https://alamedacountyca.gov/rovresults/252/ -more-

Sometimes it’s hard to find the story under all the information. Before I took up journalism (the first time) I shared the common belief that there’s such a thing as truth, if only you could find it. But when I started writing stories about local events, guided by the likes of Bruce Brugman at the San Francisco Bay Guardian and Sandy Close at Pacific News Service.I realized that we’re constantly surrounded by a swarm of facts, and you have to pick and choose amongst them to end up with a coherent story.

And no story is completely true. Stories are informed by the belief system of the assigning editor and/or the reporter.

Bruce had two main hobby horses when I worked for him. One was “the Manhattanization of San Francisco will ruin the city” and the other was “PG&E is no damn good”. He was vastly derided by the chattering classes who worked for the Chronicle for these ideas, but surprise!, he was spot on, Check out the daily wailing about The City’s doom loop and the huge number of vacant office buildings there for proof..

Sandy used to tell us that California would be a majority-minority state by the year 2000, which seemed fanciful in the 1980s. She was right, and PNS morphed into the important Ethnic Media Services following what she predicted. A good reporter can imagine the future.

Every reporter has a point of view. I use the word “reporter” in the loosest possible sense these days,now that we’ve entered the era of citizen journalism. Especially in a literate city like Berkeley, there’s an abundance of intelligent people who are good writers, who welcome the opportunity to expound on topics that interest them, presenting curated facts as arguments for their beliefs. They are today’s reporters in many small towns and even in more pretentious cities like this one.

As a former high school debater I appreciate a good argument, but I realize you can always argue contrary point(s) of view. A strong belief can distract a reporter from the important story concealed in a flurry of facts.

Today (Monday, October 14, 2024) we have a good illustration of how that happens.

Reporter A discovers that Councilmember B seems to have neglected disclosing family salaries and investments as required by state law, and Reporter A writes an op-ed about it. Ex-Councilmember C, while complaining about a proposal on tomorrow’s Berkeley City Council agenda, neglects to mention that she herself had supported a somewhat similar proposal in 2019, which omission Reporter D exposes in another story. And Citizen Reporters E,F and G are now chiming in to express outrage at various aspects of the situation.

But no one pulled the big story out of these smaller ones. You could call it the OMG effect.

Folks, folks, you’ve uncovered a flock of facts, but the really shocking story is that Mayor X, in the tradition of Berkeley mayors who preceded him, is trying to slide out of office on a giant giveaway to the tech sector and its UC patrons. He wants to exempt a vast collection of Berkeley tech start-ups from paying taxes on business gross receipts relating to government and philanthropic research and development grants.

OMG!

He’s put the item on the “Consent” or “Information” part of the Berkeley City Council Agenda, presumably in the hope that no one will notice. Items on Consent can be passed with no discussion by an increasingly passive council. They just might get away with it.

That’s the story. Parts of it can be found at berkeleydailyplanet.com.

Your job? Put it all together yourself and then tell the council what you think before tomorrow at 6. You can attend in person or online if you want to speak after that at the council meeting. -more-