Newest articles on The Sacramento Press written by Ryan Sharpe

The Sacramento Bee's crisis of relevance

2009-03-10T01:49:00Z

The Sunday, March 1, edition of the Sacramento Bee, included an article written by publisher Cheryl Dell entitled "It's not a lack of readers, it's a lack of advertising." The gist of the article was that despite the Bee's growing readership, advertising revenue has fallen, forcing the paper to reevaluate its business model. While it's never a bad idea to revisit policies when times get tough, I don't think Dell's column went far enough to acknowledge one of the biggest albatrosses hanging around the Bee's neck : the McClatchy Company.

I'm not trying to demonize McClatchy. The problem is that as a profit-seeking business, McClatchy has institutionally different goals and definitions of success than do its subordinate parts, including the Bee. McClatchy is a profit-seeking corporate entity, but the Bee is a member of our cherished free press, an institution enshrined in the Constitution and fundamental to our civil society. And though the Bee should be a civil servant in the best sense of the term, its expensive investigative reporting is going to create natural conflicts with McClatchy's profit motivation, beyond corporate editorial pressures.

For starters, consider that many papers nationwide, McClatchy-owned or not, are profitable in and of themselves but were required to make drastic cuts because their corporate owners incurred too much debt too quickly to maintain their business expansions. While the Bee may not itself be profitable, it is hard to believe that the paper has been so hammered by the recession that it had no choice but to eliminate half its staff and cut valuable inches from the printed edition. Not when its parent company, McClatchy, has watched its stock price drop from $74.50 in 2005 to $0.41 today. Sacramento's primary news source is suffering because McClatchy can no longer make the payments on its purhase of Knight-Ridder.

Consider also that though it is a sound business decision to save money by adopting corporation-wide platforms and standards, it undermines the ability of a newspaper to acknowledge and embrace its city’s character. Instead of a newspaper tailored to the unique interests and values of Sacramento, we readers are treated to mostly the same diluted content as other McClatchy readers. This is especially evident with McClatchy's web properties. Given an amazing and infinitely malleable digital distribution medium, Sacbee.com is a bland pixel-for-pixel rehash of McClatchy’s Charlotte Observer. Blank out locations and names, and you could not tell California from North Carolina.

Another sound business decision is to drop expensive original reporting in favor of cheaper, already-ubiquitous feeds. These days, there are more ways to receive an AP news feed than there are AP stories, and the same is true of nationally syndicated columns. Unfortunately, the Bee does neither itself nor its readership any favors by reprinting what is already widely available and eliminating what it alone can provide: local news, local opinions, a broad and diverse forum for community discourse, and public scrutiny of local powers.

A strong Bee would measure itself in its relevance to Sacramento, not its contribution to McClatchy’s share price. This means cutting back on wire and syndication reprints in favor of a renewed focus on local stories and local issues. This means celebrating life in Sacramento. This means redesigning the paper to reflect Sacramento’s unique character. This means prioritizing investigative pieces. Where advertising is concerned, this means pushing advertising quality over quantity and providing more column inches than ads.

As we've seen, good journalism can be severely undermined by the pressures of profits. If a for-profit business model is failing the Bee (and by extension, Sacramento), perhaps the paper should be excised from its corporate parent and given new life under a business model that would let it get back to journalism. That's something Cheryl Dell ought to consider.

The revolution will not be motorized!

2009-03-03T18:33:14Z

Around 20 bicyclists loiter around the fountain in the center of John Fremont Park at 16th and P Streets, resting on park benches or milling about to chat with other riders. A small group huddles around one park bench, where rider Danny Gutierrez is passing out t-shirts printed with an arresting graphic: a car, surrounded by a circle of bicycles, framed by the slogan, "¡La revolución no será motorizado!" -- "The revolution will not be motorized!" Another rider is passing out fliers with links to the Sacramento Critical Mass Google Group: groups.google.com/group/sacramentocriticalmass. It seems every time an anxious rider checks his watch, a couple more riders ride in from the Starbucks or Naked Lounge, on either end of the park.

The t-shirts excluded, this is how Sacramento's low-key version of the wild and eponymous San Francisco institution always seems to start. At 6:00 PM on the last Friday of every month, anywhere from a dozen to over one hundred riders converge on Fremont Park. This time, Barry, a grizzled Critical Mass veteran, gives a short speech about having fun and riding safely, and the riders start filing out of the park, towards 15th and P. Once on the road, they take off on an aimless and ambling tour of midtown. There is no set route; the group moves organically, turning as a flock, stretching across all three traffic lanes on 8th Street for a while, squeezing down to single-file to navigate past gridlocked cars on J, and lingering through intersections as "cover" for slower riders. Some riders peel away from the group, others spontaneously join the mass. All the while, riders are introducing themselves to each other, cracking jokes, shouting joyfully, ringing bicycle bells, blowing horns, and maintaining a party-on-wheels atmosphere. As the group makes its way through town, a few motorists honk angrily, but most seem to laugh, yell appreciatively, or, conditions permitting, even extend high-fives to riders.

Critical Mass in Sacramento has a rocky history. The first rides started in 2001, but petered out in 2003 under police pressure and after a couple of incidents involving vigilante motorists. The current incarnation started in April, 2007 and has convened monthly, rain or shine. Though the Sacramento Police Department, citing safety concerns, accompanied the rides in late 2007 and early 2008 (including one ironic incident where a police vehicle rear-ended, then arrested, bicyclist Eric Riggs), they have since decided to leave Critical Mass alone. The police scrutiny and a cold winter depressed ridership, but it is steadily rebounding.

Some riders ride to exert their right to the road as members of traffic, others to flaunt the benefits bicycles give over cars, and still others just to have fun. Though there's no dominant political message, just an appreciation of two wheeled transit, Critical Mass is a testament to the vibrancy of bike culture in Sacramento and the appeal of a casual ride through midtown with a few dozen fellow cyclists.

Images above are from the Febuary, 2009 ride. Pictures of past rides are available at www.nothingsharper.com/gallery2/main.php, with video clips at www.youtube.com/0geek0.

Sacramento Bike Kitchen to open on Furlough Fridays

2009-02-23T21:09:14Z

The Sacramento Bicycle Kitchen at 1915 I Street has decided to join the chorus of organizations offering free services to furloughed state workers.

According to a post on its web site, the SBK will open its doors from 10 AM to 3 PM on the first and third Fridays of the month, in addition to its normal midweek schedule. As a further incentive to pedal in for some bike maintenance, the normal $5 shop fee will be waived for furloughed state workers.