[vista, Originally uploaded by okarol]

To all members of the blogosphere:

Greetings and hello. Since 2006, the Foothill Cities Blog has endevoured to bring citizen-journalism to the suburban communities of the San Gabriel Valley that abutt the powerful mountains. We have strived to inform the citizenry not only of events and their duties in the face of them, but also of their awesome power over the government itself.

Each of us had our private motives and sensibilities that guided us. But never was this venture expected to generate revenue or income. Those who supported us, morally, materially or otherwise, may know that they gave aid and comfort to a tribe that wanted to reach out to the community around. Our legacy will be honorable if it is merely a footnote in some greater work.

In short, we’ve had a lot of fun.

But the pressures of domestic life have finally closed in. The enigmatic Centinel and Publius no longer return even my email. Technological problems with the server software impare even my power to post this goodbye. Were I an administrator I could continue this struggle myself. But, as I sit, I deem it time to throw in the towel once and for all.

This site and its archive will stay up as long as someone pays the bill. I will migrate over to a new platform elsewhere. Keep tabs on me over at http://therealzajac.110mb.com

-30-

[profusion of purple panicles in Pasadena, Originally uploaded by faria!]

Excerpted from The Economist:

Q: Do you see blogging as an inferior form of journalism?

A: I only wish more bloggers would do journalism. Meaning: independently check (alleged) facts before publishing them. Ask people for comment before printing claims about them or attributing hearsay to them. Leave the house and find things out, preferably things that surprise and confound one’s initial predispositions. Try to provide some balance. Understand that people can be hurt or even ruined by what writers write, so there is some real need for compassion and caution. Understand that an all-purpose snarky attitude is no substitute for the specialised knowledge that comes from working a beat. Newsrooms teach these values. The blogosphere seems, too often anyway, to teach contempt for them. I suppose I’ll get a flood of comments (some abusive, proving my point, but never mind) saying I paint with too broad a brush. Fair enough. Some bloggers do good work. And of course the medium is still young. But it’s already old enough, I think, so we can say it is no substitute for the newsroom journalism that is in such trouble today.

And special thanks to Faria! for her jacaranda collage. (Yes, the two are totally unrelated; so there.)

Sir Eric Maundry, who formerly wrote for this blog, has reported on his site The Sierra Madre Tattler that the infamous Sierra Madre Cumquat is back from the dead, now owned by former President of the Sierra Madre Rotary Club, one Mr. Benjamin Duward Howes. Howes has registered the domain “downtowndirt.org” and put up a place-holder graphic (which is the image seen here).

For those who don’t know, The Cumquat gained notoriety in 2007 when the local and vulgar humorist Jim Snyder became involved in local city politics, particularly over the contentious Measure V. Snyder died unexpectedly at the beginning of last year, but not before his involvement left deep divisions on the small community. Where some saw only immature satire, others viewed Snyder and the Cumquat as an arm in an increasingly dirty campaign by a small club to push an agenda that would only serve the few. Steve Lopez of the Los Angeles Times even did a lengthy piece on the controversy.

Sir Eric has pointed out that this is not the first time that the Cumquat has come back from the dead. But each time, it was on some free server space and was rapidly and inexplicably shut down. (I should note that within days of Snyder’s death, the original Cumquat was totally wiped off the internet, even on the Way Back Machine archives.)

His post sums up with this bit:

A friend stopped by to help me with some of the technical aspects of this post. I ran through what I discovered, and he scratched his head. “These people really aren’t all that smart, are they?” No, they’re not. Lowlife creeps? Sure. But definitely not long on intellect. After all, if they were, would they be attempting to return once again to the same losing strategy?

Something that’s bothered me for, oh, two years now. The SGVN newspapers continually break their links within hours (sometimes minutes) of publishing. Come on, guys.

[Note: The FC Blog only breaks its links once in a while, and then it does so catastrophically, taking the entire blog down.]

RCJP, Cyrus Kemp and Robert Walker co-authored an op-ed piece that appeared in the SGV Tribune titled “Silencing dissent in Monrovia”.  It carefully outlines how the “in-crowd” attempt to control what happens in town.  A bit scary to see it in print and quite powerful.  Unfortunately very true.

Allow me to add in one more bit of how they attempt to brow beat and control what any voices may have different than the official agenda.  As most of you will recall this summer police officers within MPD would call me with information regarding the risks the community had and did not know about due to the MPD under-staffing.  They would even call with tips regarding crime incidents that had information being suppressed.  ”Whistle Blowing” is protected, but not in Monrovia.  The officers were threatened with loss of their jobs if they spoke to media.  They were given notices they had to sign to that effect.  The officers were given verbally the list of media types, specifically bloggers (citizen journalists as the mayor derides this form of media).  

How do I know this?  The last contact I had called me before he was given his notice to sign that others in the department had been given their memos.  He advised the memo contents were specific and easily tracked and could not share a copy.  I have since had 2, TWO other ex-MPD officers confirm they were told the same thing by their friends still within the MPD.  

Whistle blowing and the ability to report are to be protected as free speech.  In Monrovia its not.  Things have not changed within MPD according to my contacts.  Nothing has changed, the perception that things are “just fine” is a facade simply because the freedom to speak out has been quashed.

We can start the count-down for the response from the power structure.

[Revised to delete a significant factual error.]

So, late Tuesday night, yours truly ran a couple of quick tests and then launched a post announcing that we would have a first for TheFCblog.com – live blogging the Monrovia vs. Rosemead playoff game.

Well, whaddya know!!! Barely 18 hours later the Tribune/PSN announces THEY will live blog the same game. Perhaps if this trend continues, they might run the story I gave them over the summer.

BTW, according to commenter Todd Golper on Miguel Melendez’s prep sports blog, Monrovia’s Marquis Williams has been offered a scholarship to play football (and study!) at Arizona State University. If true, that’s a great accomplishment!

I. Can’t. Believe. It.

Maureen Dowd, cutting edge super internet researcher extraordinaire, recently discovered James Macpherson and his groundbreaking outsourcing of local news coverage to India. I kid you not. From the frigging NY Times:

I visited the future, and it was wearing a bow tie and calling itself “Thomas Edison.”

The newspaper business is not only crumpling up, James Macpherson informed me here, it is probably holding “a one-way ticket to Bangalore.”

Macpherson — bow-tied and white-haired but boyish-looking at 53 — should know. He pioneered “glocal” news — outsourcing Pasadena coverage to India at Pasadena Now, his daily online “newspaperless,” as he likes to call it. Indians are writing about everything from the Pasadena Christmas tree-lighting ceremony to kitchen remodeling to city debates about eliminating plastic shopping bags.

I can’t believe what I’m reading. Some questions pop to mind:

1) Where was Maureen when this brouhaha went down, um, a year ago. I’d link back to our coverage of the original story, but our wretched archives still aren’t back up. More impressive, though, is Jill’s list of people linking to/talking about the story. Unless I’m mistaken, just about every media outlet in the world covered this story when it broke. Where on God’s green earth was Maureen Dowd?

2) Is James Macpherson getting kooky?

“I have essentially been five years ahead of the world for a long time, and that’s a horrible address at which to live because people look at you, you know, like you’re nuts.”

Mmmhmm. Five years ahead of the world, James? I admit, outsourcing coverage to India was a bold stroke. It didn’t, however, raise the level of Pasadena Now above the middlin’ mediocrity it has inhabited for, well, ever. I spent so long last year trying to link to their stories, and eventually realized it just wasn’t worth the trouble. It’s not a terrible site, but as far as news goes, it does offer much to me.

I checked in with one of his workers in Mysore City in southern India, 40-year-old G. Sreejayanthi, who puts together Pasadena events listings. She said she had a full-time job in India and didn’t think of herself as a journalist. “I try to do my best, which need not necessarily be correct always,” she wrote back. “Regarding Rose Bowl, my first thought was it was related to some food event but then found that is related to Sports field.”

Macpherson admits you can lose something in the translation — the Pasadena City Council Webcast that the Indian reporters now watch once missed two African-American lawmakers walking out in protest — but says the question is, how significant is it?

Um, I would have thought that would be the ONLY important thing to happen at the city council meeting. What did the Indians report on: “Steve Madison did not appear to be present”?

Macpherson feels “vindicated,” but also “conflicted” about the idea of having an American newspaper industry fueled by Indian labor. “I mean, I am an American too,” he said. “I had two ancestors in the Revolutionary War. My mother was in the Daughters of the American Revolution.”

What the…

3) Um, what about accuracy?

I checked in with one of his workers in Mysore City in southern India, 40-year-old G. Sreejayanthi, who puts together Pasadena events listings. She said she had a full-time job in India and didn’t think of herself as a journalist. “I try to do my best, which need not necessarily be correct always,” she wrote back. “Regarding Rose Bowl, my first thought was it was related to some food event but then found that is related to Sports field.”

Need not be correct. Aye yi yi…well, I gotta admit, you’re making me not think of you as a journalist either. Hey, just come be a blogger where mistakes are acceptable.

~

I still can’t believe that Maureen Dowd just noticed this story, that her editors let her go ahead with it, that James Macpherson was equated to Thomas Edison, and that Pasadena Now’s staffers think the Rose Bowl is some kind of oversized cornucopia. Madness.

UPDATE: JMac has started a blog. I think my cerebellum just fused.

UPDATE II: Kevin Roderick:

I still never hear Pasadena Now mentioned in any context but the India thing, nor have I ever seen it.

I’m not surprised.