Apologies for such a long absence...

... But blogging is an altogether different thing entirely when you get back into being a working journalist. Or semi-working. Whatever, the point is I'm on assignment again for a newspaper, and it feels really good–like having a cast cut off from your arm, freeing it for the first time in months.

It's funny how writing and reporting for money really saps the desire to blog, which, at least as far as I interpret it, is doing journalism without pay. What was it the Joker said in The Dark Knight? Something like, "If you're good at something, never do it for free."

Anyway, I'm headed off to court right now to cover a case I'm working into a story for Sacramento News & Review. That story should be done next week and, if all goes well, published the following week. I will, of course, provide the appropriate links when completed...

An American documentary

Had a curious experience watching television the other day. I was sitting there on the couch with a friend, switching through the channels without any real interest when we stopped on an HBO documentary called Hard Times for an American Girl: The Great Depression, though we didn't know that was the title at the time. 

The program was a thoughtful and quirky look at how the harsh economic conditions of the 1930s and 1940s affected people's lives. Basically, the program followed children around as they interviewed (sometimes in endearingly scripted ways) senior citizens (at least one was more than 100 years old) about their experiences as children during the Depression. The program was alternately funny and heart-breaking, and we were riveted.

But then we started noticing the dolls. Some of the girls doing the interviews or talking later about what they heard were holding dolls. One girl held a doll wearing exactly the same dress she had on.

"That's an American Girl doll," my friend said. "Each doll is tailored exactly to the girl. They're quite pricey."

It was only at the end of the program, when we finally saw the complete name of the documentary, that the whole thing made sense. Turns out the whole thing was just an advertisement for the American Doll company. In fact, according to this February 21, 2007 Time Warner press release, American Girl and HBO are making all sorts of stuff together.

"HBO and American Girl, one of the nation's top direct marketers, children's publishers and experiential retailers, have entered into an overall relationship to develop a variety of multi-platform ventures including theatrical films, series, specials, and documentaries," the release stated. Further on in the release, HBO Films President Colin Callender offers this gem of corporate stooge-speak: "This is an unprecedented opportunity to align the forces of both the HBO and the American Girl brands in a groundbreaking collaboration that will enable us to take advantage of the rapidly expanding, multi-platform, multi-faceted promotional opportunities spanning all areas of distribution."

Experiential retailer? Overall relationship? Multi-platform ventures? Multi-faceted promotional opportunities?

Yeah, I'd guess I'd spout euphemistic nonsense like that if I was turning 16 years of unimaginable hardship and misery into advertisements for expensive dolls.

More thoughts on Roseville

Having lived here now two weeks, and having seen a lot more of the burb since this recent blog post (which was constructively criticized by a longtime resident), I can definitely say my thoughts on Roseville, California have moderated. I still think the whole place is a model of the auto-centric, gasoline-addicted urban sprawl that's plastering over so much of American territory and is going to be absolutely unsustainable once the era of cheap oil ends, but it definitely offers more public space than I first noticed.

The Roseville Library is a large, roundish building swathed in recycled railroad ties. It's located downtown and it's quiet, comfortable and packed with books. Trains are a recurrent theme in Roseville, (the train station in Old Town is, though relatively new, a clear and welcome throwback to the 19th century) and the town sports one of the largest rail switch yards in the entire state. Anyway, next door to the library is Royer Park, a wonderful mix of meadows and woods that borders a beautiful stream (though you'd never guess that by looking at this, the city's official webpage for the park).

But that's all downtown. Closer to home, in the maze of cookie-cutter four- and five-bedroom houses that all seem to include three-car garages, there are public options far in excess of the tiny parks I alluded to in my last post. While out walking the other night, I discovered a clean and well-maintained bike trail I had never even noticed from my car that, once again, follows a wooded stream (I also saw two horses and one garter snake, which tells me the place isn't as completely developed as I originally thought).

There are ecologically sound reasons for living in an urban area these days, but Roseville does offer a few environmental advantages that city living lacks. I just had to look harder for them.

Awesome!

Congress is trying to make it legal once again to carry a loaded gun into national parks! Isn't that fantastic? And by gun, I of course mean pistol, revolver, automatic, hunting rifle, shotgun, whatever. You know, there just aren't enough places in this great nation of ours that allow a person to carry a loaded weapon. 

And yes, as this Sacramento Bee article on the move points out, the Democrats are still in charge of Congress.

USA! USA!

The "public" side of Roseville

So I've spent the last few days adjusting to life in the greater Sacramento area. Sacramento is a fine city, with a great urban core full of life and public spaces, all serviced by public transit, which includes light rail. Virtually everything in the city center is within walking distance. But for a variety of reasons, I live about 15 miles east in Roseville, which reminds me a lot of Irvine in Southern California.

Roseville is, as suburbs go, a pretty nice place to live. It's also a glaring example of the urban sprawl and automobile dominance that plagues modern American life. My particular neighborhood is full of houses that, except for the variations of beige paint used on the exterior surfaces, pretty much all look alike. They lack porches (the front part of the house has long ceased to be a place where neighbors gathered to talk and get to know each other) but offer two- or in some cases three-car garages that provide most of the house's actual street frontage.

Streets lined with these dwellings twist and turn for miles, snaking themselves into mazes that will confuse even long-time residents. But once you escape, you quickly find yourself on a boulevard as wide as a freeway that sends cars hurling past gigantic "big box" retail outlets (literally gigantic masonry boxes), light industrial centers and, eventually, a full-blown air-conditioned shopping mall (again, all painted either white or some tone of beige). The other day I drove through at least four strip malls while trying to find a Barnes & Noble.

Except for very modest parks here and there (usually just squares of grass holding playground equipment in one corner) and the very quaint "Old Town" on the other side of Interstate 80, there is no real public space in Roseville. In a disconcerting twist, "The Fountains at Roseville," one of those strip malls I wandered through earlier, is trying to set itself up as public space. The mall itself is an attempt at an old downtown, laid out in a plus sign with shops and restaurants lining each block. This would work, except the roads are completely open to auto traffic, meaning pedestrians and cars inside still have to dodge each other. That little design quirk is left out of promotional blurb for the center in a special advertising section of the May 2009 issue of Sacramento Magazine:

"Fountains brands itself as a lifestyle center–a place where the community comes together. That notion is catching on quick."

Never mind that old "lifestyle centers" (towns) were places where people lived and worked. Fountains is a place to shop and eat–nothing more and nothing less. That a place like Fountains might actually become synonymous with "community" is just one more depressing piece of evidence that "citizen" is nowadays just another word for "consumer."

The future of Maui

That sufficiently dramatic for you? Good reporters stick to reporting, but I'm going to draw from my nearly six years of living on Maui and make some pretty big conclusions about the future of this island. I'd like to say this place has changed dramatically since I arrived, but it really hasn't. And that's a big problem.

The Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks hit tourism–and by extension, Hawaii–pretty good. Then the tourists began returning, but of course, the state did nothing to move the Hawaiian economy away from being so dependent on airline flights. That the state seems to be in much the same immediate post-Sept. 11 woes today would seem to indicate that, despite Governor Linda Lingle's focus on growing high-tech industries here, most residents still make their living selling goods and services to visitors.

And yeah, Maui is still paradise and all, but how much longer is it going to stay that way? Land developers keep building giant, ugly condos, timeshares and "neighborhoods" jam-packed with dull, cookie-cutter houses–all linked by shoddy roads choked with cars and, here and there, still-weak public transportation. And if people like James Howard Kuntsler are correct in their predictions of the impending end of relatively cheap oil, it's all doomed.

The big gamble seems to be what's coming first: death by energy strangulation or by climate change. Global warming is happening, and it's going to raise ocean levels. That will swamp virtually all of Maui's priciest private property and will consign the word "beach" to the history books (check out this webpage to see what's going to happen to Waikiki). And God help the islands if the Trade Winds get disrupted...

So I guess the status quo lovers are right: bring in the tourists now, while we still can. And while we're at it, let's still grow (federally subsidized) sugar on a few thousand acres. I mean, we can always rip it all out and plant fruits and vegetables to feed us later, right? And the voters should by all means keep electing their pro-development, pro-tourist industry buddies to the the Maui County Council. And the Department of Liquor Control–you go right ahead bringing the hammer down on locally owned bars and restaurants, while largely steering clear of the big Wailea and Kaanapali resorts. 

But I digress. I'm headed to a land where an ex-Phoenix Sun is Mayor and the Terminator is Governor. Oh yeah, this is going to be fun...

Leaving Maui, Part III: Things I didn't do

Editing Maui Time Weekly was the best job I ever had. It was tough (I usually put in around six days a week getting the paper out the door) but it was also fun. I got to be snide, I got to play pundit and I got make the rich and powerful (or, at least some of them) angry. The paper was small, with a tiny staff and a tinier budget, but there was also an undeniable power trip to the job: each week, I got to decide how stories were told, what piece received cover promotion and, ultimately, what went into the paper each week.

Yesterday I blogged about some of the things I did in my five years as editor. Today I'll write about a dozen things I didn't do during that time. For anyone even remotely familiar with the paper, I'm going to warn you now that this post will be pretty rough...

1. Increase the amount of money budgeted each week to pay freelance writers. When I began the job, pay was listed as $45 for what we called an "up front" story–news, arts, music, food, all between 500-800 words–and $100 for a cover story, which required more reporting and research and typically ran 2,000 words. I succeeded in getting the cover story payment raised to $150, but I was also limited to running just one freelance cover a month. Those pay rates didn't change again.

2. Do much of anything when, during my last week as editor and after nearly four years of me journalistically pounding on the Maui County Department of Liquor Control, a certain investigator in the office contacted me, saying he wanted to spill the beans on corruption in the department. Though he refused to allow me identify him in print or even use any of what he told me in a story, his call genuinely surprised me and should have spurred me to interview him at length. But by that point I was exhausted, and passed the tip off to a freelance writer who did contact him. Though the LC investigator never really provided much in follow-up and continued to insist on anonymity with the freelance writer, basically ending any story possibility, it does not excuse my failure to pursue him earlier.

3. Properly handle the transition from the column "Holoholo Girl," which began the first week of my editorship and lasted until August 2007, when Associate Editor Samantha Campos moved to California, to "Restless Native," written by Starr Begley (now of The Maui News). Holoholo, which after stirring up considerable initial resistance (more than a few readers were pissed that I dumped Amy Alkon's syndicated "Advice Goddess" column), eventually built a strong readership for itself. And while Restless Native was also an excellent column with a solid readership of its own, it was very different. Whereas Holoholo was about the troubles of being single and cultured on Maui, Restless Native concerned the life of a young mother. Restless should have run in the front of the paper, where readers would be more apt to give it a chance on its own rather than see it as a straight replacement for Holoholo.

4. Lose my cool when then Haleakala Times editor Rob Lafferty (a usually intelligent and progressive person) called me and cursed me for 20 minutes after I told reporter Joan Conrow that papers like the Times were mostly dull and milquetoast. As Lafferty yelled at me, I sat there calmly, patiently repeating my arguments in simple, rational terms, just as I'd earlier practiced with my publisher, Tommy Russo, who happened to be sitting in my office, listening. The high point of the conversation was when I gleefully told Lafferty, "For a guy who doesn't like it when I print curse words in the paper, you certainly use the word 'fuck' a lot." 

5. Get into very many arguments with Russo over Maui Time's stories. There were one or two dust-ups over stories (usually food-related) but on the whole, he granted me considerable, even lavish, freedom of action. For that, I will be eternally grateful.

6. Surf. Imagine this for a moment: guy moves to Maui, lives within sight of the ocean for virtually the entire six years he's on island, hangs out with a half-dozen surfers and never once paddles a board into the waves. Yes, it's tragic.

7. Show sufficiently good judgment concerning nasty letters addressed to Campos and Begley. Put simply, I let both writers see too many nasty, personal attacks that offered no actual story critique. In addition, I let too many letters that were at least somewhat professionally critical of both writers appear in publication. 

8. Lose heart over the immense, astonishing turn-over in writers I had to deal with as editor. While I have no doubt Maui Time's terrible pay rates were at least partially responsible, the island's ambient transient nature played a big role.

9. Discern who exactly was reading the paper. Young people? Retired liberals? Bar owners? Angry locals? Who knows: through anecdotal evidence culled mostly from letters to the editor, the most popular features were Eh Brah!, Holoholo Girl and LC Watch, in that order. Since we could never afford to carry out proper, scientific market research, we could only guess at who was picking us up each week.

10. Let freelance writers whither on the vine. When I received pitches for local stories (the only stories we published) from writers, I responded as often as possible. This, I've sadly found from my failed attempt to build a post-Maui Time freelancing career in Hawaii, is not the case with most local publications, which will simply just ignore any pitches (and phone calls and e-mails) they're not interested in. That is a horrible, ridiculously unprofessional way to do journalism. I know editors are busy–I was rarely not busy–but it takes 20 seconds for an editor to e-mail a writer saying he or she is not interested.

11. Put a story about cock-fighting (including a blood & guts description of an actual bout written by a reporter who infiltrated a cock-fighting ring) on the cover. From Day One I wanted a snarling, squawking expose of cock-fighting and all its horrors in the paper, and I could never get it. This still pains me.

12. Get any kind of payment at all for Ron Pitts, who each weeks draws a bang-up illustration for Eh Brah! He puts hours and hours each week into those illustrations, for which he receives no actual monetary compensation. That's real love and dedication, people–the kind papers like Maui Time need to survive.