Biting the hand that strokes you
The Long Beach Press Telegram's San Pedro Magazine (part magazine, mostly doorstep advertising supplement), recently ran an article called, "20 things that make San Pedro great." This scrappy blog was number 8 or 9 on that list.
San Pedro Magazine and Copley Newspapers' More San Pedro seem to exist mainly to sell homes and cars to the area's residents, and in the process are no doubt draining advertising dollars from the established, truly local biweekly, Random Lengths.
All three papers have their flaws, but the Torrance and Long Beach rags feel like interlopers. Random Lengths is half-mad, radical and conspiratorial, and there is something comforting about the way it flies in the face of many of those on the West side of Western Avenue, offending their sensibilities and driving them to take desperate measures such as getting its distribution locations shut down in businesses along Western.
Any community worth it's salt should appreciate a good rabble rouser. Out of town corporo-pap and ads masquerading as news are just more noise.
San Pedro Magazine and Copley Newspapers' More San Pedro seem to exist mainly to sell homes and cars to the area's residents, and in the process are no doubt draining advertising dollars from the established, truly local biweekly, Random Lengths.
All three papers have their flaws, but the Torrance and Long Beach rags feel like interlopers. Random Lengths is half-mad, radical and conspiratorial, and there is something comforting about the way it flies in the face of many of those on the West side of Western Avenue, offending their sensibilities and driving them to take desperate measures such as getting its distribution locations shut down in businesses along Western.
Any community worth it's salt should appreciate a good rabble rouser. Out of town corporo-pap and ads masquerading as news are just more noise.
15 Comments:
Too bloody right!
All small print newspapers are beholden to their advertisers. It's just something to take into account when you read them. With their 31 page real estate insert, do I really expect More to be critical of real estate development in San Pedro? No way. On the other hand, I don't expect to open the Random Lengths and see them rake a restaurant over the coals in their large dining section. I don't see More or SP Magazine as being any different from the Random Lengths in that respect. I read and I've worked with all three papers, and none of them tends to bite the hand that feeds.
I'm sill a loyal reader of the Random Lengths, and it is the only one of the three with any teeth when it comes to covering San Pedro. The more papers that come to the party, the better, IMHO. A portion of the Random Lengths' coverage is syndicated national news, and I wish they devoted more ink to getting into the issues here in the Harbor Area. I usually skip the national stuff, as it's almost always old news to me by the time it makes their paper. The Random Lengths, forced from it's comfortable collector of local business' advertising revenues by new competition, could become an even better paper. Being owned by its editor, James Allen, he can be as agressive as he likes in re-affirming the paper's identity and relevance to San Pedro, where the other paper's staff almost certainly do not have that freedom.
There's always room in Pedro for more rabble rousers, though.
Well, you've certainly got a point about competition being good for most any business, and newspapers are no exception. The two doorstep rags More and San Pedro do share a definite advantage over Random Lengths when it comes to distribution and financial backing though. Sort of like -- well, not WalMart -- but say, Office Depot running the local stationers out of business. Anyway, the marketplace decides, as always.
As for the RL stuff being old news by the time it hits the street, that's true in a lot of cases. But it's also true that they run stories that the Press Telegram and the Copley papers - and the Times, for that matter - aren't ever going to touch. Even the once-opinionated LA Weekly (okay, so that was 20 years ago) shies away from the extremes that you can see in RL. Anyway, I like a little bit of over the top paranoia sometimes.
You can't expect More San Pedro and monthly SP Magazine to be sources of news. They're filled with lifestyle and local interest pieces. Random Lengths on the other hand, has a far more ambitious agenda which it wears on its sleeve. It seeks to inform AND agitate, and in trying to accomplish so much, it falls further from its goals than any other local publication. As Calamari pointed out, their coverage of the Harbor Area is spotty since energies are divided between local and national news. He was also right in pointing out that James Preston Allen is as beholden to his advertisors as any other publisher.
Anyway, a little over-the-top paranoia and a half-mad braggart for an editor may be entertaining at times, but that's where the paper fails the most: it becomes grating and a turn-off and loses credibility as a result.
I approach Random Lengths the same way that I approach this blog - with caution. I read and learn, but recognize the content as anything but balanced.
I'm sympathetic to the Random Lengths' postion as an independent, but I don't necessarily associate independence with quality. I find it a lot easier to read a story about a local issue in the Lengths than I do in the other papers, there's less "holding back" in the Lengths.
I've grown really suspicious of all journalism lately, anyways. The roles of journalist and subject has gotten so blurred, and so many people are actors on both sides of the fence, that I'm always wondering "what do they know that didn't they write in this article?"
Random Lengths is really hit-and-miss these days. When they hit, they hit hard and well--witness the recent stories about molestation in the local Catholic church, and the young black kid who was arrested for "burglary" when he was helping his dad move--but boy, have they been missing lately. Their coverage of the proposed waterfront projects is only marginally better than the "he said, she said" coverage of the Breeze. And their coverage of the hot-button development/gentrification issue is actually worse, consisting in the main of a few glib paragraphs from Art Vinsel every now and again.
Now, I despise the Bush administration as much as any sane human being does, but is it really necessary for RL to duplicate the efforts of The Nation, Mother Jones, Pacifica, Indymedia, etc. every week in reminding us of the Administration's misdeeds and malfeasances, when there seems to be plenty of malfeasance going on right here? That picture of Janice Hahn endorsing the paper is cute and all, but I'd rather see that space devoted to investigating why she took the side of the developer over the neighborhood in the Grand Ave cottage debacle. And those EEK/Gafcon ads looked swell, and I'm sure they help pay the bills, but I'd certainly like to see somebody get off his or her ass and do some investigative reporting as to precisely how that Maximum Development alternative suddenly came into being, and why.
Valid points 4:34. I know they don't have a lot of resources, but R.L. should do more local investigative reporting (and watch the typos).
I got a chance to check out the "20 things" issue of San Pedro Magazine tonight at the coffeehouse. It didn't disappoint me, in that it didn't fail to disappoint me. Is it too much to ask these days that the content of a corporo-pap magazine flush with real estate dollars be well written? Apparently so. The writer of the featured piece actually made a reference to "the Longshoremen industry." The what? The only people I know engaged in the business of making longshoremen are my parents, and they quit it after I was born (as failures, alas, having produced only one longshoreman rather than several). And why the capitalization? Longshoremen may be the backbone of San Pedro's economy, but "longshoreman," whether singular or plural, remains a common noun. And so on.
One wants to weep for, if nothing else, the sorry state of the Copyeditors industry.
The sorry state of copy editors indeed. Apparently book publishers have more or less given up on ensuring that the non-fiction they publish is even factual. From Monday's Wall Street Journal; "Publishers Say Fact-Checking Is Too Costly"
I approach Random Lengths the same way that I approach this blog - with caution. I read and learn, but recognize the content as anything but balanced.
Where, pray tell, do you get your "balanced" content?
The Reagan administration threw balance out the window when they scrapped the old "equal time" requirements, and paved the way for a handful of companies and individuals to buy up as many media outlets as they could afford (previously ownership of multiple television stations in the same city, for example, was not allowed). I don't think it's coincidence that the lines of division that we see in this country now have sprung up in the wake of this deregulation.
I approach Random Lengths the same way that I approach this blog - with caution. I read and learn, but recognize the content as anything but balanced.
Other than the live feed of Congress provided by C-Span, there's no such thing as balanced news. I have a lot more respect for the reader that knows that news outlets and journalists have adendas, than I do for people who imagine that their source for news is somehow objective, and disregards other sources out of hand. The key aspect of imbibing any information, news or non-news is the act of thinking that goes on in the imbiber afterwards.
I don't know our other authors feel, but I don't think any of us see Life on the Edge as a source of news, although I imagine that it is useful as a news source in some degree. What's going on here is public dialogue, and what I like about that is that everyone here has agendas and that there is honest debate about the local issues here, something that Pedro is critically short of right now.
Until one awakens to the fact that all published news springs from biased sources, mental processing of the news will be at a primitive level. On another (higher)level, all so-called truths are relative. This is not a rational for giving up on public debate, but it should give us a little humility and perspective in our rants.
I too would like to see RLN focus on stories about local goings-on and local slants on national news stories. It does seem like their spins on peninsula news stories have gotten somewhat tame lately. It is possible to state non-mainstream viewpoints without it reading like mad-dog ravings, utilizing multiple viewpoints, circumspect language and select personal quotes. I'd still like to see a gossip column, though....
Re this blog, my enjoyment is mainly based on the opportunity to gratuitously spill out my thoughts in a virtual public realm, to get a reaction, and to react back. Oh yes, the announcements and the everyday dog bites man stories are worthwhile also.
San Pedro is way too much of a "we all know each other's dirty laundry" town for a good gossip column. It would be all sharp teeth...
UPDATE: Just as I was hitting the "Publish Your Comments" button on my post criticizing Random Lengths News for failing to do any investigative reporting on, or meaningful analysis of, the various development plans hanging like giant anvils over San Pedro, RLN was going to press with an excellent front-page article--by Art Vinsel, of all people--about the Pacific Trade Center condo proposal and the slimy people behind it. I had no idea that the war profiteers at the Carlyle Group had a stake in this thing. That's a superly-duperly wealthy and powerful organization, to put it mildly; no wonder they're so confident in their ability to run roughshod over the concerns of local peons.
I read it. I was aware that Carlyle had a role, but I've been refraining on addressing that issue pending some research into their relationship to the project. If there is any non-Halliburton company/cabal/organisation who's profits are etched from the blood of American troops and the blood of those that America's military is inflicted upon, it's the Carlyle Group.
I still like the proposed project, but the source of funding behind it disturbs me.
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