The Brain Drain, Part II

One of the disheartening aspects of calling Bakersfield home is watching the steady exodus of bright young people who go off to good schools and never return. It's not that they don't have soft feelings for Bako; it's just the simple lack of opportunities. And despite what our city leaders may say, it takes more than an affordable home to attract young people here. Things like culture, a nightlife where you won't get shot or stabbed and a crowd of the similarly educated would be a good start. It's why I started the "brain drain" list farther down on this page to note those who chose not to come back, and these were just the names that came to mind over a 10 minute period. Some kids do of course return, but it doesn't hurt if there's a family business in town. Joe Hay (son of Mikie and Dan Hay, owners of Jim Burke Ford) went to Notre Dame and is now back in town working at the dealership. Kelly Loyd, daughter of Steve and Pat Loyd of Loyd's Aviation, is back in town after graduating from UC Berkeley and working for Gap in San Francisco. Morgan Clayton, owner of Tel-Tec Security, has three children including one of whom, Tasha, is working at the company after graduating from Pepperdine. (His two boys are both working in Los Angeles.) It's just a shame that there aren't more opportunities for our best and our brightest to return home.

Care packages for our troops overseas

There's a lot of good that goes on in this community that never makes the paper or local TV. Folks making the right decisions, sacrificing for others and doing it all without an ounce of press. Consider Pam Binns, commercial and operations manager with the local Walter Mortensen Insurance office, who has been sending care packages to our troops (Army Company C, Alpha Company)in Iraq the past couple of years. She does it all out of her living room through donations from dozens of friends. She emailed this picture of some of those goodies (black beanies for the cold, pistachios, Christmas stockings shown with a smiling helicopter airman.

Wendy Wayne's courageous battle with cancer

I hear that Wendy Wayne is back at Cedars Sinai in Los Angeles for another round of chemotherapy in her ongoing battle with non-Hodgkins lymphoma. The former chairman of the First Five Commission is commuting back and forth and doing so with her trademark good attitude and courage. Wendy (her husband is political consultant Gene Tackett) has long been one of the more progressive voices of our community. She's a fulltime volunteer and activist who puts us all to shame in her good deeds around our community. She has worked with the Rotary Club International on the polio eradication program in India, done charity work in Africa and been involved in about every community charity of note. (Not to mention her stint in the Peace Corps out of college) There is not a bigger and more gracious heart in town. Our prayers are with you, old friend.

Ford: The good, the bad and the really ugly

There's more bad news for the car industry, and it's no longer relegated to the Big Three. Toyota and Honda also report plummeting sales. But there could be some good news for Ford, and I am unabashedly pulling for Ford's recovery. Why? Locally Jim Burke Ford is a family company that over the years has done a lot to improve our community. They are good stewards who have always given back when others have not. So let's hope they stick around for many more years. Ford reported today that sales dropped 32.4 percent in December from the period a year ago. That's tough but there is some good news: the company said its market share increased to 14.6 percent in December, up 0.7 of a point from a year ago. In addition, the Ford F-Series pickup has maintained its position as the best selling model in the United States, and on the horizon in the incredible Ford Fusion Hybrid that promises gas mileage in the 40-plus range. We'll take the good news when we can get it.

A tribute to attorney John Petrini: RIP

< A memorial service was held on a rainy cold Saturday for John Petrini, the local attorney who died Dec. 19 after a long bout with cancer. John was a prince, one of those local institutions who always had a smile and hearty handshake for anyone. It was John's father that helped found what is now Borton, Petrini & Conron, one of Bakersfield's premier law firms. John was born Catholic but migrated to the Methodist Church. The ceremony at the First United Methodist Church featured a little of both: Rev. Richard Thompson and Father Craig Harrison. John was just 63 when he died, far too young for such a nice man.

An idea for real, indepth education coverage

If local newspapers are truly going to move from mass to niche, and that means serving a better educated and more engaged audience, they're going to have to find a way to deliver the goods. And that means fewer stories about drivebys, fires and agenda-driven government news and more in-depth stuff that a reader believes "makes me smarter." Think the Economist as your local newspaper. Okay, it's a dream now but it should be our goal. One way to bring top notch reporting back to newspapers is being raised by Richard Lee Colvin, director of the Hechinger Institute on Education and Media at Columbia University's Teachers College. Colvin is a former education reporter at the Los Angeles Times, a dogged specialist who took his craft seriously and produced some stellar work. It's just an idea but he's considering a plan where Hechinger would produce the stories in partnership with local newspapers, bringing some much-needed depth to the resource-starved paper at (hopefully) a reasonable price. If we're going to survive, we're going to have to determine how to evolve from a product that simply serves up crime and courts and soft features to one that gives our readers something special. Stay tuned for more from Colvin and Hechinger.

Addressing overload: how reporters can help readers make sense of the world

More from the excellent Matt Thompson's Newsless.org blog, which addresses the information overload and how traditional journalists can retrain themselves to become relevant. I might add that becoming relevant means keeping one's job and staying in business. Some of Matt's recommendations, with my comments in parenthesis:
1) Are we making our community feel better informed or merely distracted? (This goes to the heart of the old way of simply "reporting the news" that may or may be of relevance to the reader.
2) How important is this for our community to know, and why? (It's not enough that "news" happens; it has to be relevant.)
3) Are we chasing the larger story, or just the latest story? (Simply "chasing" stories is not only the path of least resistance but it's also downright lazy.)
4) Are we synthesizing information, or merely aggregating it?
7) Are we using 1,000 words where a picture should be? (This is what I call the tyranny of the story form, where reporters build everything around a 20-inch bylined piece where other forms may be better)
The complete list is on Newsless.org. Recommended reading.

The new journalism: why "context" matters and "mirroring" does not

I stumbled upon a provocative blog on the future of reporting and journalism at Newsless.org. Written by Matt Thomspon, a research fellow at the Missouri school of journalism, it effectively argues that "context" is what's important, not simply "mirroring the community" (my words, not his) by reporting the latest driveby or what happened at the courthouse. This is important stuff because I believe it speaks to the increasing irrelevance of what comes out of newsrooms today. Too many reporters and editors don't have a clue who their core readers are, and they hide behind their own narrow definition of "news" as something that simply happened. From the Newless.org blog:

Until recently, newspaper editors defined news as “important developments over the past 24 hours.” Editors of newsmagazines might expand that time horizon by a few days; Web editors will contract it to within a few hours. But there’s no escaping the time-bounded nature of “news.”

My understanding of journalism is broader. To me, journalism is the constant effort to deliver a truer picture of the world as it is. The “latest developments” provide one lens through which to capture that picture. And as long as journalism was primarily delivered by static media, that lens made perfect sense.