The recent sale of San Diego's Union-Tribune to the Beverley Hills based private equity firm Platinum Equity has left many in the area wondering what the future will bring. Will the paper, which has seen several rounds downsizing of its news staff in recent years, be even less of a source for local news as its new owners seek to shore up their investment? The answers to their questions will play out over the next year as Platinum partner Black Press, Ltd. takes a hand in shaping the publication once the sale is completed later this year.
Although it may seem serendipitous with its timing, San Diegans woke up Monday morning with yet another source for news. The San Diego News Network (SDNN.com) launched a beta version this week, with a staff of over fifty reporters, correspondents and editors and twenty eight "partnering" media organizations. Whether this new media outlet can command enough readership or provide real in-depth local coverage remains to be seen.
Beverley Hills based private equity firm Platinum Equity has reached an agreement to purchase San Diego's daily newspaper, the San Diego Union-Tribune for an estimated $15 million dollars. The paper, once the flagship of the far-flung and politically conservative Copley media empire, has been a distressed property in recent years. Last summer the heirs to the Copley fortune decided to cut their losses and put the paper on the market.
In your news roundup, San Diego women's prison Las Colinas will close by order of a grand jury which found the overcrowding to have reached "barely humane" levels, whatever that means.
Pre-trial hearings began today for Lt. Col. Jeffrey Chessani, the commanding officer of the Marines involved in the Haditha killings. On the menu: violation of an order and dereliction of duty. Contrary to what I'm sure many on the Right wish was popular opinion, nobody wins in this.
And finally, our good friend Ruben Navarrette has a perplexing analysis of low-skill jobs and immigration. He spends the first half of his op-ed establishing that Americans don't want low wage jobs, and that they indeed look down on such jobs. Then he dives right into the notion that maybe low-skilled workers would be better off if they got more skills. Huh? Didn't you just tell us that the problem was that America's home-grown workforce was overskilled? So your conclusion is, people need more skills? He falls into the classic trap of "they're stealing our jobs" blowhards while seemingly trying to refute it. Nobody actually knows of large numbers of people who can't get jobs because of immigrants, they just hear tell of them. Yet they must be real, and I guess they need to call Lincoln Tech.
15 years after their last sighting, X-Clan is putting weak MCs on notice. Now dance to the rhythm of the evolved drum. X-Clan - Weapon X.
"You can be a strange fruit and be straight innocent."
A couple of one offs because I'm just not feeling particularly brilliant tonight.
Chris Reed, shockingly, is still stupid. The only way to react to growing traffic is to build more roads. Not create new transportation mechanisms. Not to reconsider growth patterns. Nope. Build roads. He likens this to taking medicine even if a condition is chronic. I liken it to eating candy after being diagnosed with diabetes. Hell, it makes you feel good and it's easier right?
A judge ruled today that California can start shipping inmates out of state again. Clearly, this will solve the problem. This is why, when I get an assignment at work that I don't like, I just stuff it in a drawer.
Incredibly, even that is too much effort for some on the radical left who refuse to acknowledge that these people broke the law and need to make restitution, and that step one is acknowledging the wrongdoing. For many Americans, though, this is all they want -- some humility and remorse by those who wiped their feet on our laws on their way in the door and then demanded rights once inside.
Presumably, those asshole slaves that kept escaping should have had to apologize for breaking the law before the 13th Amendment as well.
Thousands of Iraqis are being held in detention camps off the record.. Get angry with stop action. Metric - Succexy.
In an editorial today, The San Diego Union Tribune takes issue with John Edwards for being willing to consider an "excess-profits, excess-income tax." The editorial complains of Edwards "hawking class warfare" and complains that a rich person has no business being concerned about class issues. In closing, it does us all the service of "call[ing] this toxic idea by its proper name. It's a tax on performance. It's a way to punish the high-achievers in our economy in the hopes that we might be able to discourage them from trying so hard and achieving so much."
I'll refute this nonsense on the flip, but first the kicker:
The good news is that at least one of Edwards' competitors, New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, had the good sense to shoot down the idea, promote himself as a taxpayer, and chide Democrats for proposing taxes as the solution to every societal problem - and non-problem.
