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

My cats would be furious if I tried to put anything on them other than my bare hands. Or clean laundry, which one of them loves for some reason. But I digress. The Shasta Animal Welfare Foundation is having its Halloween Pet Parade and Costume Contest tomorro

Thomas Sowell's column for distribution tomorrow leads off with an assault on the Obama administration's "czars". Going back to the drug czars, I've always hated that word. Yes, it appears in our newspaper, particularly in Associated Press stories. Doesn't mean I have to like it. William Safire, a judge of langu

I have no idea what to expect, but I plan to go down to the Redding Tea Party protest at 5 p.m. It's billed as an event to "let the Record Searchlight know how you feel about reporting in the north state." I could either pay some fancy-pants consultant to tell me how people a

We actually fell for the three-year-old's "I think I feel sick" scam on Saturday morning, and stayed home for a boring day of fix-it projects around the house. But on Sunday morning, Kristen and I ignored the whining and loaded up the kayak and a picnic lunch. It was already getting hot in Redding, so it didn't even occu

I was talking to a pretty serious local investor a couple of weeks ago who said he's waiting for another wave of foreclosures -- perhaps a couple thousand of them -- to hit Shasta County. Coming just as the housing market is showing some real signs of recovery, this is a pretty disturbing thought (unless, I suppose, you'

Redding Police Chief Peter Hansen has worn the boss's badge for nine months now. It's hard to think of any new executive in town who's walked into a bigger, more public hurricane. Every bit of Hansen's even temper, experience and leadership ability is being peak-tested. He leads a mostly unionized force that is

Whoever is actually behind the idea of recalling Dick Dickerson and Mary Stegall, I hope they realize a key point about planting yard signs. Which is: You need permission from the owner of the property you intend to deface. Such was not the case with a sign that sprouted over the weekend on the corner of the Reco

I got a call yesterday in the middle of a hectic afternoon. It was Sterling Yeaman, the production director, saying that Marketing Director Michelle Martin Streeby was on her way down with some visitors who would like to meet me. A couple of minutes later, David Brookshaw and his parents walked through the door.

The desperation to settle the question of what's next for newspapers is leading to some downright silliness. Take the latest effort in Illinois, which depends upon the state creating a new type of ownership structure that's a Frankenstein composed of for-profit and non-profit parts. They call it the LC3, or Low-profit Li

Looks like our favorite local celebrity is playing my alma mater at the end of next month. I hope Merle Haggard finds the Performing Arts Center at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo a suitable venue. It's a beautiful concert space, opened in t