of the day, and we decide the best way to describe those events based on the news of the day, not by—never mind, I’m not gonna go there.�?
Then he did.
“It should be noted that the day that this pronouncement—and who makes pronouncements anyway? But that’s what it sounded like—was a quiet day, relatively speaking, in Iraq,�? he said.
CNN’s official statement on th matter is: “CNN will continue to report on what is happening in Iraq on a day-to-day basis. And we will also report on the ongoing debate in academic and political circles about what constitutes a civil war.�?
It perhaps goes without saying that the Fox News Channel has not leaped onto the civil-war bandwagon. Fox anchors will join most of their colleagues in television news in anticipating their own Cronkite Moments.

The story that came out of Iraq Friday that six Sunnis were burned alive now is being questioned.
"The U.S. military said Saturday that Iraqi soldiers securing Hurriyah found only one burned mosque and were unable to confirm residents' and police accounts that six Sunni Arabs were dragged from Friday prayers and burned to death."
A blogger is also questioning the identity of a man who is frequently quoted in stories, especially about violence, coming out of Iraq.
I don't believe anyone willfully prints inaccurate information and Iraq has to be the toughest place to report on. It does give pause though about taking everything you read without a critical eye.

UPDATE: Associated Press is standing by their story and will be releasing another one with more detail today.

Editorial dicusssions for the front page sometimes center on what stories readers want as opposed to information they need. One former editor of mine said a paper's mantra should be "tell them something they don't know but need to know." Most times the story fits both, but occasionally the choice isn't all that clear. Crime stories are usually the most read but the information they relay is not always that important. The biggest worry for some is that if we decide our stories in a popularity contest we become a tawdry gossip rag or, as politics editor Gary Scott says, fetish-based journalism. I don't agree with Jeff Jarvis that news has already gone tawdry, but I thought the numbers that show what the BBC wants us to read as opposed to what we want to read is interesting. The NY Times also has an interesting popular story page as well.

As part of a continuing move toward more online interaction, the newspaper has put comment links on the bottom of stories. Other newspapers have also dipped in this pool, sometimes without success. Ventura County Star eventually went back to giving comment links. I think it gives our online readers one more reason to become engaged.

This post is not about who holds anti-or pro-war sentiments that was a major element in the elections but about accurately portraying events. The LA Times and NY Times had photos tying it to Veterans day, set aside for all who have battled wars. LA had a picture in Santa Barbara and NY had a photo in Santa Monica. Both said it was a memorial for fallen soldiers by Veterans for Peace. What neither noted was that the group has been strongly anti-war and opposed the 2003 invasion. Once again, it's not about the group's stance but giving readers' context.

The national flareup over former (maybe future) presidential candidate John Kerry's remarks about education at Pasadena City College gives a glimpse into the 24 hour news cycle. Shortly after Kerry told the students that if they were able to navigate the education system, they could get comfortable jobs - "If you don't, you get stuck in Iraq," he said to a mixture of laughter and gasps," it was on Youtube and ringing around the blogosphere. National newspapers were mentioning our sister paper, the Pasadena Star News, which covered the event, and prompted President Bush to slam the remarks. We talked about it again in our editorial meeting this morning to see if it should have prominent play - which would make it three days in a row. A “botched joke�? it may be, but with the carnivorous Internet news hole, this is the type of fury that may come to a city hall near you as more people get a hang of new media.

UPDATE: Kerry apologizes.