Readers keep calling and writing to tell me about things they know are going wrong in Berkeley, as if I could do something about it. I wish.
They hope that I still command the services of crack reporters who will dig deep into stories of evil intent and actual wrongdoing, and that when the news is out the people will put a stop to it, whatever it might be. Again, I wish.
I originally became a journalist because I thought that if you told people the truth, the truth would make them free. This came after a period of working in politics, managing campaigns and marching for causes. We were telling the truth there, too, but seldom was anyone paying attention, though we had our successes as well as a lot of failures.
So I shifted to journalism and adopted a new slogan: let people know what’s coming down before it lands on them. The idea was that even if you couldn’t persuade, you could at least warn, and then folks would be on their own to take the appropriate action. That strategy also produced some good results, but not as many as you might have thought it would.
It turns out that almost nobody wants to hear the bad news. Readers are happy to learn that a new and better pizzeria has opened in their neighborhood, but they don’t want to hear that the one that’s already there has gone under in the recession. And many aspire to be journalists, but competent reporters who can produce consistent results without dissolving into hissy fits when they miss a story are rare.
Now we can no longer pay reporters of any sort. I myself am too old, or maybe just too tired, to do the kind of big investigative pieces I did in my youth, with or without being paid. And yet, with no reporters, competent or otherwise, at my beck and call, I continue to be deluged with plausible-sounding tips from the still-numerous Planet audience. What should I do with them?
Here’s an experiment. I’m going to outline three might-be-true stories which are now circulating in the local gossip mill, and offer them to anyone who wants to pick them up and confirm or disprove the rumors. I would be happy if someone produced a story about any of these for another publication, and would also be happy to publish any results that seemed correct on this site.
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