Category: Media

The U-T’s online magazine, the Point Loma-Ocean Beach Monthly, will now charge readers – as they established a paywall last Friday, June 21.

The publication warned its readers:

If you receive our emailed monthly newsletter, you will still receive it, but starting June 21 you’ll need a subscription to open articles.

… As all U-T publications will require.

Bleached coral in the Flower Garden Banks National Marine Sanctuary, off the coast of Galveston, Texas, in the Gulf of Mexico, in September 2023.

By David Helvarg / Los Angeles Times Op-Ed / June 5, 2024

On May 21, the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea ruled that greenhouse gases are marine pollutants and nations must take action to “reduce, control and prevent” their effects.

By Kate Callen

When I felt stuck in a fractured romance just after college, a wise friend told me: If you walk out now, tomorrow is a new day. If you stay, tomorrow is the same day.
I want tomorrow to be a new day. That’s why I’m breaking up with Cox Communications.

Doomed affairs often languish until one final transgression breaks the glass. For legions of Cox customers in San Diego, that break may have come with the wholesale dumping of Cox email accounts into unwanted Yahoo email accounts.

Every year, the San Diego Society of Professional Journalists hosts an event called “Walls and Windows” in order “to honor those in our community who have worked hard to expand the public’s right to know by fighting for transparency — and hold accountable those who have stifled these efforts.”

This year, they awarded the “Sunshine Award” to Will Carless — a former San Diego journalist — who works for USD Today. The award “goes to a journalist or community member who went above and beyond to make the government more transparent and hold elected officials accountable.”

And the Society awarded the “Wall Award” to San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria, and here’s why:

by JW August / Times of San Diego / March 19, 2024

[Last week was] Sunshine Week, a celebration of democracy and the transparency that keeps it alive in this country — and you don’t just have to be a journalist to join the celebration. It’s for civic groups, government employees, and anyone who cares about maintaining our rights to access public information so that we can keep an eye on our government at all levels.

The California Public Records Act is  one of those powerful “hammers” the public can use to find out what the government is up to.

By Aliah Fabros / LomaBeat.com / March 1, 2024

If you travel down pot-hole-ridden Rosecrans, you’ll find La Playa Books — an independent used bookstore located six minutes away from campus. Upon opening their heavy wooden door, you’ll be greeted by the chime of a bell and that woody, slightly medicinal old-book smell.

By Rick Reilly / Washington Post / Feb. 5, 2024

Are you bummed you weren’t around when the Stasi ruled? Do you wish you could’ve been one of Mao Zedong’s millions of neighborhood snitches? Maybe watch the Red Guards drag off your least favorite aunt?

Not to worry, the bad old days are back — thanks to Nextdoor.com.

On Nextdoor all you have to do is sign up, log in and start profiling everyone on your block. Teenager in a hoodie walking on your street? Lock your doors. Black guy with a backpack standing on the corner? Call the cops.

Its new owner, Sinclair executive chairman David D. Smith, has pushed local TV news hard to the right. Will he do the same with newspapers — a medium he’s called “so left wing as to be meaningless dribble…so devoid of reality and serving no real purpose”?

By Joshua Benton / NiemanLab / Jan. 16, 2024

It’s a question only the bravest have dared contemplate: Is there something worse for a newspaper than being owned by Alden Global Capital?

The vulturous hedge fund has, after all, been traditionally seen as an end-stage owner. In the old days, newspaper owners existed in an ersatz great chain of being. Family-owned papers worried about being bought by McClatchy;

By Sara Blanche Hayes

The below comment was left on the news story CBS 8 San Diego made about the closing of OB Playhouse.

“Unchecked capitalism and straight up Greed!!! The state needs to cap this sh#t!!! Hopefully that spot sits open and nobody rents it…”

There are many others like it, full of disgruntled San Diegans railing against the lack of rental protections and the landlords who exploit this fact. They toss around phrases like price gouging and profits-over-people, expressing their anger and disappointment.

The board of Wildsong Productions was shocked at the outpouring of anger and love.

“We were hopeful, of course, that mainstream news coverage would help us in some way. We never expected this.” — Kannon Gowen, Technical Director of Wildsong Productions.

Please join the Ocean Beach Historical Society on Thursday evening January 18th as they kick off their 30th year of our free monthly lecture series.

Ocean Beach photographer Randy Dible will present a program of his own wonderful photos mixed with the great historic photos of his grandfather, San Diego photographer Robert Thompson, from his travels around the world in the 1920s, ‘30s and ‘40s.