As the Managing Editor of SacramentoPress.com, and a life-long journalist of more than 30 years, I thought I should start a storyline about what I'm trying to do here. My purpose is to get feedback, and to give you, the potential or current contributor, and above all, to give MYSELF, some idea of what's going on with SacramentoPress.com. Despite my experience as a writer for The Sacramento Bee, Sacramento (and other) magazines, my own blog and with stints at radio, this is as new for me as it is for everyone else.

Because this is NEW. The internet is not yet a generation old, blogging far newer. And journalism - well, what is that? Our Thursday, Dec. 18 workshop will answer that, in part, but let me try to demystify it a bit for you, especially in context of SacramentoPress.com. Because while we use the word "press," your laptop is the press. There are no big - and we're talking BIG - presses like those that cost The Sacramento Bee so much money to run. There is no paper, though founders Ben and Geoff routinely refer to the press as "the paper."

So what is this? It's not a "paper"; that’s just a convenient metaphor. SacramentoPress.com is something new. It's contributor-driven, amateur in the best sense of the word (for the love of doing it) and, especially as we get more and more people contributing, self-edited. There is no way that Editor-in-Chief Geoff Samek or I can edit everything that goes on this site, and that will become even more true as the readers/contributors grow in number, as you already have significantly, in just a month.

So, how to get a handle on this thing? As I see it, the essence of what drove newspapers into existence two centuries ago, and continues to drive the news, is very simple: STORIES. We love to hear stories, to tell stories, we tell each other stories all day long, just as we tell ourselves stories as we live our lives. These stories range from purely factual (and possibly even accurate) to fantastical. Along with Geoff and Ben, I’d love to see SacramentoPress.com become a repository of stories about this central city, where there is so much going on, against a backdrop of so much history, and with so many unimaginable things yet to come.

Stories boil down to people. "Who?" is always the first in the old cliche who-what-when-where-how (and why). Yes, the trees are beautiful, the architecture rich and sometimes grand, the art and music compelling at times. But it’s always the people who make Sacramento what it is, and that should always be our focus. Good people, bad people, and as often as possible, interesting people.

Regarding journalism and how that applies at SacramentoPress.com, amateur as it is, the main thing that it boils down to is what journalists call “reporting.” You’ll all heard the word, and everyone knows that journalists are “reporters.” But what does it mean?

It means that, above all, your responsibility as a reporter for SacramentoPress.com - self-assigned though you may be - is always to find out what is, to the best of your knowledge, true. What was actually said, what was actually done, where and when did it actually happen? In blogging, it’s too easy to just go straight to the WHY - you’ve got a theory about why trees are being cut down, why drug dealers are suddenly in an apartment complex, why a developer is building in this spot rather than that spot - but if you post accurate information, you empower every reader who comes after you to add more, to build something true, together. Something that will literally serve the entire community, in ways you can’t even imagine now. Perhaps even years down the line. But it has to be TRUE.

How do you know it’s true? Best is to see it with your own eyes, though even that’s not foolproof. Next best is to talk to someone who saw it themselves, and better still, two or three people who did. You do this every day, in things that matter to you. So, write about things that matter to you.

And if you get to a point where you don’t know something - and that is devoutly to be hoped for, because when you have to learn something, then you’re really going somewhere - you need to call someone. You may not know what you need to know, but someone else does, and more often than not, they’re happy to tell you. And they’ll tell you something that you didn’t know, and it may well be something completely contrary to what you thought you’d find. And that’s when it really gets good.

OK, that’s enough for now. I’ll be posting more, in part to give you a break, and also to give you a demo on how storylines work. And to get myself better at it. Because I’m just a step or two ahead of you...