As You See It: July 2, 2008 - Santa Cruz Sentinel

The problem with fireworks and everything else is that we have a large population of common idiots.

"I suspect that a bigger economic threat to your business is the waning quality of your paper."
You're kidding, right? Don't you think the reduction in paper quality is obviously a result of the economic downturn for the newspaper industry, not a cause?... To all: please exercise your sense of logic when composing blather that the whole county may be forced to read in the news.

As for Mara considering switching her subscription from Sentinel to the Chronicle: I subscribe to both, and have watched the Sentinel bring in comics run in the Chron (Sherman's Lagoon, Pearls Before Swine, Get Fuzzy) and combine the Sunday opinion section with a book section like the Chron. Hey, if the Sentinel adds a Chron-ish pink Section on Sundays I can cancel my Chronicle subscription - which for an 8-week period is over 40% higher than the Sentinel. Hey, readers...support your local paper. You don't know what you have until you lose it.

I love chron!.... Oh, the newspaper?

Susan Hilinski, I'm so sorry about your son's injuries and horrifying experience. Live Oak definitely needs more police patrolling the area.

It's sad - my daughter has a friend that lives in that area, but I can't bring myself to let her have a playdate there. Nope, not even though it's daytime...

A campfire starts one fire, and lightning starts over 800. It isn't campfires that should be outlawed, but lightning.

That fire burns so big and hot precisely because it needs to burn. Suppressing every fire simply creates an imbalance that only these now catastrophic fires can correct.

For every acre that burns vs. every home and structure saved is good news. And I say this as a homeowner on a forested hillside.

I'm with Big Mike. Nature has always been the biggest source of fires in our forests. A total ban on human-created fires merely penalizes the vast majority of responsible campers because of the lightning-like rare instance of camping-related accident or carelessness. And let's remember that arson is already against the law, which doesn't appear to deter many, if any, of those who would deliberately set a fire. Plus, as Mike said, it is inevitable that overgrowth will burn sometime.

Too bad there is no way to send campers out into the wild with the expectation that they will start BENEFICIAL fires, which would burn in a containable fashion and eliminate undergrowth, preventing even larger and uncontrollable fires, as we now send hunters out into the wild to "thin the herd" of an overpopulated species. That said, the usual authoritarian response of "punish all for the flaws of a few" just seems inappropriate here. Supporters might have a point, if the tactic worked, but it doesn't. So let's look at other approaches that might actually be effective against unwanted fires, without spoiling people's camping experience and fun.

As far as subscribing to a newspaper from SJ or SF, just wait long enough, and the Sentinel -- what's left of it -- will be a "special advertising supplement" of the San Jose Mercury News, so you'll get your SJ Murky subscription "for free" in the inevitable involuntary subscriber migration. I predicted this in correspondence with former editor Tom Honig a year or two ago, and I see no reason to change that prediction. He said he'd fight against that trend as long as he was with the paper, but he's been gone for a while now, so I'll be surprised if a stand-alone Sentinel exists as late as 2010. If it lasts any longer, I hope it will be in a form that we locals feel is worth the subscription price.

Print newspapers (yea verily, even the New York Times) have been taking a hit for some time now.

As for community cohesion, there's the rub. Consider four components of the local socio-economy:(a) UCSC students and faculty with little attachment to the general community; (b) immigrant labor, many of whom do not read English much; (c) Silicon Valley tech commuters, whose interest lie in another county or with global economics; (d) old-line residents, now elderly, living in their $30,000 shacks now worth $600,000 as bulldozer feed.

What do those have in common? Nada. How do they interact with each other? Very little, except that (a) and (c) might have (b) or the children of (d) serving them over-priced coffee drinks.

Let's face it: If the nation as an "American ethnic group" is obsolete, and 1M-1W marriage is obsolete, and little pink houses for the working class are obsolete, then why should newspapers hang on?

(a) UCSC students and faculty with little attachment to the general community;

Wrong at least when it comes to faculty and staff.
I'm staff and think I have more attachment to the community than many so-called locals. I buy as much as I can within Santa Cruz city limits.

There are many UCSC faculty and staff that have involvement in the local community.

Maybe it is time the newspaper went online and did away with the paper version. The online version can have a low cost subscription that will keep the local news flowing. Do we really need to have all that paper being printed (and thrown away) every day-just because people like how paper feels?

Same Ole Tired arguments wrote:

(a) UCSC students and faculty with little attachment to the general community;
Wrong at least when it comes to faculty and staff.
I'm staff and think I have more attachment to the community than many so-called locals. I buy as much as I can within Santa Cruz city limits.
There are many UCSC faculty and staff that have involvement in the local community.

I was staff for more years (at UCSC) than most people live in Santa Cruz. We try to buy local as much as possible. The students are great and caring people. I have great faith in them. Too bad most people in town are too snobbish.

I think that you left out all of the middle aged homeowners that work on this side of the hill. There are at least a few of us. We aren't elderly, we aren't newcomers and we had to pay $500K for our houses after saving for 20 years for a downpayment.

I agree that there is no one homogeneous SC community and little to no mixing between the groups. More and more people are becoming part of online communities with shared interests and that's where we get our news. The Sentinel has been losing touch with the local community for years because of the constant turnover and the loss of experienced local reporters. They've been replaced by kids who miss most of the backstories and are easily aimed and pointed to provide the most desirable spin.