"The press is a gang of cruel faggots. Journalism is not a profession or a trade. It is a cheap catch-all for fuckoffs and misfits—a false doorway to the backside of life, a filthy piss-ridden little hole nailed off by the building inspector, but just deep enough for a wino to curl up from the sidewalk and masturbate like a chimp in a zoo-cage." -- Hunter S. Thompson, commenting on his profession
[H. S. Thompson, the H.L Mencken of the times, July 18, 1937 – February 20, 2005 (Wiki)]
Hunter S. thompson fired a pistol at his head, but that doesn't mean he was sick in the head. A Thompson friend, Douglas Brinkley, once noted that "In any given situation, as soon as he feels there’s a system closing in, he’ll destroy it." Mistah Thompson's physical system was giving out and closing in. Suicide was a final act of defiance. Call him what bent, drug-addled, paranoid, but Thompson never kissed an editor's ass, nor sought a politician's favor. He intended to impress no one. More often than not, in spite or because of his psychotic yet strangely fluid reporting style, Thompson managed to lay bare the underlying truth in any given situation.
Save us, Dr. Gonzo, from celebrity journalism, and vapid reporting in the USA Today style ("We're eating more cheese!" -- actual USA Today headline). God love all who wretch reflexively at the mention of Barbara Walters.
Meanwhile, the trend in community newspapers drifts farther away from no-holds-barred reporting. These days all editorial policies gravitates to one mantra: Fluff. As in, "everybody has a story, no matter how boring." The smarm-meisters at the top of national, regional and local publishing chains want Positive. They want Happy. Fluff costs less and sells more advertising than hard reporting. The local broadsheet, the Gilroy Dispatch, is no exception to the trend.
I call our local newspaper the Dipsack, in homage to its vacuity. Just reach in and grab some superficial news gratification between the cheek and gums. Councilman Bob calls it the Dogpatch, in deference to the paper's commitment to provincialism. Keep it local, is editor Mark Derry's advice to newcomers on the op-ed page. Both monikers work.
I wrote for the Dipsack for several years, as a columnist and as an editorial board member. One thing you have to realize: Down at Dipsack headquarters, a herd of sacred cows graze freely, immune to slaughter: Gilroy school district management; Leadership Gilroy; entrenched school board members; the Chamber of Commerce; any business with a Dispatch advertising budget; a host of local icons including assemblywoman-in-waiting Jane Howard, city manager-for-life Jay Baksa, and glad-handing man-of-the-year Bob Kraemer; and above all else. the Garlic Festival, which serves double duty as sacred cow and cash cow. Moo!
You have to want to be a pariah to criticize the G-fest in this town. So here I stand, alone again, speaking the plain truth: The Garlic festival is an over-rated three-day barbecue, nothing more. After all the cost and effort is tallied, the G-fest doesn't really generate all that much money for local charities. And no one calculates the hidden cost -- the G-fest burns through the available volunteerism coin faster than an Internet startup. The army of G-fest volunteers could be doing something useful, like building houses or building trails or visiting shut-ins, instead of erecting tents and portapoddies at Christmas Hill park.
Yes, the yearly G-fest is an amazing logistical feat, and doesn't the Dipsack let us know it. The Dipsack bleeds every last drop of ink from the G-fest. G-fest volunteer profiles. G-fest history pieces. G-fest promos. G-fest by-the-numbers. The G-fest "news" orgy always ends with the same shot of flabby G-festers shimmying to the sounds Sha-boom (classic 50s oldies from hell! ). In their tank tops purchased at the custom car show. Well after all it is Gilroy.
The G-fest feeds 120,000+ each year, but mostly it feeds on itself. Yes I am in awe -- not of the 25-year volunteer tradition and how it brings the community together, but of the locals who've achieved a cultish, nabob status at the top of the G-fest food chain. The reality is that most of the town -- especially those of us who weren't raised in Gilroy -- stay away from the G-fest. We've done it once, twice, and that was enough. We wish Gilroy was known for something besides the G-fest.
Some G-fest tival headlines you'll never see in the Dipsack:
- "Thousands of locals evacuate town to avoid volunteering!"
- "Big-ass festival this weekend: Let's eat heavy food and sweat in the July sun!"
- "It was a helluva lot more interesting when drunken bikers terrorized patrons!"
When G-fest preparations aren't dominating the Dipsack news hole (the other ten months of the year), the paper is busy trying to get every citizens' name in the paper. It's the new model for selling newspapers (another reason Thompson shot himself). And apparently it works. The Dipsack grows fatter, and more uninteresting.
Oh sure the Dipsack does do some old-fashioned investigate reporting -- as long as the subject meets two important criteria: (a) No important advertisers be offended and (b) the story offers an opportunity for moralizing. The Dipsack has done well investigating the spectre of Indian gaming casinos darkening the fair republic (yet the local investors behind Indian gaming remain unexposed).
Labor unions, tree-hugging environmentalists and any outside government agency are fair game for invesigation. Dipsack editorial policy holds that any government outside our borders is inherently evil: The Santa Clara Valley Water District (SCVWD), the Santa Clara Country Local Agency Formation Commission (LAFCO), the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority (VTA) -- they're all interlopers treading on the sublime, serene sovereignity of the republic.
Attacking outside government entities is a proven model for selling newspapers AND getting a politician elected (see Dillon, Valiquette, Gartman): Hell no, we don't need no government interference! We're perfectly capable of making a mess of things on our own, thank you. Who is LAFCO and the Greenbelt Alliance to tell us we shouldn't build on the flood plain east of town. Doesn't the VTA know that this is a car town and nobody wants to fund no stinking BART to San Jose? In Gilroy, riding the bus or even taking the train to work is vaguely unAmerican. We don't need No Child Left Behind and Sacramento bureaucrats tellings us how to run our mediocre schools. And get a load of these folks up in San Jose! A pox on their plan Coyote Valley Specific Plan that pretty much excludes input from little old Gilroy. They should take a tip from us, and develop their housing piecemeal, without a master plan!
Meanwhile, the local status quo is off limits for investigative reporting. Just the opposite occurs. Council gets praised for "attracting" big box retailers, even though they've failed to gain a single concession for the downtown. Steve Brinkman and Golden girl Jane Howard mismanage the school district's voter-approved bond funds, but nary a word is printed against them. School board trustee Jaime Rosso bumbles through two years of school board presidency -- not an issue. City manager Jay Baksa shrugs off the city's delay in constructing neighborhood parks that don't arrive until after the neighborhood kids no longer need them -- he's excused. The most criticism any sacred cow receives from the Dipsack is a tsk-tsk scolding in an editorial devoid of incriminating detail, and no reporter will follow up.
Reporters at the Dipsack have less say than a coolie on a railroad gang. And they rarely stick around long enough to develop expertise about their beat. Watch 'em come, watch 'em go: the Dispatch is a puppy mill for newbie reporters. Worked to death for McDonald's wages, they usually leave after about nine months. And another J-school graduate desperate for newspaper experience gladly steps in.
Ever notice how many Dipsack editorial's complain about excessive compensation for teachers, firefighters. cops, or any public servant? Editor Mark Derry is so accustomed to paying reporters subsistence salaries in the $20K range, he thinks firemen working overtime and making $100K a year are overpaid. Clue up, dude, it's the Bay area, not Winnemucca. $100K/annum is only considered a huge Bay area salary by skinflint newspaper editors.
lf you're gonna starve the wretchedly overworked newbies to death, at least attempt to mentor them in the craft! Teach them to be more than parrots, mimicking the local school district's sugarcoated, glossed-over press releases. Teach them to background a story, ask the hard question that makes a poobah sweat half-moons under his arm. It's been years since a politician in this town cringed when a Dispatch reporter dialed his phone number. You have to go back to Eric Leins.
The free weekly newspaper in town, the Pinnacle, has shown promise. Good writing, an independent voice, and in-depth reporting in the old style. Yet they've never investigated Gilroy's mediocre-and-proud of it school system. Liberal leaning minds are loathe to criticize any entity that celebrates diversity. No matter how many smart kids abandoned the school district, or how often the high school's principal trampled on a teacher's rights, no matter how much he lied to parents.
Why is the GUSD's ongoing crisis of competency and leadership vacuum not a story the Pinnacle want s to report? It's a matter of liberal politics. The GUSD has been adopted by the Stupski Foundation and has deep philosophical ties to the UC Santa Cruz school of education - basically the Pinnacle's philosophical peer group. They just never won't believe the obvious academic situation is as bad as the college-educated, two-income parents claim. Anyway, the Pinnacle covers Hollister, San Juan Buatista and Morgan Hill first, Gilroy last. They've always silently acknowledged that Gilroy is Dipsack territory.
The Pinnacle saves its most diligent reporting for former editor Tracie Cone's cause celebre, the back-from-the-brink-of-extinction California condors. That's why the R of G refers to the Pinnacle as the Condor News. Don't expect the enviro-nerd focus to change now that Mark Paxton has assumed the editor's position. Even so, the Condor News qualifies as the only paper in town that does true newsreporting. gThe Pinnacle's reporting staff is more experienced, harder to snow. For now, anyway.
The Condor News' days as an independent voice are probably numbered. The crucial moment came last year when editor Tracie Cone sold out to Anthony Allegretti's Mainstreet Media Group, a fact barely acknowledged in the local gazettes. For now at least the Condor News remains a better read than the bastion of fluff that is the Dispatch, but the R of G predicts that in time Allegretti will wear them down, and the Condor News will lose its good writers -- Kate Woods, Jonathan Jeisel, and a few other staff writers with real journalism credentials -- people who can get to the story behind the story. It's just a matter of time before the Dispatch's sacred cows begin grazing at the Condor News' doorstep.
Moo!
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