Category: Media

As we wind down the week of our annual summer fundraiser, we can proudly say we’ve now reached three-quarters of our goal of $2,000 — $1480 to be exact.

And to add more reasons for our readers and supporters to donate to keep us goin’, it’s the people, the writers for the Rag. Nowhere else can you find their writings, reportings, observations, poetry and photography.

Geoff Page

Through his reports on the goings-on at the 3 local community planning boards, Geoff keeps the Peninsula informed. His excellent research into the state of the OB – San Diego Pier is unrivaled, and he was the first to determine the pier needed to be replaced.

Ed Decker

Ed has joined the Rag with a monthly “advice” column. You can’t read his superb wit anywhere else.

By Frances O’Neill Zimmerman

No question Senator Bernie Sanders did a national service by writing this piece for the Guardian. The American press and radio/TV are beating the drums of war with no explanation about past history, so Sanders goes to a British journal to lay out the risks we are taking.

I haven’t seen one word of explanation about NATO’s USA-backed expansion in recent years to the borders of Russia itself.

Instead we hear only that Putin is having a nostalgic fever dream about restoring Russian greatness by reconstituting the old Soviet union.

No mention of any tacit agreement between the USA and Russia in 1990-91 for Russia to accept the reunification of Germany in return for our keeping Ukraine out of NATO.

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:

by Chris Jennewein / Times of San Diego / December 20, 2021

Three decades ago, when America’s local newspapers were at their peak, I attended a dinner for publishers at a mid-sized chain. After dinner, the president rose to speak and asked everyone to clap for one publisher whose newspaper had exceeded a 50% profit margin in the previous month.

At a 50% margin, half of every dollar from subscribers and advertisers went directly to the bottom line. Sure, there was depreciation to account for, and some taxes to be paid, but overall that’s a level of profitability that would make a pharmaceutical company blush.

Thanks to all those who gave us birthday greetings, either here, on OB Rag facebook or in emails.

It’s been an amazing 14 years (for earlier commentaries on our beginnings, go here.)

The following is from our “About” page:
About the OB Rag

It was early October in the year 2007 – George Bush was still president and the war in Iraq was in its 4th year. I lived in a small cottage on the 4600 block of Long Branch with Patty Jones.

On Tuesday, October 19, the San Diego County Board of Supervisors will honor Doug Porter, a former writer for the OB Rag, for all his contributions over the years to San Diego journalism.

Here’s a stupefying bombshell bit of news about San Diego’s Trump-Loving One America Network (OAN): It’s being funded almost entirely by the largest telecom company on the planet: AT&T.

The network, with offices in the Morena district, is known for spreading conspiracy theories about the 2020 election and Covid.

An in-depth Reuters review of court records shows OAN founder and chief executive Robert Herring Sr. testified back in 2019 that the inspiration to launch OAN in 2013 came from AT&T execs.

By Joni Halpern

Marshall McLuhan was right. “The medium is the message.” That was the popularized theme of McLuhan’s book Understanding Media – the most incomprehensible book I have ever read –and it is quite possible that what I think I understood is worlds away from what he meant.

If I am right, however, that thematic summary helps explain why so many of us Americans cannot find common ground. It’s not our fault we don’t get along. We’re not even the same human beings anymore.

It is ironic that today, we live in the most interconnected world we have ever known.

Last weekend’s Saturday Night Live captured the OB “Whistling Guy”, played by comedian Bowen Yang. The “Whistling Guy” – you may recall – showed up at the San Diego County Board of Supervisors back in August and created quite a scene.

By John Nichols / The Nation / August 31, 2021

“When we can discuss socialism rationally. It will be as if a heavy curtain has been lifted from man’s eyes.” Those were not the words of Karl Marx or Eugene Victor Debs, though either of those radical thinkers might well have uttered them.

Those were the words of Ed Asner, the actor who became a household name in the role of gruff but lovable Lou Grant, the boss at a TV station, in the 1970s TV comedy The Mary Tyler Moore Show. He then carried the character over, with a new job as a Los Angeles newspaper editor, to one of the most socially conscious programs in the history of television, the eponymous Lou Grant of the late 1970s and early ’80s.

When he died Sunday, at age 91,

By Ken Stone / Times of San Diego / August 17, 2021

Score one for Rachel Maddow — again.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Tuesday said a San Diego federal judge was right to throw out a $10 million defamation suit against MSNBC’s top-rated host. The opinion of a three-judge panel was posted three weeks after hearing arguments in a virtual hearing based in Pasadena.

A lawyer for owners of San Diego-based One America News argued July 27 that Maddow should face trial for calling OAN “literally … paid Russian propaganda” in a 3 1/2-minute segment two years earlier.

By Ken Stone / Times of San Diego / August 15, 2021

When the owners of San Diego-based One America News sued Rachel Maddow for defamation, they scoffed at the liberal TV host’s First Amendment rights. OAN lost, and was ordered to pay Maddow’s lawyers $247,000.

Now the shoe is on the other foot. Herring Networks, the OAN parent, will plead constitutional free-speech protections to stave off a $1.6 billion lawsuit by Dominion Voting Systems.

Another loss could spell bankruptcy. Unlike the six words Maddow uttered in a single 3 1/2-minute MSNBC segment — that OAN “really literally is paid Russian propaganda” —