How do you know if community contributors on our site are using their real names? How do you distinguish staff reporters from community contributors? How do you know who has been featured on our front page? This weekend, The Sacramento Press launched badges to address all those concerns and more. Badges come in two varieties: merit and identity. Identity badges identify our users, what they do and their role on our site. The staff of The Sacramento Press assigns all identity badges manually. Assigning badges will start slowly and take time. We have eight identity badges: Editorial Staff, Sacpress Staff, Editorial Interns, County Government, City Government, Law Enforcement, Fire Departme

The future of news is not paper. At the same time the future is not necessarily just computers or mobile phones either. These days a new player, in the form of a new medium has entered the fray. That new technology is eInk. eInk is, much as its name implies, electronic ink. From the eInk website, eInk is described as offering, “...the viewer the experience of reading from paper, while having the power of updatable information.” The key difference between eInk and a computer screen is that it is not backlit like a screen, so it can be viewed in bright sunlight but not in the dark. To retain the image on the screen no power is required. So does eInk satisfy those that want the feel of news

Until April 14th, 2009 we, at The Sacramento Press, had been lax in enforcing our policies. As of that date we have begun to more strictly enforce our policies. We strive to be the best source of local news and information in the Sacramento area. We aim to do that with a mix of paid reporting, and contributions from the Sacramento community. However our site is primarily written by community volunteers who submit their content without direct contact with The Sacramento Press Anyone who lives in Sacramento is welcome to sign up and write for our site with no editorial approval prior to posting. It is a very free system, the only caveat is that you abide by the rules and policies of the si

The current fear goes something like this: "If the newspapers disappear, so does all the real original reporting with it." The basic charge is that there is no business model for "giving away" news online, because online revenue is too miniscule and newspapers spend an enormous amount to get us that amazing original content. The trouble is that a lot of those assumptions are just plain false. Once you start delving into the numbers those assumptions begin to wash away. For instance, what does an average major daily pay, in terms of a percentage of its overall budget, for its editorial department? While one's inclination may be to assume that it is a huge portion, the reality is that the

As it is today, could the Sacramento Press replace The Sacramento Bee? In a word, no. However, one word is far from the full story. In my last installment of this storyline, I outlined the course I was taking in discussing the future of news, with an emphasis paid to local content, since that is what this publication focuses on. Over the course of the last week, I embarked on the rather epic and tedious task of quantifying exactly what is in a week's worth of The Bee. In order to do this, I purchased a copy each day and as meticulously as possible recorded how many pieces of content The Bee wrote versus content drawn from other publications, and of that content, how much of it was local.

It is a pretty amazing picture of Arnold though right?

You might consider that the tech world tends to pay extremely well. I chose to address your point only in regard to the fact that it is a tech job. Of the many, many computer scientists I know not a single one of them considered working for the government. The simple answer is that the private sector simply pays way, way better.

The job you linked to is a tech job, a Systems Engineer. 2 of the 3 tech jobs I had before my involvement with The Sacramento Press had better benefits than that, to answer your question with empirical numbers. That is not to say that I agree or disagree with you, just to answer your question.

I must admit that despite living in Sacramento the vast majority of my life I have never been to that bar. Really interesting pick, now I'll have to check it out.

Yes, a follow-up article by our staff is forthcoming.