The Media Literacy Issue 2019
Things you need to know to better understand the media landscape around you.
Cover Stories
We are Never Only Talking About Food
I am always talking about food. Ask anybody. Better yet, try to have a conversation about anything else with me and keep an eye on your stopwatch to see how fast I can steer us back. Why? Well, that’s likely a longer column. But the how is easy: Food touches everything. Food is life or…
‘Insurmountable’
When Daniel Squier returned to the Times-Standard in January of 2018 to take a reporting job covering local courts, he knew he would be stepping into a newsroom fundamentally changed from the one he left 12 years earlier. When Squier served as the paper’s sports editor in the early 2000s, he was one of four…
Journalism at Three Arcata High Schools
The journalism adviser hands skinny reporter notebooks to students filing into her Arcata High School classroom. Today is a favorite day for English teacher Danielle Witten and her 30-person journalism class. “It’s the first day of our news cycle,” Witten tells students, reminding reporters and editors of the importance of getting all student voices heard.…
Endangered
Consider the worm. Some species of worm are parasites that live off the human body. But others are essential to our ecosystem. They add nutrients to our soil that enable food to grow and they serve as essential food for all kinds of animals. Some worms have been so decimated by loss of habitat and…
Because Media Literacy Matters
Welcome to our second annual Media Literacy Issue. A lot has changed since last year’s inaugural offering (June 7, 2018), penned as the fake news chorus gripped the nation. The inspiration behind that issue was transparency, wanting to bring you, our valued readers, into the proverbial newsroom to help you understand how this newspaper works…
Representation Matters
Johnny Depp is likely not going to read this article. He’s very busy. He owns his own island, after all, and imagine the upkeep on emptying his Roomba of all the sand it’s collected from visiting guests traipsing through his island house without a care in the world. I honestly can’t imagine Johnny Depp even…
The Invisible Primary
Welcome to the invisible primary, the season leading up to official primaries and caucuses, in which candidates fight for media attention and pundits stupify the campaign into a horse race, dissecting who is “most likely to win” rather than reporting on political platforms. Four years ago, the television news media gave Donald Trump an inordinate…
Poking Fun and Poking Holes
“Good satire goes beyond the specific point it’s trying to make and teaches you how to think critically. Even after your favorite cartoonist retires or [Stephen] Colbert wraps it up, you’re not left believing everything they’re telling you.” — Aaron McGruder, creator of The Boondocks The Humboldt State University journalism major grew up watching news…
Hey Reporters! The Environment is Everything
Imagine this: Meteorologists warn that a huge storm is poised to hit Humboldt County. We can expect howling winds to uproot trees and knock out power. The Eel River Valley and Arcata Bottom will surely flood. Driving to get food or other supplies will be foolhardy in such conditions. Without urgent action, hospitals will be…
UPDATE: Humboldt County is Fully Re-Powered
FOURTH UPDATE: The power may be back on but the outage took its toll on perishable food in refrigerators across the region. The county Department of Health and Human Services wants CalFresh recipients to know they can apply to have those losses replaced by phoning the call center at (877) 410-8809 or going into the…
Sen. McGuire: PG&E to Begin Restoring Power to Humboldt Tonight
Restoration of electrical service to Humboldt County will begin tonight, according to North Coast state Sen. Mike McGuire. McGuire tweeted at about 6:20 p.m. that the process may take several hours as PG&E conducts line inspections, adding that restoration to Lake, Mendocino, Sonoma, Trinity and Marin counties will begin tomorrow afternoon. Other sources not authorized to speak…
Where to Find Gas in the Blackout
The moment Pacific Gas & Electric announced its sudden plans for a blackout throughout Humboldt and 33 other counties, folks have been trying to fill their tanks and gas cans. Some stations have run dry and others simply can’t operate without electricity. But there are still some stations with working pumps and registers. Here is…
Getting Food During the Blackout
At 9 a.m., rows of shopping carts blocked the glass doors of a darkened WinCo Foods. Staff there said a generator could power lights but that was it. Across the street, a dozen people lined up on foot at the Happy Donuts drive-through window for miraculously hot coffee. Owner Natalie Dy, who hooked up her…
UPDATE: County Officials Urge Residents to Stay Safe, ‘Take Care of Your Neighbors’ During Blackout
UPDATE: According to Pacific Gas and Electric spokesperson Deanna Contreras, the company will only be opening one community resource center in Humboldt County — not the two previously indicated — and it won’t be up and running until 8 a.m. tomorrow. The center will be located at Redwood Acres Fairgrounds and will offer bottled water,…
3rd UPDATE: PG&E to Open ONE Local Resource Center with Water, Bathrooms During Blackout
3rd UPDATE: According to Pacific Gas and Electric spokesperson Deanna Contreras, the company will only be opening one community resource center in Humboldt County — not the two previously indicated — and it won’t be up and running until 8 a.m. tomorrow. The center will be located at Redwood Acres Fairgrounds and will offer bottled…
Photos from Saturday’s Zombie Apocalypse
On Saturday ahead of Arts Alive, the annual Zombie Walk from Eureka’s courthouse through the streets of Old Town brought out the undead. The loose scrum of leg-dragging cannibals stopped to terrorize people in cars, wait for street lights to change and take selfies with the living. A few brave machete-wielding souls waded into the…
County Officials: Prepare for Days Without Power
Following up on an emergency alert sent out earlier this evening, the county of Humboldt has issued a press release warning that most, if not all, Pacific Gas and Electric customers will lose power beginning at midnight tonight and should be prepared to be without power for at least a few days. The outage is…
SECOND UPDATE: Shutdown to Hit Humboldt
UPDATE: PG&E has notified the county that “all customers” in Humboldt County will lose power at midnight due to a power shutoff in another county, affecting major transmission lines to Humboldt. “Please prepare for an extended power outage. 9 1 1 should only be used for life threatening emergencies,” an alert from the county states.…
SECOND UPDATE: County Office of Ed Posts Outage School Closure Page
SECOND UPDATE: The Humboldt County Office of Education website server is being shut down at 8 p.m., so the page with school closures related to the PG&E outage will not be available after that time. The office said in a release that its Facebook page will be kept up to date as much as possible…
One Shot at Cannabis Farm Robbery
The Humboldt County Sheriff’s Department is searching for three vehicles involved in an armed robbery at a reportedly legal cannabis farm near Blocksburg, where one person was shot in the hand. “We got called at 4:40 [this morning,]” Lt. Mike Fridley said. “There were five to seven armed subjects all wearing black with black masks……
Eureka Names Six City Manager Finalists
The city of Eureka announced this morning that it has narrowed its city manager search down to six finalists, including two of its current department heads. According to a press release, the city met in closed session Sept. 24 and reviewed 10 applications for the position being vacated by current City Manager Greg Sparks’ upcoming…
HumBug: Hello, Handsome
While moving firewood, I happened on a small beetle with an interesting pronatum. Its orange thorax was flared outward. A quick look up in Pacific Northwest Insects showed me it was a handsome fungus beetle” (Aphorista lactus). I’ve never seen the words “handsome” and “fungus” in the same sentence before. No accounting for taste, I…
Caltrans: Arborist to Check out Health of Eucalyptus on 101
If you notice some activity next week around the row of eucalyptus trees that has stood sentry along the banks of Humboldt Bay for nearly a century, that’s because they’re getting another “overall health and safety” assessment, according to Caltrans. In a Facebook post, the agency says the southbound shoulder of U.S. Highway 101 by…
North Coast Night Lights: Avenue of the Imagination
Imagine, if you will, a journey down an avenue through corridors of towering redwoods. Between them the stars hang motionless in the sky, while streaking past beneath you fly the yellow dashes of the road. This is a road you think you know. But this night your journey will end in another destination, and what…
Eureka Warns ‘Carmageddon’ is Coming to Myrtle on Monday
The city of Eureka is reminding folks that a local version of “Carmageddon” will hit Myrtle Avenue on Monday as repairs on a sinkhole in the Cooper Gulch area begin, necessitating the excavation of the “full width” of the main corridor. “A temporary bypass road around the construction will be in place, but this bypass…
With New CA Charter School Rules Official, Here’s the Latest on Incoming K-12 Laws
The most significant set of revisions to the state’s charter-school law in more than two decades was signed Thursday by Gov. Gavin Newsom, putting new curbs on a segment of public schools that has grown over time, particularly in cities, to enroll more than 600,000 California kids. Negotiated over months among lawmakers, charter school advocates…
I’m Your Man in thePeanut Gallery
I was in my early 20s when I realized that I would never cut it as a strictly objective journalist. I had just sold my second piece of freelance writing to a now-defunct magazine called Clamor. It was an interview with Christian Parenti, the author and Iraq War correspondent for The Nation magazine. Hearing about…
‘Diary of an Artist’
Media Literacy week at the NCJ presents a welcome opportunity to reflect on the critic’s (frequently misunderstood) role. The critic, here at least, is neither judge nor booster nor native interpreter nor PR flack — just a person who narrates their experience of art in public. In doing so, the critic models the form (but…
Arts Alive!
Presented by Eureka Main Street. Opening receptions for artists, exhibits and performances are held the first Saturday of each month. For more information, call 442-9054 or go to www.eurekamainstreet.org. 707 BAR (formerly Steve and Dave’s) First and C Streets. Music by Dr. Squid. A TASTE OF BIM 613 Third St. Maggie Draper, artwork. ADORNI CENTER…
Trinidad Art Nights!
Note: Circus of the Elements will be providing roaming entertainment throughout Trinidad instead of Fire Dancing. No Skate Ramps due to earlier Sunset. FORBES AND ASSOCIATES 343 Main St. “A personal journey to Humboldt & beyond,” Richard Clompus, color and black and white photographs. HEADIES PIZZA AND POUR 359 Main St. Rick Tolley, landscape artist.…
All for One and One for All
France was still embroiled in revolution when the story of The Three Musketeers first appeared in 1844. So, even though the story itself is set in the early 17th century, the battle between republicans and monarchists for the soul of the nation was still being hotly contested. Ken Ludwig’s fun, high-energy adaptation of the Alexandre…
Confessions of a Movie Nerd
My editor informs me this week’s issue will be focused on media literacy. I don’t believe I could be accused of possessing said literacy and, as a writer of movie reviews for print media, could more aptly be called obsolete or deaf to the mewl and clamor of contemporary culture — perhaps a relic. But…
The Unraveling of the Times-Standard
It’s difficult to watch what’s been happening at the Times-Standard over the last several months, even from my seat on the sidelines. If you’re unaware, the region’s only daily just weathered another round of layoffs, including three members of the newsroom. I’m not sure how they are managing to put out a paper six days…
Free Will Astrology
ARIES (March 21-April 19): In 1956, the U.S. federal government launched a program to build 40,000 miles of high-speed roads to connect all major American cities. It was completed 36 years later at a cost of $521 billion. In the coming months, I’d love to see you draw inspiration from that visionary scheme. According to…
