Bravo, I remember the inception of this idea and worked on two failed campaigns to get a fee increase passed to build it. At the time called "A Train Wreck" by then President Gerth. I had to chuckle at that. A decade later it's coming to fruition. If you remember the BEER (Better Education Events and Recreation) campaign of 1998 then you'll have a little laugh to see how far the idea has come in ten years. Kudos to Leslie Davis and Alexander Gonzalez as well as the hundreds of students for seeing the vision and making it happen.

If Sacramento wants to become a world class city we need a strong mayor to lead it. Period. If the State Legislature or US Congress have shown us anything about politicians it's that they would much rather debate and win political battles than get things done. Every successful organization whether it be a sports team, non-profit, company, or government needs a strong leader in charge with the capability to make tough decisions. Those which don't lose, run poorly, fail, or flounder in red tape. Isn't that why we elect a Mayor? Who cares about this draft or that draft and what was scribbled on a piece of paper. Let's elevate the discussion to one of the Big Picture need for the Sacramento Metro area to step up and become a World Class city with great Performing Arts, Theater, Sports Performances, Amazing Recreation, and a 21st Century economy which is creating jobs, wealth, and a higher quality of life.

There's a lot of great efforts underway to provide event more awareness and information about Clean Tech/Green Tech efforts in California. It's exciting to see.

Congratulations Megan and all the other winners.

Very cool Katie. I'm now going to visit the Sutter National Wildlife Refuge based on your recommendation. The Sacramento region has so many great natural resources like the Sutter National Wildlife Refuge and the American River Parkway we all should take some time to just visit and experience them. It can be very relaxing too.

The Kings are definitely are in a rebuilding year, however there are some glimmers of a great young nucleus of talented players. If these guys can continue to work hard and develop their teamwork there's no reason they couldn't be very competitive. After a couple years of disappointment I've finally begun watching Kings games again. The Purple Pride is back. It's also intriguing that there doesn't seem to be one clear star player. The starters all seem fairly balanced. This team could be like so many great teams of the past with good chemistry and teamwork, they'll be tough to beat because there is not one player other teams can focus their attention on and shut down.

Not true. Mather Commerce Center and the Mather Airport is the West coast shipping hub for UPS, DHL, and Fedex. There are planes flying in and out every day with thousands of packages. There is also a passenger commercial airport at Mather which sees a lot of commuter traffic especially for corporations like Intel.

Ben Ilfeld said, "However, the interesting thing is that our community actually uncovered these affiliations in the conversation, not us. If we give one person the job to screen then we take power away from our community and give it to someone in our office. That person is fallible and will undoubtedly make mistakes." I agree completely. Reporting the news is a process and part of the process is the community of readers needs to add their insights and additional information to complete the picture. It's exactly what happens between journalists at different publications so why not between contributors of the same publication. The community vets the information being presented. As far as how to alleviate the issues of false information begin spread by suspect sources. How about badges, individual ratings, and verified identity. The badges would reveal if this person is a Community Contributor, Staff Writer, Editor etc. The ratings would be based on the thumbs up/down on stories and comments compiled site-wide. Get bad comment or story ratings and your overall rating will be poor. At least would give readers a gauge to measure by. The identity verification could be a process requested by Community Contributors to add credibility. Simple enough, Community Contributor answers some additional questions to confirm their identity and a staff member verifies. Provide a verified identity badge to add trust to the source.

Looks great. I like it.

Sounds like a great contest. I'll be looking forward to the entries.

Maybe we could sell the name of the city and become the City of Clear Channel. That should bring in about a million or more! One resident to an out of towner, "Oh, where are you from?" The resident, "I'm from Clear Channel. You know, the state capitol - Clear Channel, California."

Ben this is a win-win for Sacramento Press and its contributors. It's a much more open agreement aligning better with your intended mission IMHO.

In my experience it's not feasible to provide local coverage for an area larger than a city. The differences between West Sacramento, Folsom, Elk Grove and Roseville for example are too great to provide blanket coverage. In order to compete locally the Bee needs to be local and not try and cover all of Superior California from 21st & Q.

So about 30 local stories in the Bee per day, a lot of AP and a smattering of other sources. I think what we'll begin to see is decentralization of news gathering and editing. On par with the revolution in community oriented policing 20 years ago, Big Newspapers will soon realize they have become too centralized and become more community oriented. Local again. Wait, where have I heard that before?

A couple of points after reading the articles above and some others linked to them. The new paradigm: 1. Decentralized - Nobody but MSM cares about the demise of Newspapers, readers care about good journalism which is just storytelling. 2. Personalized - If the journalism produced by Big Newspapers is so good, why the explosion of blogs. 3. Portable - The media landscape is changing and people get their news and entertainment in new ways; blogs, podcasts, rss, twitter, FB, Myspace, sms, kindle etc. 4. Aggregated - The answer to the newspaper dilemma is already here see Digg, Topix, Examiner, Outside.in, TechCrunch, Gizmodo, etc. 5. Diverse - There is now more info created and shared in a day than most people consumed in a lifetime 100 years ago. 6. Distributed - New Media will take many forms; traditional newsprint, membership based non-profit investigative journalism, subscription based niche content, pay per podcasts, fee based live media events, ad supported web magazines, and more that have yet to be invented. 7. Individualistic - Credibility, trust, and Brand recognition have shifted from Corporations to People. This trend will accelerate. much like society in the US, the way we consume our news is changing

If the smartest minds in journalism haven't figured out a way to save their newspapers, why would we trust a politician?

Try Topix, Technorati, Examiner .....

Nobody cares about saving newspapers, they care about journalism which is alive and thriving. Journalism is one form of storytelling which will always be the most important human characteristic, the medium by which this is accomplished matters less than the message. As long as we find new and better ways to connect, share, and story tell we'll escape doom. And thanks for being Geoff's editor. I agree he needs it. Wink!

"it is clear to me that, more than free commerce, the rule of law is still the core of our democracy" It really is because without the rule of law, elections would run amuck, commerce could not sustain with corruption and fraud, and many more tenants of society would cease to function or become chaos. It's amazing what you'll see and hear by just sitting in the Sac county courthouse for a day or two.

I've always been curious about the grand jury system. It's much different from the regular jury pool. That might make a good article, telling how you were selected, what your duties were etc...