In praise of Mark Gold
Posted on | September 3, 2010 | 9 Comments
Few of us come so near greatness as to be crushed by a defeat. This week, after 22 years with Heal the Bay, the man synonymous in Los Angeles with the health of our ocean and beaches was crushed. Moreover, he was flattened while the nation was watching. Until the wee hours of August 31st, it seemed as if Mark Gold, president of Heal the Bay, had led California, and hence the country, in a ban of the single-use plastic bags handed out in stores. Then the state senate rejected the ban, 21-14.
On the morning of September 1st, as news organizations reported how plastics industry lobbyists stopped the first bag ban in the nation, Gold’s blog “Spouting Off” was surprisingly empty. Over at Heal the Bay, the Action Alert asking Californians to call their senators to support AB 1998 still sat on the website.
Where was Mark? Aside from taking calls from reporters such as Steve Lopez, he was penning what eventually did come up on Spouting Off, “State Senate: Industry Bagmen,” a response whose coolest moment may have been the suggestion that we send Senators Aanestad, Ashburn, Calderon, Codgill, Correa, Denham, Ducheny, Dutton, Emerson, Florez, Harman, Hollingsworth, Huff, Negrete McLeod, Price, Romero, Runner, Walters, Wolk, Wright and Wyland our plastic bags.
Click here to keep reading
Sherman’s “little friend”
Posted on | September 2, 2010 | 3 Comments
When Las Vegas Review-Journal publisher Sherman Frederick assured his own readers yesterday that anyone who posts an article from his newspaper without securing copyright permission “will meet my little friend called Righthaven,” he sounded like a thug, which he clearly intended and enjoyed, but mostly he came off like the kind of fool that has so successfully reduced Las Vegas to one of the most depressed and depressing places in America.
Frederick argued that by using Righthaven, a company suing an ever-expanding array of non-profits, internet bulletin boards and even a local PR firm for unpermitted reproduction of R-J content, he is saving newspapers in an age of rampant internet pilfering.
With saviors like that, who needs a wrecking ball? As held earlier on this site, what Frederick really is doing is rendering R-J content worthless. For a perfect example of how, turn to the paper’s arch rival, the Las Vegas Sun, which yesterday reported that on Tuesday Righthaven “sued Kirvin Doak Communications, a longtime source of news and advertising revenue for the Review-Journal.”
According to the Sun, Frederick is suing Kirvin Doak Communications for reprinting a story made possible in part by information supplied by the PR.
The hot content involved a Celine Dion concert. Frederick’s litigiousness might be funny if it only punished promoters of ear-splitting singers, however, almost from the start of the suing spree, it has corrupted every corner of his newsroom. Last spring, for example, when Righthaven filed suit against the Progressive Leadership Alliance of Nevada for posting articles on its internet bulletin board, in one fell swoop Frederick discredited all the R-J reporting on the desert city’s water policy.
Why? PLAN represents the conservation community of Southern Nevada. You can’t contact an organization for comment, then sue it for posting the article containing its own comment, then expect its members or allies to talk to your reporter again, or for anyone to trust what you print. You can, however, politely contact the organization and ask them not to post the entire article on their web site, but to link to your website and keep it civil while retaining public trust. As it is, Frederick has done nothing but add fuel to the idea that he is using his newspaper to destroy the conservation movement.
No observer is more delighted by Frederick’s war on his reporters’ own sources than the Las Vegas Sun, which has been doing a dandy job reporting Frederick’s march to the sea through his own newsroom. This being Las Vegas, however, even this grudge match is gamed. A joint operating agreement means that the libertarian R-J and the solidly Democratic-leaning Sun are distributed bound-up together. You can’t get one without the other.
None of this bodes well for newspapers or a profoundly depressed Las Vegas. Soon the only thing selling in Southern Nevada may be moving vans. Note to U-Haul: Whatever you do, don’t post any R-J stories mentioning the rate of people fleeing.
*Hat tip to ABM for alerting me to Frederick’s post. This post has been updated. The headline has been changed.
Let them eat plastic
Posted on | September 1, 2010 | No Comments
It only looks like a jelly fish. A sea turtle eats a plastic bag. Source: Heal the Bay. Click on the image to be taken to Heal the Bay.
A “closely watched, first-in-the-nation ban on plastic grocery bags was defeated Tuesday night,” reports the Los Angeles Times. “That measure, AB 1998, passed the Assembly in June and had the support of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, but faced a withering and well-financed advertising and lobbying campaign from the plastic bag manufacturing industry.” To keep reading, click here or, for the AP account, here. “Opposition arguments last night were straight out of Lewis Carroll,” writes a disgusted Heal the Bay president and bill co-sponsor Mark Gold in Spouting Off. To read in the Sacramento Bee how the American Chemistry Council, whose members include Exxon, Dow and plastic bag manufacturers, “unleashed a flurry of fresh donations to politicians and assembled teams of high-powered lobbyists” in advance of the vote, click here. LAist has a full report, including the defiant reaction of the bill’s sponsor, Assemblywoman Julia Brownley: “This is an environmental movement that won’t be stopped, even by big-money interests like the American Chemistry Council.”
For more information about the persistence beyond the check-out stand of single-use plastic bags, click here for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Marine Debris Program.
This post has been updated. The quote from Mark Gold’s “We will win the War” in Spouting Off was added at 5.03pm.
Maps help
Posted on | August 31, 2010 | No Comments
Ever wonder how relief workers know where to go when a region’s infrastructure is washed away and millions of refugees are stranded over vast distances? Dutch hydrologist Michael van der Valk sent this link from Hydrology.nl to Mapping Pakistan’s Floods. To see how international agencies are working together to track the water that has now impacted almost 20 million people, click here. To enlarge the UN map above, double click on the image. Thanks to Michael Campana of WaterWired for linking to Feriha Peracha’s heart-breaking account from the Swat Valley, and for in addition to Red Cross further offering this new link to aid organizations at work in Pakistan. From Michael: “Don’t look down on anyone unless you are helping them up.” — Pakistani proverb
September fully loaded
Posted on | August 30, 2010 | No Comments
Summer heat is late and fiery days are surely ahead in Southern California, so planting season is still months away. However, the number of courses aimed at helping homeowners and facilities managers convert from lawn to less wasteful landscapes ramps up in September. Book now to attend the Pacific Horticulture Society’s “Gardening under Mediterranean Skies” symposium from September 23-26 in Arcadia or click here for a full calendar of region-wide events. If you have an event to include, please send details to emily.green [@] mac.com.
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