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The inside story of San Diego Opera's demise
I think there's a lot of truth to that: the symphony, the opera, Del Mar racing, the Padres, the Chargers, charity balls - these are all institutions that have benefited from ticket buyers looking for places to treat the clients to a night or day out to schmooze them. I've gone to the Pops, the track and the Chargers on someone else's corporate dime and eaten a few ballroom dinners because someone had "bought a table" and filled it with people they thought could help them somehow (back when I used to be somebody, used to be a contender). As for opera - well, it has always been a niche market and changing tastes have made it even more so. As with the symphony, though, it had enough cachet among the monied classes to generate financial support way out of proportion to its actual popularity. Those forms of "classical music" are in some ways the public transit of music, serving a narrow slice of the population with each ticket heavily subsidized, in this case by corporate and individual donors and, no doubt, a few bucks from local government over the year. The subsidies are drying up because of the economy and because the old rich folk who were the biggest donors are dying off. Don B - I have to say I was surprised to see that a working class journalist could ante up so much in the way of donations every year: there had to be some sacrifice behind that and I am sure this is a very personal loss to you.— March 23, 2014 11:38 a.m.
Chula Vista receives EPA award
Wow, talk about meaningless jargon speak: there's nothing that tells us what they actually did to receive this award or to improve the environment, but it must have looked good on paper: "inventories…goals…exemplify leadership…[engage] their peers…[address] climate risk…adopted a “Climate Action Plan”…piggy-back[ed]…brainstorm[ed]"— March 2, 2014 12:32 p.m.
Faulconer’s wife pitches street closing for event in June
You show about $54,000 in fees charged from June 2011 to June 2012, yet write that the fees "are no longer being collected at all, potentially costing city taxpayers millions of dollars in lost revenue." ???? Okay since "millions" implies more than one million, let's assume it's $2 million you're talking about. At $54,000 a year, that's 37 years before the city loses "millions" from not charging this fee. And that doesn't doesn't take into account the income from the sales taxes charged on the food and services paid by the party hosts, nor the extra paid hours for San Diego workers employed at these events. Or was something left out of the story, perhaps hundreds of thousands of dollars in fees having been collected each year? Or, is the fact that one event organizer happens to be married to a Republican reason enough to concoct to a hypothetical account of millions of dollars lost to apparent favoritism?— February 24, 2014 2:35 p.m.
UT-TV goes dark on cable
"We are out of the over-the-air broadcasting business." There's the problem - apparently no one at the UT knew they didn't have a transmitter, which is essential if you want to broadcast "over-the-air" as opposed to broadcasting through the wired cable systems.— February 19, 2014 5:28 p.m.
Pete Wilson maxes out late to Faulconer
Prop 187 was not anti-immgrant - it was aimed at forcing the federal government to pick up the considerable social costs of its failed immigration policies, instead of making Californians pay for them. If the Senators and Congressional representatives from New York, Missouri, Virginia, etc. are going to approve legislation that results in the flow of millions of dirt poor immigrants to the US, then it is the responsibility of the US government - not the states - to pay for the impacts of that policy. Wilson certainly did lose the spin war on 187. His communications guru Otto Bos died not long after Wilson became governor and the Wilson organization's communications efforts were ham-handed at best after that, especially against that well organized anti-187 campaign. I worked for a Mexican radio station company with offices in Chula Vista and I saw first hand the faxes coming from the Mexican Consulate with guidelines and strategies for the anti-187 campaign. Mexico was having big internal problems at the time and 187 gave the government a chance to once again trump up anti-American sentiment to divert attention from the turmoil at home. It was a successful campaign that killed 187 and kept Californians on the hook for the huge social costs of a failed federal immigration policy. I spent many hundreds of hours traveling throughout California with Pete Wilson as a senior aide and never, ever was than any indication that he considered San Diego an unsuitable backwater. But, when he retired from public service, the kind of work available to someone with his background pretty much necessitates being in a large city, which we can all agree San Diego is not. As for Wilson's campaign contribution being the potential source of negative campaign fodder? I can't even begin to fathom what would support such a supposition. Latinos generally did not vote for Republicans long before Pete became mayor, Senator or Governor and a contribution from someone who hasn't held office for 15 years certainly is not going to impact the Latino vote in a local special election.— February 12, 2014 10:05 a.m.
Neil Morgan dead at 89
This discussion once again calls attention to the myth of journalistic neutrality with the belief that there really were newspapers, editors and reporters with no bias, driven only by the common good. Neil's bias for San Diego was no secret, but it generally manifested itself in his column and on the editorial page, which are places where bias and opinion was expected and allowed in newspapers. Nowadays, though, electronic media (TV, internet), especially, have so blurred the lines that news consumers accept personal opinion as factual news. Neil thrived as a newspaper person in the era when, as a 2000 Harvard study noted, newspapers had a "concentration of readership among the more educated and affluent sections of society." He certainly moved comfortably among that group, and in San Diego, as in large percentage of medium and major markets, it was generally a conservative group. I only met Neil a couple of times while he was editor of the Trib, but based on that and my work in politics and public affairs, my impression was that personally he was more comfortable among the more liberal members of cafe society. Of course, I knew many Union and Tribune reporters of that day who I perceived as much more liberal than Neil. If there was a balance in the news it happened because their personal bias was tempered by their editor's balance which in turn was tempered by the Copley corporate bias. The journalistic stew that was Copley Press in its heyday gets a lot of bashing now, but it did what other newspapers did: reflected the prevailing local mindset. In DC the Post reflected the fact the local industry was government thinking it could solve all problems, the NY Times mirrored Wall Street and the arts. The LA Times might have stayed a bit more neutral than the others because of the vast economic and cultural diversity of what has been called "72 of suburbs in search of a city." Neil served his community as well as those Times and Post editors served theirs, and based on the crap that came out of Wall Street in recent years and the Federal government mess in DC, maybe San Diego fared a little better.— February 3, 2014 10:29 a.m.
Comme ci, comme ça at Bleu Bohème
"I must differ with Barbarella. Her only qualification as a food critic is she likes to eat lots. Having the Reader pick up her tab and paying a pittance for the review is the motivation, not accuracy and objectivity." It tastes good or it doesn't - what qualifies someone to make that distinction, perhaps being, say, human? Granted we all have different tastes, but I guess a "qualified food critic" is someone who can convince as as to why we should like something that doesn't appeal to out taste buds.— January 17, 2014 7:16 a.m.
Brick runs dry
One of the best club concerts I have saw was Mojo Nixon at the Spirit - amazing that the venue has kept going for over 37 years.— January 15, 2014 6:34 p.m.
Seaside Courier debuts in North County
It looks like they will compete with the Coast News and not try to serve the Highway 78 corridor from Oceanside to Escondido, which is THE North County, quite different than the "mid county" Del Mar and Encinitas area. Maybe they will at least not be condescending to Oceanside, as is often the case with the Coast News, whose Oceanside correspondent is apparently bummed that he has to live and/or do business there. The Paper is published by Lyle Davis, who managed Escondido's radio station back in the 1970's (before suburban community radio stations went the way of suburban community newspapers). The Paper's coverage has always been heavy on history and it has always been a mystery as to how they stay in business.— November 8, 2013 9:36 a.m.
Warren Buffet, Doug Manchester, Tom Gores buy newspapers
"For some of these buyers...there are huge political and egotistical motivations that make controlling local news so attractive." Hasn't that pretty much ALWAYS been a key motivator for publishers, going back to the first newspapers? Certainly Bezos, in buying the Post, had to have been quite excited about becoming an instant power player in Washington. He surely didn't do it for the money. I would bet that a study of newspaper history would show that all the big newspapers were built by men (yes, it was men only in those days) with strong political views and even bigger egos. At some point the bean counters began to take over, but now that the papers aren't worth beans, they're being picked up people with an agenda other than profits. "Balanced reporting" is a bit of a myth and an oxymoron. Newspapers have agendas, editors have agendas, reporters have agendas and all of that plays into what stories are covered and they are covered. I was a newspaper junkie back in the days when you could visit most large cities and buy two or three daily newspapers, I edited and reported for papers, scrutinized their editorial policies as a political flak, and I can't see anything in the current UT that isn't pretty consistent with what I've seen in papers from coast-to-coast. The difference now is that San Diego has a vocal liberal community now and they have voices such as the Reader, Voice of San Diego and City Beat where they can feign surprise at their realization the daily newspaper has an editorial spin!— November 6, 2013 5 p.m.