Newest comments on The Sacramento Press written by Ryan Sharpe

Ryan Sharpe on "Editorial: Transparency and scrutiny"

2009-10-01T22:28:26Z

You're still in good shape, Geoff, and as long as you're willing to work on improving the site, I'll keep it in my RSS reader. This thread's a good example of what the Pres can do, thankfully. Bill Anderson's got some great ideas below. I'd add better publicizing and enforcing of disclosure rules. For a decisive measure, you could even hire an army of editors to work with writers to improve stories before they're posted, too. Each idea has their cost in "openness", though. I think this comes down to an odd trap the Sac Press is caught in: it can't grow without quality writing and reporting, but it's hard to maintain quality if you're actively soliciting input from everyone. You'll have to draw the line on submissions somewhere, and I don't envy you the task of figuring out where.

Ryan Sharpe on "Editorial: Transparency and scrutiny"

2009-10-01T20:26:11Z

Advocate, feel free to dismiss me as an arrogant elitist as well. Condescension aside, sactoe raises some good points, and her first paragraph largely sums up my thoughts about the Sac Press. After slogging through more than a few stories that desperately needed an editor's hand and personally posting stories about groups and organizations I was part of (and thereby noticing how easy it is for the site to be misused), I grew disillusioned with citizen journalism as practiced, and now the Press is now a steadily growing unread RSS subscription I'm daily tempted to delete. There's a very noble ideal at the center of the Press (everyone is invited to participate to help improve local reporting), but that ideal also holds a fundamental contradiction: the act of letting everyone participate doesn't necessarily improve the quality of the articles. Some sort of gatekeeper is needed (traditionally, editors and staff writers -- both of which the Press now has) to separate the wheat from the chaff. For an article on a major issue, like city charter revisions, there are likely going to be enough readers to ferret out propagandists and malcontents, but I can't trust that the readers will uncover and call out every person using this site for their own ends rather than to inform the community, especially on articles that receive low levels of traffic. To be taken seriously, you have to present a quality product. For journalistic enterprises, quality can be measured by factual accounts, trustworthy writers, and quality writing. Unfortunately, putting the onus on your consumers to enforce that quality is little better than just showing them the door. Sactoe and I (and likely others) have already reached for the doorknob.

Ryan Sharpe on "Sacramento's liberal ranking"

2009-05-22T17:16:06Z

That's not uncommon. When one paper in a metropolitan area has a perceived bias, other papers in the publication area tend skew the other direction. Compare the New York Post as a counterweight to the New York Times, Boston's Herald to its Globe, the Sun-Times and Tribune in Chicago, or even our own Union and Bee before the former's collapse. The Bee reaches Davis with its leftward tilt, opening a niche for right-leaning local content. http://infochimps.org/static/gallery/politics/endorsements_map/endorsement_graph.html graphs out papers by size and recent endorsement, so it's not a definitive left/right split, but it does show that cities with multiple papers tend to split them ideologically.

Ryan Sharpe on "Sacramento's liberal ranking"

2009-05-19T20:19:29Z

"How did Sacramento rate only 88th most liberal when it is 79.7 percent Democrat?" Perhaps because it's not actually 79.7 Democratic; voters registered as independent or decline-to-state would show up as neither. It's an interesting quick glance at Californian political divisions, but it would be as interesting to see another breakdown that included Green and Peace and Freedom Party voters on the "liberal" scale and Libertarian or Constitution Party voters with the "conservatives".

Ryan Sharpe on "Police address privacy concerns over security system "

2009-04-21T17:28:03Z

Dan's got a good start, but considering how controversial video surveillance is, there's a lot of questions to consider for a follow-up article: Will video be fed directly to a surveilling officer, or is it going directly to storage? What is the Department's method of discerning whether a given fragment of video contains evidence of crime (therefore deserving of long-term storage)? How granular will video storage be? What issues did the ACLU raise, and were their concerns satisfied? How will the Department discriminate between private and public spaces captured on camera, and at what point in the process are private areas obscured? At capture? After video review by an officer? Will this video surveillance system work with identity recognition software, and does the Department have any plans to expand this surveillance into identity recognition? Depending on where the cameras are placed, they may capture financial transactions and therefore sensitive information like PIN codes. Will those be obscured, and if so, at what point in the capture and retention process?

Ryan Sharpe on "City Will Survey Underground Sidewalks"

2009-03-28T00:33:34Z

Having been in the "catacombs" in the Crest's basement and the one-off park system tour of Old Sacramento's underground areas, I can happily testify that these are some neat historic passages. Unfortunately, since they tend to be walled off block-by-block, it's going to take a very widely coordinated effort to make any contiguous district or tour-worthy area out of them.

Ryan Sharpe on "The revolution will not be motorized!"

2009-03-16T02:10:43Z

Well, I guess my lack of fifteen years of anarchy zine back issues betrays itself; nobody I talked to was familiar with any rides before the 2001 set. I would take issue with your characterization, though. Considering that the cyclists are moving with (albeit slower than) prevailing traffic, don't prevent traffic from moving around them, moved back the start time to 6:00 from the more "rushy" time of 5:30, and usually avoid riding through the areas of town with freeway entrances and exits, calling them out for deliberately blocking rush hour traffic seems unwarranted.

Ryan Sharpe on "The Sacramento Bee's crisis of relevance"

2009-03-11T21:53:14Z

Production costs aside, you can't discount the advantages of a growing base of 300,000 paid daily subscribers, in terms of direct revenue, advertising leverage, and classified leverage. Unfortunately, without hard numbers in front of us, we're not going to be able to find that service-to-costs balancing point where the Bee can break even or profit. And as I suggested in my article, one of the pertinent numbers is how much revenue McClatchy has been sucking out of its flagship paper.

Ryan Sharpe on "The Sacramento Bee's crisis of relevance"

2009-03-10T22:11:38Z

That attitude (which I share) is the exact problem; consumers are notoriously unwilling to pay subscription fees for most online content, and it's impossible for any organization to keep a subscription lid on what they publish. Besides, citizen-journalism only goes so far; we still need full-time professional investigative journalists, and that's not exactly cheap. I highly doubt that an ad-supported online presence would be enough to keep the lights on at the Bee. It's a vicious cycle: to fund its operation, a newspaper needs a strong subscriber base, which isn't going to develop online. As sactomaya suggested, the Bee might want to look at the revenue models that sustain public radio and TV, or perhaps look into endowments, as for-profit incorporation has done it a grave disservice and it can't survive with online-only revenue.

Ryan Sharpe on "What's in a name? "

2009-03-05T19:57:23Z

This is getting away from David's issue, but I'm optimistic about the direction the Press is going, I just think it's going to take some time to develop the cache and respectability of a paper-and-ink publication. There's been some good reporting so far, but the last couple of days have also seen my own "newsified" press release about Critical Mass, an opinion piece by mayoral spokesman Steven Maviglio in favor of a city council decision, an opinion piece about the mayor's "message," and an opinion piece by a firefighter about the state of the department. This isn't to say the pieces were bad, but that the Press might benefit from an editorial system. Maybe not dedicated editors, but at least a community process that can identify "fluff" pieces like press releases and opinion articles and separate them from the more serious original reporting. If you want to discuss this more, I'd be more than happy to do so; my e-mail address should be in my profile.

Ryan Sharpe on "What's in a name? "

2009-03-05T18:43:51Z

I have to come out in defense of psuedonyms, which is the basic question here. While using one's real name can promote civil discourse, it's not the only way to do so, nor would it guarantee that civility. A strong sense of community and shared purpose are much more effective. The lively and civil comments section here speak more to our esprit de corps than the names we use. After all, civil society isn't poisoned when we use peoples' preferred nicknames or abbreviated names in the real world. Addressing people by what they prefer to be known as is one of the examples of civil engagement. But if we are going to ask for real names only, what would be the recommended style guide -- could someone named Douglas Bartholomew Surname go by Doug Surname or even Bart Surname, or would he be pressed to post as Douglas Surname? Any call to use real names be only half the fight, anyway; shouldn't we also ask for full-color, full-size close-up portraits from commenters? As long as the Sacramento Press publishes on the web, it ought to reflect the way people assemble their identity on the web. I've used my real name here in deference to the popular style, but that naturally disconnects this "Ryan Sharpe" from the myriad forum posts, blog entries, and comments I've made as "rgsharpe" or "sharper." Press readers and contributors looking to get a better feel for who I am are going to be sorely disappointed when it looks like I haven't contributed anything else anywhere else. I hate to say it, but the Press as yet feels like an outpost mainly for press releases, opinion pieces, and non-primary reporting. As long as that's the case, there's little reason to expect real names. Besides, if false names were good enough for Hamilton and Clemens...

Ryan Sharpe on "City (Finally) Gets Tough on Bin Scavengers"

2009-03-04T22:31:23Z

Steven, should we assume you're no longer the official spokesman for one of the council members that voted for this proposal, since -- in the interest of transparency -- you didn't include a disclaimer identifying you as such?

Ryan Sharpe on "The revolution will not be motorized!"

2009-03-04T18:28:33Z

I'm glad I ran into you at the Mass, too; I wouldn't have written the article if you hadn't suggested it!

Ryan Sharpe on "Road blocks in Downtown"

2009-02-25T18:29:31Z

Having lived on H Street at 25th before and after the no-entry installation at 26th, I can safely tell you that it was a much nicer area once the daily commuters were removed. If your route into the central city absolutely requires you to use the northern midtown residential streets rather than major corridors, consider bicycling or using RT's 34 bus; both are allowed through such obstructions. As for the "sudden onset do not enter" you describe, the city seems to be working on that: H Street eastbound from 16th has signs warning that through traffic should use J, then points you down 19th to get to it.

Ryan Sharpe on "IS IT JUST ME, or are the automotive fuel companies screwing us?"

2009-02-18T18:29:12Z

"Did you ever hear of them lowering the price when the price of oil goes down? No." There might well be a gas price conspiracy, as you contend, but you're not exactly laying out the argument. As you say, the day-to-day price of oil isn't tied to the day-to-day price of gasoline, in part because supplies of each aren't used up at identical rates. Looking at longer trends, gas prices do mirror oil prices. When oil prices dropped from $140 to $40 a barrel over the last year, gas prices likewise fell -- from $4.50 to $1.75 or so.

Ryan Sharpe on "City to Eliminate Design Commission"

2009-02-12T22:53:07Z

I for one didn't know that if you planted some 2x4s in that fertile Natomas farmland, added some water, and waited a few months, you'd have a beautiful row of $400,000 (erm, $300,000 (sorry, $250,000 (I mean, $190,000)) houses.

Ryan Sharpe on "City to Eliminate Design Commission"

2009-02-12T20:28:02Z

How convenient; this meeting will only be off the ground before the Alkali Flat/Mansion Flat Neighborhood Association meeting, previously reported at http://sacramentopress.com/headline/3245/Alkali_FlatMansion_Flat_community_meeting I hope the city's non-Flatters make up for my lack of attendance.

Ryan Sharpe on "Bike Safety Night During Bikeramento Week"

2009-02-12T04:42:29Z

To be fair, Senator Ensign is partially right: now is not the time to just build bike paths -- after all, bike lanes as currently implemented are just state mandates to expose yourself to an opened car door. Where he's really wrong: now is the time to entirely rethink our transportation infrastructure and try to overcome the failures of the automobile culture.

Ryan Sharpe on "Flying over the Grid"

2009-02-10T17:59:28Z

I miss the Darth Vader building's observation deck for the reasons you've shown above. It's always neat to be reminded that central Sacramento looks like a sea of trees with little islands of buildings from the air.

Ryan Sharpe on "AT&T"

2009-02-06T17:44:41Z

Bob Shallit covered this a couple of weeks ago: http://www.sacbee.com/shallit/story/1556985.html Apparently, we should be getting captions added to the pictures soon enough, so we won't have to rely on the captions written on the original photos.

Ryan Sharpe on "The Sacramento...Who?"

2009-02-04T21:35:03Z

Having a popular, good-natured franchise player doesn't hurt, but I think the big thing is giving enough time for fans to get used to perennial defeats. Arco was packed day in and day out right up until Kings stopped winning playoff games. We have a thing for lovable losers and perpetual underdogs (see also: Cubs, Chicago), but once you've succeeded, failure is unacceptable. I've heard that since their World Series victories, the Boston Red Sox's fans don't take defeat well. If you and beerzie are any indication, though, I should have started my list with number three.

Ryan Sharpe on "Any advice for Mayor Johnson?"

2009-02-04T18:47:51Z

"KJ 's political machine ( and it is a fine machine , that all involved should be proud of)" I disagree. Considering mayor Johnson's public image still needs remediation after the character assassinations of the campaign, the last thing he needs is to be seen as power-hungry or corrupt. There, his political advisors are doing him a terrible disservice. While he did manage to get elected easily, I don't think his team gave enough credit for that victory to the sheer depth of the public discontent with Heather Fargo (heck, that's half of why you and I thought we had a chance at the seat, Shawn). Judging by their handling of the volunteer staffing issues (particularly the unresolved conflicts of interest) and the botched strong-mayor push, they're operating as if they have a much stronger mandate than they do. It certainly doesn't help them at all to have volunteer spokesman Steven Maviglio getting roasted here, in the comments sections of the Bee and Press, and on my low-volume blog, for repeating talking points and ducking out when substantive questions are asked. Nor does it help to trot volunteer attorney Tom Hiltachk before the city council only to accuse city attorney Eileen Teichert of bias after she gave a very clear and very dry PowerPoint presentation that compared the Johnson strong mayor initiative to fourteen city charters. He did excoriate the council for its lack of action on charter review over the last few years, but he wasn't able to address what should have been obvious flaws in the proposal like the lack of documented legislative intent or consideration of residual powers, and he certainly wasn't able to counter accusations heard often at the meeting that we need to identify the problems in the city government before we start trying to change it. Frankly, his team is either made up of incompetent tone-deaf politicos or they've pulled off a Machiavellian maneuver to push the need for a strong mayor into the public consciousness. If the latter, they've spent $131,000 to do so and merely succeeded in getting the council to warm to the idea of changing the charter, which is almost certainly going to include mayoral term limits, giving Johnson far less time as he'd like with the special powers. Also, after Hiltachk's presentation, I figured out Maviglio's 74,000 number: this is the 37,000 signatures for the strong mayor proposal and the 37,000 signatures for the companion initiative.

Ryan Sharpe on "Let's be bike savvy"

2009-02-04T17:54:54Z

Bicycle advocacy groups exist; it isn't a bad idea to look into joining local groups like SABA or FABA that specifically lobby local governments to improve conditions for cyclists. Though midtown seems to have exploded with bicyclists in the last couple of years, it doesn't seem that drivers have adapted to the new traffic mix. Specialized traffic controls like dedicated bike lanes are going to help, but the biggest thing is just to be visible and assertive -- drivers that are aware of you are drivers that will only hit you intentionally. Ring your bell, yell, or blow your horn often in traffic, especially so when overtaking a car or the driver's on the phone. Participate in group rides (Critical Mass is an example, leaving from Fremont Park the last Friday of each month at 6:00 PM) or at least with a buddy whenever you can. Make sure you and your bike are well lit and easily visible, day or night. Ride in the middle of a traffic lane whenever possible; you'll be directly in a driver's line of sight, and the California Vehicle Code says bicyclists are required to ride as close to the roadside edge as possible, except when a lane's not wide enough for a bicyclist and car to safely share it or it's unsafe for the bicyclist to do so. 15th, 16th, and J Streets are textbook cases for "taking a lane" -- an open door on a parked car is a definite safety hazard to avoid, and the left- and right-most lanes aren't wide enough for a car and bicycle to share. With all this said, try not to be a jerk when riding; drivers are probably going to resent or hate bicyclists no matter what, but you don't need to give them reason to do so. Personally, I've also noticed that drivers seem to drive a lot closer to me when I'm wearing a helmet, so I've taken to riding lidless, though I'm not sure how that cost/benefit works out. I also try to ride just a hair unpredictably, to keep drivers on their guard but not frustrated enough to do something rash.

Ryan Sharpe on "The Sacramento...Who?"

2009-02-04T17:17:10Z

Off the top of my head, I'd say that the fact that tickets are even available and that Arco is not overflowing nightly probably has three causes: 1) The economy. It's not as easy to pack a stadium when people are struggling to keep their lights on. 2) The Kings' recent success. Once fans have had a taste of victory, they start expecting it. It takes many losing seasons before a team gets back into that beloved "sad-sack" territory. 3) The Maloofs. Their public profile seems to have been built around disrespect for Sacramento and Sacramentans.

Ryan Sharpe on "Any advice for Mayor Johnson?"

2009-02-02T23:03:34Z

Steven, tell us why a public commission with politicians and special interests is inherently worse than four or five anonymous people. Sacramento probably does need a strong mayor system, but we voters need to know that we're not being thrust back into the bad old days of machine politics and strong-arm political bosses. An open commission, as was used in San Diego, would let citizens participate in (as opposed to just approve or disapprove of) the city structure. It would also help identify exactly the areas in which the current system is lacking and make sure any reasonable idea is considered to fix those flaws. The basic question is this: how, as a citizen and voter, will I be sure that the people who drafted the charter amendment have the city's interests at stake? How will I be sure that the flaws they've identified are the true problems in the city's political structure? How will I be sure that they've considered all possible solutions? How will I be sure that the solutions they've decided to include are the best ones? Simple reassurances aren't going to cut it, and repeating those empty reassurances hurts more than it helps. If you can honestly address those questions, nine-tenths of the promotional work for the strong mayor campaign will already be done.

Ryan Sharpe on "Should Our New Mayor be Granted More Power?"

2009-01-22T20:12:58Z

If only the proposal being pushed to our ballots was as open! I doubt I'll have a chance in the next week or so to read the 85 page Final Report from San Diego's charter review committee, let alone all of the minutes of the review process meetings over the last year, but the sheer volume of available information from SD's process alone only highlights how opaque the Sacramento initiative is.

Ryan Sharpe on "Should Our New Mayor be Granted More Power?"

2009-01-21T17:17:22Z

The studies I've seen are all in academic journals and aren't available to the public. The Sac County League of Women Voters put out a strong mayor fact sheet for the 2002 full-time mayor election (http://www.lwvsacramento.org/education/Mayor_study/mayorstudy.html), but that's certainly not deep enough. San Diego established a city council committee to examine and consider its strong mayor system; a sample of its work is at http://www.sandiego.gov/charterreview/pdf/070906ismreport.pdf. Presumably the organization that drafted the current proposal undertook at least an informal study of strong mayor systems. If so, that study wasn't transparent, though. We don't know who participated (other than Hiltachk, mentioned above), what ideas were considered, or what criteria were used to rate those ideas. That opaqueness makes the charter amendment look about as corrupt as a city office could ever be, and seems to be driving the pushback as much as anything.

Ryan Sharpe on "Should Our New Mayor be Granted More Power?"

2009-01-20T21:42:11Z

There don't have to be any grounds other than sufficient dissatisfaction to get a recall petition on the ballot. Legislatures have to prove malfeasance in office to impeach someone, but voters get to recall just about anyone on a majority whim. Consult http://www.sos.ca.gov/elections/recall.pdf for more. Obviously, a recall is an idea that will go nowhere, but it's certainly would make for an exciting election, with simultaneous referendums on a strong mayor system and the guy who wants that power.

Ryan Sharpe on "Should Our New Mayor be Granted More Power?"

2009-01-20T18:01:58Z

Not to mention that a central, though largely unspoken, tenet of American democracy is that most substantive changes to a political office occur after the next election of that office, to cut down on the ability of an office-holder to make a blatant grab for power. Congress can vote to give its members a raise, for example, but they have to be re-elected to earn those raises. A strong mayor might well be what Sacramento needs, but the voters should get to decide who that strong mayor is, rather than just using the guy we elected because we were universally unhappy with his predecessor. Doubly unfortunate: because this proposal came from a rushed nonpublic process, there was no opportunity to consider other possible amendments to the city charter. We could have made the city's high offices elected positions (thereby making the city manager, clerk, and attorney accountable to voters). We could have enacted term limits for our mayor and quite long-serving city councilmembers. We could have taken San Diego's lead and enacted a "trial period" for our strong mayor system.

Ryan Sharpe on "A stronger mayor for a stronger Sacramento?"

2009-01-10T05:39:20Z

The proposal seems nice overall, but man does it smell bad to have a city charter amendment drafted by a personal coterie and pushed without public input after only a month in office, especially since it will take effect pretty much immediately. Even state and federal legislators give themselves raises that take effect after they're re-elected to avoid getting called out for shenanigans. I don't think I can in good conscience support it as is. Give me the opportunity to vote for a strong mayor charter amendment and then for that first strong mayor, and you've got a deal. Give me the opportunity to vote for something that looks and smells like a power grab, noble though it is, and I'll walk away.