San Diego Reader Spotlights Local Online Media, Praises OB Rag for Being ‘Ethically-Conscious’

Photo by Patty Jones

San Diego Reader writer, Thomas Larson, just had his cover article published under the title, “Where is San Diego’s local news going now?” Larsen interviewed publishers and editors at Times of San Diego, Cannabitch, Voice of San Diego, Union-Tribune, San Diego Community Newspaper Group, and the O.B. Rag.

Larson had generous things to say about the Rag and about yours truly. His last line is worth gold:

The kind of authentic local news groups that need support are those whose back-and-forth between producers and consumers help clarify the intentions of both, and, if possible, cast out the self-interested trolls. I don’t see where else such integrity will come from, except the hand-to-mouth, ad-avoidant, ethically-conscious alternative media.

The entire piece is well worth checking out. We repost Larson’s section on the Rag:

From Self-Enterprising to Citizen Journalist

In the 1970s, Frank Gormlie edited the radical O.B. Rag for seven years, with a decent press-run of 10,000 copies every two weeks. A generation-skipping lag passed until 2007 when he and his wife Patty Jones resurrected the Rag as a blog. Gormlie tells me that in the interim between the pubs, people told him, time and again, that they “craved” the hyperlocal brew of “grassroots and progressive” perspectives in Ocean Beach for which he was semi-famous. He got busy and brought the Rag back. Indeed, the hunger for O.B. news seems biblically endowed, as the town is forever fighting to retain its funk against the predators from downtown. Of late, the Rag’s record as an effective news group includes saving the O.B. library and the iconic beach firepits as well as reviving, briefly, the San Diego Free Press. Does his staff of five earn a living? Gormlie laughs, and says, “Yeah, we pay them — a pittance,” a term the OED defines as a “pious donation to a religious order.” Still, the Rag, he says, retains one reporter who covers the O.B. planning committee where, voter approval or not, the 2020 Sports Arena redevelopment project is undergoing serious birth pangs.

Gormlie sees the Rag inspiring more investigative reporting of this kind from its competitors. He names the Peninsula Beacon, part of Julie Main’s publishing group, and the Point Loma-OB Monthly. He wishes they’d reciprocate the Rag’s local bias. But they don’t — or won’t. One recent story that lit up O.B. was Geoff Page’s video interview about the pier, its rot, and accelerating droop. A City of San Diego report highlighting the pier’s deterioration, done in 2004 under Mayor Sanders, was shelved, but now, with the Rag’s due diligence, the pier is finally scheduled for repairs, even if the effort is an “emergency” temporary fix that includes neither the $8.6 million designated by the state for repairs or the estimated $30 to $60 million to adequately rebuild the structure.

Gormlie deletes most of the flood of requests he gets for sponsored content. Little is legit or has anything to do with O.B. But they do pay, I remind him. He’s not interested in bargaining with the advertorial devil. He’s blog-centric, encouraging the citizen journalist, people with cellphones, tape recorders, and notepads to report what they see and hear. An informed citizenry that cares what happens block by block appeals to Gormlie, just as it appeals to journo prof Dean Nelson. Nelson tells me that the citizen journalist (neither of us is sure about the name) “is necessary. We wouldn’t know as much as we do about the stampede at Astro World,” in which ten people died, “if there weren’t cellphones. Or Tahir Square, if there weren’t these nontrained folks, watching and recording.” But Nelson adds that its usefulness comes only when it’s sufficiently “crowd-sourced” — when there’s a quantity of gathered coverage and a news organization canny enough to establish a “trustworthy narrative.”

Gormlie likes this model — a collaboration between news collectors and synthesizers, the reporter/witness and the writer/editor. It creates another link between community news and its readers, which is vital to promoting confidence in user-generated digital media. “A story,” Gormlie says, “is not finished until it’s commented on.” Readers’ distillation of news — and not just their consumption of it — is key. “We rely on our readers to fill in the gaps, correct us, or, God forbid, criticize us — ultimately, to help us understand our role.” He also notes that the Rag, with little ad revenue, cannot survive without an activist audience. It’s a good thing, he notes, that “we don’t have advertisers who’d be upset” about a particular civic position and withdraw their support. Case in point: the site led the charge to get rid of the business-friendly Lorie Zapf in O.B.’s council district, replacing her with the putative labor-supporter Jen Campbell, who turned out to be “just as bad” and who the Rag and others tried and failed to get recalled. Gormlie laughs heartily at the irony. Backing candidates online is a version of being careful what you wish for: the community your community newspaper may seek to reflect may not always be the community you think it is or should be. The kind of authentic local news groups that need support are those whose back-and-forth between producers and consumers help clarify the intentions of both, and, if possible, cast out the self-interested trolls. I don’t see where else such integrity will come from, except the hand-to-mouth, ad-avoidant, ethically-conscious alternative media.

A note: I was one of numerous editors of the original OB Rag, 1970-1975.