If you take a gander at our staff box this week, you’ll notice some changes afoot here at the Journal. First, you’ll likely notice something missing. Assistant editor/staff writer Grant Scott-Goforth has moved on after more than three years as an award winning reporter and photographer here at the Journal. This is a sad day […]
Editorial
Posted inLetters + Opinion
Eureka Gets Squirrely about Handing over Public Records
As a reporter who’s worked in Humboldt County for more than a decade, the Eureka Police Department’s May 2 clearing of the PalCo Marsh was something to behold. Chief Andrew Mills made sure there were independent observers, local clergy and a swarm of local media on site, all of them with unfettered access to roam […]
Posted inLetters + Opinion
Aww, Shucks
This week the Journal took home a total of seven awards at the California Newspaper Publisher’s Association’s Better Newspaper Contest, a peer-judged competition which includes some 800 newspapers throughout the state. Competing against similarly sized weeklies, we fared well, garnering awards that reinforce our mission, which is to take the best in-depth, long-form reporting we […]
Posted inLetters + Opinion
Going Postal
You might be curious to learn that the United States Postal Service has decided to invest its dwindling resources into having a local employee page through the Journal every week. This came to our attention over the past week, when we received a few calls from the local post office warning us that the postal […]
Posted inLetters + Opinion
Drama Trauma
Editor: Kjeld Lyth, the axing of whose drama program was featured in a recent NCJ (“Re-imagining CR,” April 11), sent a message of farewell to the CR community, which I summarize here: “… I have been teaching here with unyielding passion, since many of you were children. … There has not been a single word […]
Posted inLetters + Opinion
Taking Pictures in Public
North Coast Journal Editor Carrie Peyton Dahlberg talked with Mickey H. Osterreicher, general counsel for the National Press Photographers Association, about taking pictures in public. Here is a condensed version of that conversation. North Coast Journal: You trained police in Tampa and Charlotte before the Republican and Democratic conventions in 2012 and also in Chicago […]
Posted inLetters + Opinion
Good Cops Aren’t Afraid of Cameras
When I last taught news writing, I asked the class to read about a bust in a drug-plagued San Francisco hotel. In their police report, officers wrote that they had knocked and announced their presence before entering. But a videotape showed they had just barged in. For beginning journalists, it was a lesson in skepticism. […]
Posted inLetters + Opinion
Dear School Trustees
Please understand that I’m writing with deep affection. In more than 30 years as a voter, I can’t recall ever voting against a local school bond. I’m enduringly grateful for a state college system that once had tuition so low I graduated without a dime of debt, just by working weekends and summers. Schools […]
Posted inLetters + Opinion
We’re Not Stenographers
The North Coast Journal does slow journalism. (That’s not my coinage, but I love the image.) Like slow food, slow journalism is nurtured along, given some time, given some thought. Slow journalists seek out the highest quality ingredients — facts, not spin — and we arrange our words carefully, for maximum reading enjoyment, like a […]
Posted inLetters + Opinion
Journal honored
This time last year, I thought that I’d probably never work for another newspaper. I’d had a long career, and figured I was going to be happier freelancing. Then I met Heidi Walters, Ryan Burns, Andrew Goff, Bob Doran, Holly Harvey, Judy Hodgson, Carolyn Fernandez and the whole amazing crew who make the North […]
Posted inLetters + Opinion
NCJ’s Ugliest Billboard Contest
Which billboard or other signage do you think uglies up 101 along the bay more than any other, either because of where it is or what it looks like? Take a gander at the candidates below. Then click HERE to cast your vote. (Voting ends at 5 p.m. Wednesday, April 4, 2012). Click HERE to […]
Posted inLetters + Opinion
Didn’t We Say No?
Slipping in almost after the Top 10 deadline and almost under the radar, it’s … (chirpy/gagging adjective of your choice) … Wal-Mart. In a nation full of loathsome business practices, Wal-Mart has become symbolic of the slimiest of the slime. Pay lousy wages? Check. Offer miserly benefits? Check. Rely on oppressive overseas labor practices? Check? […]