The North Coast Journal Inc. — a media company that includes the 15,000-circulation weekly newspaper and website, plus nearly a dozen publications serving Humboldt County, California — has been sold.
The buyer, Melissa Sanderson, 37, took over as president and publisher March 31. She has worked for the company since 2014, first as sales manager and the past three years as general manager.
The sellers are two long-time friends and business partners, Judy Hodgson and Carolyn Fernandez, who purchased the newly established monthly newspaper in June of 1990, converted it to a weekly in 1998 and launched a string of successful, hyper-local publications. Those include the Insider, a quarterly tourism magazine; the annual Menu of Menus and Wedding Guide; and more recently, the bi-monthly North Coast Trader, a classified paper that reaches six coastal counties in California and Oregon. One Journal publication launched in 2017, the Humboldt Cannabis Magazine, is distributed twice a year to dispensaries throughout California.
Over the past three decades, the Journal has won dozens of major awards from the California Newspaper Publishers Association and the Association of Alternative Newsmedia for writing and reporting, design and photography, as well as numerous freedom-of-information awards. The newspaper has been recognized numerous times by the Society of Professional Journalists and the League of Women Voters.
While preparing this press release, Hodgson and Fernandez realized they actually had been working together for 45 years. Hodgson wrote a column, "Fieldbrook Footnotes," for the Union weekly newspaper in Arcata beginning in 1976 while attending Humboldt State University (HSU). She graduated in 1978, joined the staff as a reporter and from 1983 to 1988, served as editor. Fernandez joined the Union in 1976 as a graphic artist, later becoming head of the production department. Both left in 1988 after a change in ownership and, in 1989, worked together again at an advertising agency before purchasing the Journal. The paper was immediately rebranded and redesigned from a quarter-fold into the magazine tabloid format that exists today.
The two now-septuagenarians had been searching to find just the right "next owner" of the Journal for more than two decades. "We are super happy to sell to one of our great employees and a fourth-generation Humboldt County woman half our age," Hodgson said. (Fortunans may recognize Sanderson's maiden name of Huber and the Senestraro branch of the family.)
Sanderson has been in publishing since grade school. She made copies and distributed the Fortuna Spartan to all the classrooms in fifth grade. At Fortuna Union High School, where she "majored in at least four sports" as well as FFA, she was ad manager for the Husky Howler and wrote a sports column for Fortuna's weekly newspaper, the Humboldt Beacon. After graduation, she attended both College of the Redwoods and HSU at the same time. She married her husband, Chris Sanderson, and landed her first professional job in the marketing department of the new Bear River Casino in 2005. She was an account rep for the Times-Standard and then managed a radio station until joining the Journal in 2014.
Most new owners of a news media company hope to reassure readers and say they will not change a thing, and then things do, which is what happened at the Union in 1988, according to Hodgson and Fernandez. But Sanderson said she really means it.
"We have strength throughout the company — in sales, design and production, and support staff," she said, but particularly in the award-winning editorial department.
"It's a great publication. We have a strong mission statement. We do really good journalism for this community and I want to keep that going."
Sanderson said her strengths are on the business side of publishing, with a focus on marketing and digital, and she is confident in the Journal's future.
While there were some layoffs and furloughs last year due to the pandemic, the Journal is back up to 21 employees. Circulation, which dipped from 21,000 to 12,000 when many businesses closed and tourism shut down, is back to 15,000.
Sanderson said she is grateful for the federal Paycheck Protection Program loan that helped the company retain employees during the pandemic.
Her plans for 2021 are "to concentrate on growing the Journal, for sure, and help other local businesses" recover and grow.
The Journal's glossy publications, including the Insider magazine, were suspended during the pandemic. They are expected to return to newsstands this year.
McKinleyville- Two Feathers Native American Family Services (NAFS) is hosting seven virtual forums focused on technology and its affect on Native youth. They have gathered together national and international experts for this discussion. Everyone is welcome to attend. This is a free event, however reservations are required. Each forum will last approximately one to two hours. A complete schedule with speaker descriptions follows, all times shown are PST:
December 8 @Noon. Clifford Sussman, M.D.
Child & Adolescent Psychiatrist. World renowned expert in treating Internet Gaming Disorder.
December 10 @noon. Tim Kasser, Ph.D.
Emeritus Professor of Psychology. Nationallly recognized expert on the impact of materialism and consumerism on well being.
December 14 @Noon. Devorah Heitner, PhD.
Expert on young people’s relationships with digital media and technology. Founder of Raising Digital Natives. Author of the award-winning book, Helping Kids Thrive (and Survive) in Their Digital World.
December 16 @Noon. Nicholas Kardaras, PhD.
Ivy league educated psychologist, best-selling author, internationally renowned speaker and an expert on mental health, addiction and the impact of our digital age.
December 21 @Noon. Douglas Gentile, P.D.
Professor of Psychology at Iowa State. One of the world’s leading scientific experts on the effects of media on children. Named one of America’s best 300 professors by the Princeton Review.
January 5 @3pm. Louis Cozzolino, Ph.D.
Professor of Psychology at Pepperdine University. Author of numerous award-winning books focused on interpersonal neurobiology & education.
January 12 @Noon. Andrew Doan, M.D.
Ophthalmologist, Neuroscientist & recognized expert in digital media addictions. Author of best-selling book, Hooked on Games.
Dr. Virgil Moorehead Jr., Executive Director with Two Feathers NAFS said, “As the global pandemic persists our young people are in more psychiatric distress than ever before. At Two Feathers, we have identified one major issue to be the use and misuse of technology and its impact on child and adolescent development. During these times, this issue has become even more pressing. If you work with children and young adults, are a parent or are just interested in this discussion, we urge you to tune in. Moorehead added, “This conference is open to all but is targeted especially for those who are interested in improving the mental health of our children.”
To view a full agenda visit the Two Feather website: twofeathers-nafs.org or on their facebook page at: facebook.com/2FeathersNAFS. You must reserve your space in order to attend: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/VTN7F6N
Rep. Huffman to Host Virtual Town Hall on the Presidential Transition
Washington, D.C. – On Thursday, December 3, 2020 at 4:00 p.m. PST, Congressman Jared Huffman will hold a virtual town hall on the Presidential transition, with special guests Caroline Fredrickson, a Senior Fellow at Brennan Center for Justice, and former President of the American Constitution Society, and Paul Rosenzweig, a Senior Fellow at the R Street Institute who served as a Senior Counsel in the Office of the Independent Counsel Ken Starr.
Rep. Huffman and his special guests will discuss the peaceful transfer of presidential power, the status of President Trump’s many challenges to the election results, and the challenges and importance of holding President Trump and his executive branch officials accountable during a new administration.
Participants are encouraged to ask questions in the Facebook video comments section during the event for a chance to have their question read aloud and answered live. They can also submit their questions in advance to [email protected].
Event Details:
When: Thursday, December 3, 2020
Time: 4:00 PM - 5:15 PM PST
Who:
Congressman Jared Huffman
Caroline Fredrickson, Senior Fellow at Brennan Center for Justice
Paul Rosenzweig, principal at Red Branch Consulting
Where: (This is a partial list.)
Facebook.com/RepHuffman
KPCA: Comcast channel 26 and U-verse 99 in Petaluma service area, and on radio at 103.3FM and streaming at kpca.fm.
Marin TV Education Channel (Comcast Ch 30 and AT&T Ch 99) and streaming online at https://cmcm.tv/30
Live on Mendocino County Public Broadcasting, KZYX 90.7FM Philo, KZYZ 91.5FM Willits and Ukiah, and 88.1FM Fort Bragg.
Access Humboldt AH11 (Suddenlink Cable Channel 11) as well as on radio at KZZH-LP 96.7FM
Please be advised that this is a virtual event; members of the press and public should not attempt to meet in person with the Congressman and his guests.
Prior to joining Brennan Center for Justice, Caroline Fredrickson held multiple leadership roles at the American Constitution Society. She has also served as the director of the ACLU’s Washington Legislative Office, and as General Counsel and Legal Director of NARAL Pro-Choice America. Before that, Caroline was Chief of Staff to Sen. Maria Cantwell and Deputy Chief of Staff to then-Senate Democratic Leader Tom Daschle. During the Clinton administration, she served as Special Assistant to the President for Legislative Affairs. She has been widely published and appears frequently in the media on topics including labor law, anti-discrimination law, and human and civil rights issues. She holds a law degree from Columbia and recently joined Georgetown Law as a Visiting Professor.
Paul Rosenzweig is the founder of Red Branch Consulting PLLC, a homeland security consulting company and a Senior Fellow at the R Street Institute. He is also a Senior Advisor to The Chertoff Group. Mr. Rosenzweig formerly served as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Policy in the Department of Homeland Security. He is a Professorial Lecturer in Law at George Washington University and a Board Member of the Journal of National Security Law and Policy. Twenty years ago, he served as a senior counsel in the investigation of President Bill Clinton.
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For six tense and profanity-laced minutes, Kyle Burgess kept filming with his cellphone as he backed away from the cougar, sometimes cussing and other times telling her she needed to go back to her babies, which he had inadvertently stumbled upon on a trail.
“I don’t feel like dying today,” Burgess says at one point in the video posted to his Instagram account.
(Note: He’s OK but had to traverse the same area of the encounter to get back to his car, according to an interview in the Deseret News.)
But, to be clear, this was not a mountain lion on the prowl but a mother protecting her young and making it clear to an unwelcomed visitor in her territory that it was time to get (we can only imagine she would have added a certain expletive here) out, as John “Griff” Griffith, a local naturalist and guide for California State Parks attests to in a recent Facebook video post about the misconception.
“I know a little something about mountain lions,” he says, while taking many a media outlet to task for labeling her behavior as “stalking” in a riff that skirts the conspiracy theory line of why that happened. “That was not a mountain lion stalking. That was a mama mountain lion trying to get someone away from her cubs. There is a difference.”
Griffith notes that Humboldt County is mountain lion country — panning to a shot of Humboldt Redwoods State Park where he says he sees their tracks — but even though they are around us all the time, the likelihood is most people will never see one. And that is the way they like it.
Mountain lion attacks are very rare, he says, and if it’s going to happen, it will be stealthy, not be with the paw-pounding display the Utah cougar put on for Burgess.
“They are going to attack you usually from behind,” says Griffith, a popular producer of videos about the North Coast parks, who himself went viral in the past with a posting of him dancing with California Conservation Corp crew and hosted the online show Wild Jobs for Animal Planet.
That was the case of former Fortuna resident Jim Hamm, who made international headlines after he barely survived a 2007 attack that occurred during a hike with his wife Nell in Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park, where she fought off the mountain lion with a pen and a branch.
Griffith says he’s only seen a mountain lion a handful of times, but if you do encounter one, there are basic rules to follow, including make yourself seem as large as possible, make noise, keep eye contact and slowly create space away from the animal. Never run away.
In that regard, Griffith says Burgess did just about everything right.
“The only thing he did wrong was not having a partner,” he says.