A little story about a story that you didn't read in the Record Searchlight Sunday. California Watch, a nonprofit investigative reporting organization based in Berkeley, covers a wide range of hard-hitting stories with a staff of veteran journalists who've found a market for their work in both small papers like o

There's a moment during the YouTube clip of "Winnebago Man" Jack Rebney's now-infamous meltdown where I suddenly felt a tug of humanity -- like this profane guy was a real person with deep vulnerabilities and the capacity for connecting with other

Interesting and relevant piece in this morning's Wall Street Journal about the success Rolls Royce is enjoying by keeping its factories in expensive countries like England, Germany, Singapore, Norway an

UPDATE: This issue has already been fixed. The computer code has risen up against its oppressors. Some kind of odd glitch right now is causing the points totals for all of our registered users to show up as zero. This does not mean the points are gone. If you're not registered, this won't affec

It's been so bad in Detroit in recent years that it was the one place in America you could always look at if you wanted to feel better about how lousy things are going close to home. The auto makers, teetering at the brink of collapse, took massive federal bailouts. Young people fled the city. In 2008, the Lions became t

Just tagging on to my fellow blogger Marc Beauchamp, who posted this morning about how the Record Searchlight will be produced in the future. Some extra details: As our employees have known for quite a while now, much of the wo

A starting job as a Redding police officer could be worth more than $100,000 a year. How so? Read on. As public agencies continue to wrestle with declining budgets, the scrutiny of their employees' pension programs rises. Which begs the question -- what are those retirements actually worth? What would somebody in

Steve Greenhut, author of a book that harshly criticizes the pay and benefit packages given to public employees in California, this morning told a morning gathering at the Shasta Builders Exchange that as a government worker, "if you just stay on the job through the rest of your career, you'll have a millionaire's pensio

After deleting countless comments calling for mob justice and prison rape, we've decided to stop allowing comments on Redding.com stories that deal with child molestation. It's unusual for us to remove comments from a whole category of stories, but in this case it's a relatively easy decision. Despite whatever mino

Apparently, the squirrels that keep the comment engine running for this this blog are feeling as sick as I am this week, because Ed Marek reports he could not make a response to my post about nuclear power and TANC. Ed's p

The Obama administration now says it will back low-interest loans to help build two nuclear power reactors in Georgia. What does this have to do with TANC, the effort to erect giant power lines across the north state? At t

Thanks to the efforts of Aimee Poe in the online department, we now have a single place to collect and feature the Record Searchlight's watchdog journalism. Aimee set up the page so that it breaks down by topic (Business & Economy, Environment, Local G

I usually don't pay much attention to non-local press releases, but this one caught my eye by mentioning one of my favorite songs in the headline: "George Jones' "He Stopped Loving Her Today" to be featured in Library of Congress historical archives." Ge

Former state Sen. Maurice Johannessen called this morning to talk about my Sunday column and the lost art of compromise and deal-making in Sacramento. Johannessen is one of those people old-fashioned enough to think

Remember Norm Ryan, the disgraced former CEO of Haven Humane Society? A jury convicted him of embezzling from the organization while leading it, and he was sentenced in September, but back out in October and ordered into a "home mo

The most obvious reaction to news that the city's misnamed "privatization committee" disbanded itself is to say, "well, that was a big waste of time." After all, the committee established a pattern of picking up

Last night, after everyone else in the house fell asleep, I wanted to kill about 45 minutes before bed. The TV in the living room is on the blink (OK, it's gone to the great CRT clearing at the end of the path). I'm not sure I need to replace it. I simply dragged a chair in front of the entertainment cen

The conversation about comments on Redding.com continues over in the comments section (where else) following my Sunday column. There are some thoughtful responses, including a few with specific suggestions to imp

UPDATE: A little while ago, reporter Amanda Winters told me there is fresh county-level data from 2007 here. Looks like Tehama's figure's were worse, while Shasta's were about the same and Siskiyou's were improved. Don't know what their methodolog

First, my bias: I thought Ryan Sabalow's package of stories on Sunday was important local journalism. I was proud to see it in our paper. If you haven't read it yet, it's here and

From the Consider the Source department comes this press release, my favorite so far this week: "Doctors now recommend relaxing for at least one hour each day as a part of a healthy and well-balanced lifestyle." The source is no other independent, disinte