The last few weeks presented a perfect example of why you should read your hometown newspaper. During most of my military career, my hometown newspaper was the Stars and Stripes because I was overseas. When I lived in Salinas, it was the Californian and now it's the Hollister Free Lance.
I was reading the Free Lance long before I wrote my first letter to the editor. Those letters eventually led to my writing a column. More than a few of you probably wish I'd never started, but one cannot alter history.
There have been monumental changes in the newspaper business over the last 50 years. From 1950 to 2005, the national total of daily morning and evening newspapers declined 18 percent while the number of Sunday papers increased 66 percent. Then there was this Internet thing. With direct electronic distribution you can feel as if you are sitting right in Washington, D.C. - now that's depressing.
Having a high-speed electronic portal does not mean that you're going to get the story right. Getting it wrong was what happened in the recent page one report by the San Jose Mercury News on the proposal by Solargen, Inc., to put a large solar powered electrical generation facility in south San Benito County.
If the Merc were the only newspaper you ever read, you'd surmise that the issue was all about "not in my backyard" - NIMBY. It's a good paper, but I had a few laughs reading a letter on the story condemning San Benito's citizens for using extra care before passing judgment on what might be the world's biggest solar farm - or perhaps be the world's biggest solar hype - that is the question, isn't it? Meanwhile, the residents of Santa Clara County are going at it hammer and tongs over a football stadium; are you getting a sense of the priorities?
We have many problems here in the hinterlands, but we are pikers compared to San Jose's problems from seas of red ink to constant troubles with the police department. Many of our residents man the factories that keep Santa Clara humming or work for its public agencies, but they live here because it's more affordable and it can be very nice in a rural or small town way. We may not travel in the fast lane, but we're hardly hicks; hell, I even own a laptop.
That hayseed with an old pickup truck might be able to buy and sell one of the technology hotshots ten times over, not every multi-millionaire drives a Porsche. Down here, we have PhDs who wear old fishing hats. Since this was, and is, an agricultural area we also have our share of poor people, but we seem to have fewer gang or crime problems that the bigger cities.
Go down to Vets Hall and take a look at the names and dates on the memorials and you'll quickly see that the citizens of San Benito County and Hollister, my adopted hometown, have earned the right to question whatever they want.
I often disagree with the decisions of our local political leaders and the opinions some of my fellow citizens, but for the most part questions about this project are not petty. If the editors and readers of the Mercury News want to know what all this is really about, they should subscribe to the Free Lance.
The stories won't be a long as those in the big paper, but we will cover the ground and present all sides of the argument; that's what hometown newspapers are for.
Marty Richman is a Hollister resident. Reach him at cwo4mgr@yahoo.com.
Marty Richman Got a question or a comment? Send us an email.
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