Randy Dotinga calls Sweetwater board members "victims" for pleading guilty to corruption charges

Voice of San Diego's Randy Dotinga writes in today's Morning Report, "Many of the departed [from the Sweetwater Union High School District board] are victims of the massive South Bay corruption scandal, which ensnared several education officials and contractors."

Victims?  Hardly. 

While it is true that most of the departed board members pled guilty to small offenses, it does not follow that they are "victims". 

It would be more accurate to say that the District Attorney didn't want to expose at trial too many of the antics of public school officials in San Diego County.  The obvious danger of having trials for board members would be that big honchos in the San Diego County education establishment might be exposed in proceedings that were designed to target mostly Mexicans and Democrats in South Bay.

Randy Dotinga seems to be the only person at Voice of San Diego who honestly voices the opinion of the VOSD major donors and executives.  VOSD has been, at least since it got rid of Emily Alpert, a big supporter of the honchos at San Diego County Office of Education and their loyal supporters among school officials around the county.

Randy Dotinga and Doug Porter discuss the coverage/lack of coverage of the death of teacher Sarah Jenkins

Link: VIDEO Channel 10 News story about bullying at Harriet Tubman and the death of teacher Sarah Jenkins (shown with her husband). This news coverage occurred AFTER the debate below on the San Diego Free Press website. I assume that Randy Dotinga disapproves of this "quick hit" coverage. He clearly thinks it's better for the public to be kept out of the loop.

SHOULD THE PUBLIC BE TOLD ABOUT BULLYING OF TEACHERS IN PUBLIC SCHOOLS?

Here's an interesting comment by Voice of San Diego's Randy Dotinga that I found on this San Diego Free Press story about the death of teacher Sarah Jenkins on February 26, 2014 after bullying by administrators at Harriet Tubman school in San Diego.

[Comment by] Randy Dotinga March 15, 2014 at 10:21 pm

A couple things:

1. The Education Week piece isn’t a reported story by a professional journalist. It’s a blog post by a teacher.

[Maura Larkins' comment: The story contains transcribed testimony of a school board meeting, and includes the video of the public meeting. Randy Dotinga is way out of line in dismissing it because it is not the work of a professional journalist. It's a public record, Mr. Dotinga. And what makes you think a teacher can't gather facts? In fact, a teacher starts out with a huge amount of pertinent knowledge that a journalist, no matter how "professional" he might be, is probably lacking when he covers a school story. It seems you don't want the public to obtain information that might stand in opposition to your media outlet, Voice of San Diego. VOSD is very interested in controlling the information received by the public about schools. To be fair, Mr. Porter's outlets, San Diego Free Press and OB Rag, also have an agenda regarding schools. Since Emily Alpert was fired from VOSD, there is not a single "professional" news source in San Diego that is trying to tell the whole truth about schools.]

2. I don’t know if any local journalist will pursue this story. But it’s important to note that a complex story like this raises major questions and challenges for any professional journalist.

[Maura Larkins' note: It's also important to note that a story like this raises major questions about the integrity of media outlets in San Diego.]

Based on what little I’ve read, there are many potential minefields here in terms of privacy, fairness and sensitivity, not to mention avoidance of libel. And then there’s the wider issue of whether there’s a story to be told that’s relevant to the public and sheds light.

[Maura Larkins' response: Do you find it difficult, Randy, to be fair, sensitive, appropriately respectful of privacy and to avoid libel? It shouldn't be terribly hard. Aren't you really making excuses for professional journalists who fail to cover important stories? The teachers for whom you show such contempt don't have to worry about libel because they are certain of the truth, unlike a journalist who arrives at the scene. In other respects, also, teachers are often superior to many professional journalists when it comes to reporting what goes on in schools. You're not sure whether a violation of the Americans With Disabilities Act and the failure to help a public school teacher improve are relevant to the public? Perhaps Voice of San Diego needs more teacher blogs.]

Everyone involved deserves more than a quick-hit, next-day he said/she said news story. Any journalistic examination will take significant time and great care.

[Maura Larkins' comment: A "quick-hit, next-day he said/she said news story" is better than a cover-up, Randy. You make it clear that you think that teachers are less credible than professional journalists when it comes to writing about events that the teachers themselves have witnessed. But you also clearly admit that there are many stories that professional journalists don't cover. Your excuses? Worries about libel, for one thing. Witnesses don't have to worry about libel because they know the truth.

You sure do like to help schools keep their secrets, don't you, Randy?

Voice of San Diego's current education stories don't hold a candle to the teacher blogs on Education Week. Why not? Voice of San Diego does not want to take significant time and great care to tell the truth about schools.]

RESPONSE TO RANDY DOTINGA FROM SAN DIEGO FREE PRESS HONCHO DOUG PORTER

Doug Porter March 16, 2014 at 9:02 am

Readers should know that Randy Dotinga usually comes to our site with snide comments. He often spends his days trashing the SDFP and it’s contributors on Twitter. It must make him feel very manly to be so much better than all us, especially those who dare to–gasp–write poetry and other “cringe inducing” articles here.

In this case because the story involves charter schools–a seemingly sacred subject with his primary source of funding–Randy’s trying to sound like a serious journalism critic.

[Maura Larkins' comment: Hypocrisy alert! I agree with Doug that Randy's employer, Voice of San Diego, censors stories that don't fit in with the agenda of its Jacobs/Woolley/Dammeyer donor trio. But Doug Porter is also guilty of bias in the stories he covers. I don't think it's any accident that the Sarah Jenkins story fits in nicely with Porter's anti-charter agenda. But Doug likes to keep the lid on stories of bullying by teachers and by California Teachers Association.]

Reconsideration about policies towards charters schools is guaranteed plenty of local coverage. This story that might negatively reflect on charters wasn’t covered.

[Maura Larkins' comment: For years I have been writing about bullying by adults in schools. A big part of the problem is the lack of effective teachers evaluations, and follow-through based on objective evaluations. The result is that school politics takes the place of real information.

But Doug Porter doesn't ask for teacher evaluations. He just seems to be using this tragic death to attack charter schools. This same scenario plays out very frequently in regular public schools. Here's a story from last October regarding San Gabriel Valley: Another teacher suicide; students suspended for speaking out about bullied teacher Jennifer Lenihan.

Of course, Doug Porter has the same attitudes as Randy Dotinga. He gets on his high horse regarding this story, but the truth is, he's just like Randy Dotinga: he covers stories that support his own agenda and the agenda of his media outlet.

SHOULD SAN DIEGO FREE PRESS CHANGE ITS NAME? Doug Porter refuses to report brazen injunctions by Judge Judith Hayes violating free speech of a teacher blogger; is it time for a name change for Doug Porter's press?]

HERE'S THE FULL VERSION OF DOUG'S RESPONSE TO RANDY DOTINGA

DOUG PORTER COMMENT

Doug Porter March 16, 2014 at 9:02 am

Readers should know that Randy Dotinga usually comes to our site with snide comments. He often spends his days trashing the SDFP and it’s contributors on Twitter. It must make him feel very manly to be so much better than all us, especially those who dare to–gasp–write poetry and other “cringe inducing” articles here.

In this case because the story involves charter schools–a seemingly sacred subject with his primary source of funding–Randy’s trying to sound like a serious journalism critic.

Reconsideration about policies towards charters schools is guaranteed plenty of local coverage. This story that might negatively reflect on charters wasn’t covered.

The complaints voiced at the at the SDUSD meeting are a five year old problem with the Harriet Tubman School. They were voiced last time the school’s charter was up fopr consideration. The lack of oversight in charter schools and the abusive treatment of instructors is a nationally recognized problem. The school board meeting occurred on Tuesday; apparently the complaints of the students, teachers and parents weren’t even enough of a problem for local news media to follow up on. Or maybe nobody covered the meeting. Or watched the publicly available video of the meeting.

A well recognized educator (http://www.teacherslead.com/Bio.html, http://dianeravitch.net/2014/03/11/anthony-cody-on-march-madness-time-to-stop-teaching-time-for-test-prep/) with a significant track record who contributes via the blog format to EdWeek.org isn’t enough of a “journalist” to merit consideration in Dotinga’s opinion. (That’s probably because he couldn’t think up anything nasty or snarky to say.)

Because of the story in EdWeek, which was based on what was actually said at the school board meeting, there are now “journalists” looking into the situation at Harriet Tubman.

My “baggage” in this situation is that I’m sick and tired of his internet bully persona. This “concern troll” persona on display today is one he uses on occasions where multiple interests are involved. Trust me here, his only real concern with this story is trashing SDFP. I have reached out to him in the past to try and reason with him, but he has ignored my requests.

Readers would be advised to keep Mr Dotinga’s baggage in mind when reading his comments in any forum. I would expect that he’ll be a tad upset when he realizes he’s been banished to troll-land around here and can’t respond to this.

Adios, Randy. You won’t be missed.

San Diego Charter Teachers: Bullying Contributed to Death of Colleague
by Doug Porter
San Diego Free Press
March 14, 2014

School Board meeting not ‘the time or place’ to discuss confidential personnel matter of Teach for America instructor, says Harriet Tubman Principal

I didn’t write the headline for today’s column. It’s a headline at Education Week, a nationally recognized print and digital (edweek.org) publication. With a staff of over 70 and budget of over $13 million annually, it’s hardly the product of some basement blogger. Amazingly, it’s about a story nobody else in the San Diego media seems to have covered.

The EdWeek story is about a meeting of the San Diego Unified School Board on Tuesday, March 11th. The charter for the Harriet Tubman Village Charter School was up for renewal. A group of parents, teachers and students wearing blue bravely stood up before the Trustees and proceeded to raise serious questions about the way the school is operated.

Accusations were made suggesting violations of both the Education Code and State Law by the school’s administration. And the suggestion was made that the bullying tactics and leadership style at Harriet Tubman contributed to the death of Sarah Jenkins, “a young, bright, dedicated, caring first year teacher at Tubman.”

Here’s a portion of the testimony of 8th grade teacher Clarisa Mondejar, as transcribed from a video of the meeting by Anthony Cody:

When administration had concerns about Sarah’s abilities and performance they did not provide support for her or guidance. Instead they piled more and more work on, called her names, and criticized her at every single turn. On October 24th, Sarah wrote an email to the administration informing them that she had a medical condition that made it difficult to meet their excessive demands. She ended the email by begging for positive support, writing “being kind, helpful and specific helps me better myself. But calling me incompetent is not helpful but rude and unprofessional.”

The next day, Sarah was terminated, which I believe is a violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act. Sarah passed away three weeks ago from complications of stress-related seizures. When administrators found out we did not receive support or compassion. Instead we were told to not share this information with students, not with parents, that Sarah was only at our school for two months, and at the end of the day she didn’t make an impact.

The video of the school board meeting lasts for for more than two hours. The 1hr, 54 min mark is where the testimony begins, the ensuing (and angry) school board discussion starts at about the 2 hr 20 min mark.

Here’s Whitney Carpenter, 7th grade teacher:

We apologize that we have not spoken earlier, as we are a staff that exists in fear of bullying, retaliation and losing our jobs.

Back to the Edweek account (empasis mine):

After the teachers spoke, several parents addressed the board as well, including two who voiced support for the principal. The principal spoke defiantly, reciting their test scores and attendance statistics. “I cannot apologize for putting children first because that is what I signed up to do. Today is not for talk about one confidential personnel matter involving a Teach For America teacher. This is not the time or place for it.”

Janelle Ruley, the attorney representing the charter school, took the mic and stated, “As a reminder, the District must consider, must consider, increases in pupil academic achievement as the most important factor for renewal.“

Board members Richard Barrera and Scott Barnett give impassioned speeches after learning that the Trustee’s hands were tied. Their choices were limited to approving the charter renewal or denying it, which would close the school down. None of those giving testimony wanted that to happen. They did direct the district staff to further investigate and report back to them in April. At that point SDUSD’s only option will be to initiate expensive and time consuming legal action to de-certify the school.

I’m sure there is more to this story. My question today is “Why the hell didn’t this episode get any coverage in the local media?” Anybody? Are charter schools really that much of a sacred cow?

[Maura Larkins' comment: Hypocrisy alert! This story fits in nicely with Doug Porter's anti-charter agenda. But Doug likes to keep the lid on stories of bullying by teachers--and by California Teachers Association.]

UPDATE: Chris Bertelli w/ Teach for America has added a comment saying Ms. Jenkins was not a TFA teacher.


COMMENT BY "Teacher" March 15, 2014 at 5:52 pm

The principal merely messed up her speech probably because she had no idea this was coming. There was aTFA teacher at the school that happened to be Mrs. Jenkins best friend. Mrs. Jenkins began to suffer from Gran Mal seizures because of the stress at school. She was terminated in the end of October. She continued to have seizures and stress problems because of the horror she experienced. Her best friend and teacher on staff the TFA teacher began to be a target now and for a few months dealt with it. The day Mrs. Jenkins went into a coma from another Gran Mal seizure, the TFA teacher was extremely targeted and the day after Mrs. Jenkins died, the TFA teacher was terminated. There is way more emails, information, and details that cannot be published online at this point, but believe me, this is a horrible and very true story. Her parents are involved, but not in the public forum for Tuesday Night because as I said before, they do not live her, but are very much involved and informed. There may not even be an obituary, not everyone has one. As for her Facebook page, it is not a memorial page, but merely started as a prayers and information page for her. All positive and dedications, now continues as an information or her celebration of life for family and friends. It has no information about her previous employment because that was such a terror in her life the family did not dare speak of it, the mere mention of the name would effect Mrs. Jenkins very greatly. This terror of bullying and many violations to law, ed code, and the brown act are what the teachers want stopped. The bullying has happened to MANY teachers over the years, but this is the first time they were able to gather together and make a stand against what was going on. Past teachers, the TFA teacher, parents, and teachers stood together that night. Get all of your facts before you start assuming teachers are lying. They have already gone through enough, support them, don’t question if their experiences were real. Local news was at the school yesterday to do interviews.


HERE IS THE EDUCATION WEEK STORY BY ANTHONY CODY

[This story contains transcribed testimony of a school board meeting, and Mr. Cody includes the video of the public meeting.]

San Diego Charter Teachers: Bullying Contributed to Death of Colleague
By Anthony Cody
Teacher Blogs
Education Week
March 14, 2014

At a San Diego school board meeting on Tuesday, March 11, dramatic testimony from teachers and parents uncovered serious questions about the way their charter school has been run. Harriet Tubman Village Charter School is known for high test scores, but the death of a first year teacher has contributed to a sense of deep concern. Maggie Kuhn, founder of the Grey Panthers, once said: "Dare to stand before those you fear and speak your mind, even if your voice shakes." The testimony at this meeting is riveting. And the discussion that follows is disturbing.

I transcribed some of the testimony, which begins roughly at the 1:54:00 mark in this video.

Amy Nimps (?), President of Parent Teacher Council, active on student site council, charter renewal committee, parent of daughters in grade 3 and 6.

We have experienced high turnover of teaching staff, particularly in the 6th grade classroom, which affects me directly as I have a daughter (in 6th grade). The most recent turnover was just just two weeks ago, with only 65 days left before the end of the school year. This turnover affects my daughter's ability to realize her true potential. She has lost a role model and a teacher she was very connected with. This turnover is affecting the integrity of the charter, the morale of the staff in general and the effectiveness of the teachers who teach our students. Such pressure and stress cannot be a benefit to the remaining teaching staff, or to their ability to give their best to our students. I attempted to contact our Board of Governance to express my concerns, and I was met with resistance, lack of concern, and unapologetic apathy.

I am of the opinion that our Board of Governance has lost its ability to be objective and to act in the best interests of our school. The teaching staff at Harriet Tubman is our greatest resource and they must be supported and encouraged to thrive without fear of retribution. When we first came to Harriet Tubman we were an extended family of students, teachers, parents, community members whose priority was strong instructional programs, a safe and caring environment, and a continual push for academic excellence. Somewhere this year that was lost. Upon approval of our charter I am requesting an immediate investigation of the concerns brought forth so we can again be the village that it takes to raise and educate our children.

Whitney Carpenter, 7th grade teacher:

I represent the teachers at Harriet Tubman Village Charter. On behalf of all the teachers at Tubman, we love our students and our school. We want nothing more than for Tubman to be the best learning environment possible for students and educators. We are here today to ask the Board to approve the renewal of Tubman's charter, but with the added condition of completing an investigation into what we believe are serious violations of the Education Code, the Brown Act, and the school's charter.

We apologize that we have not spoken earlier, as we are a staff that exists in fear of bullying, retaliation and losing our jobs.

We have concerns regarding the protection of our students, the success of our school and the integrity of the charter. Our charter requires us to follow the credentialing requirements of the Education Code. Several teachers this year and last year taught without proper credentials in the subjects they were teaching. In fact, this is the case for two teachers at the moment. One teacher, when initially stating she was not qualified to teach a subject, and felt uncomfortable teaching the subject, was told she could do it, she was capable, and to do it "until we get caught, and then we have a year to fix it." We also have questions regarding whether one of our administrators actually holds an admin credential, as there is no record of it with the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing.

Our administrator has violated the Brown Act by coercing several of my colleagues and me to not attend public governance board meetings. Board meetings, such as this month's, have been canceled by administration without notice or approval by the governance board.

Our charter has been violated as our administration has prevented Board members from monitoring and approving the compensation of staff, by both hiring and firing staff without proper board approval. When learning of a recent teacher's firing, a Board member actually had thought the teacher had quit, and was surprised to learn she had actually been fired. We urge you to please approve our charter but under the condition of a full investigation into these claims and more.

Clarisa Mondejar, 8th grade teacher.

In reviewing our charter we noticed a major change from the 2009 version to the current version. In 2009, a clause stating that the principal must hold the trait of compassion was included. This clause is no longer included, and I wish I could say why. But as far as we know, no teacher was involved in creating the charter. We wonder if the removal was in response to the 2011 continuing remedy period that was placed on our charter for a large number of violations. Three specific clauses were directly tied to the mistreatment of staff and teachers, but this bullying has not stopped since 2011.

I want to tell you the story of Sarah Jenkins. Sarah was a young, bright, dedicated, caring first year teacher at Tubman. When administration had concerns about Sarah's abilities and performance they did not provide support for her or guidance. Instead they piled more and more work on, called her names, and criticized her at every single turn. On October 24th, Sarah wrote an email to the administration informing them that she had a medical condition that made it difficult to meet their excessive demands. She ended the email by begging for positive support, writing "being kind, helpful and specific helps me better myself. But calling me incompetent is not helpful but rude and unprofessional." The next day, Sarah was terminated, which I believe is a violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act. Sarah passed away three weeks ago from complications of stress-related seizures. When administrators found out we did not receive support or compassion. Instead we were told to not share this information with students, not with parents, that Sarah was only at our school for two months, and at the end of the day she didn't make an impact.

In 2011, our administrator had to prove that formalized systems were in place for teachers to complain about retaliation and bullying. Also a formalized system needed to be established where employee complaints could be processed. And lastly, an internalized commitment showing that teachers have an effective process to address concerns with mismanagement needed to be installed. Our union grievance procedures give us the opportunity to address issues that arise from violations of our contract, but do not cover unprofessional and unethical behaviors by administrators outside the framework of the contract. Given the mismanagement of the governance board and the continued unilateral decision-making, no such systems exist. In order to complain about the bully we have to speak to the bully.

In 2011 accusations were strong enough so that a clause was created that stated there needed to be evidence that successful resolution of complaints involving retaliation and general mismanagement were documented. This evidence, including a formalized complaint system, and an effective internalized process addressing these internal mismanagement issues are still missing from our school. I'd like to think that had they been in place, and effective, Sarah would still be here with us. Please, for the sake of all of our teachers, and more importantly, our students, approve Tubman's charter with the condition of investigating these claims and more.

Rachel Varga, 4th grade teacher.

I am one of just three teachers who remain as teachers at Tubman since the last time the charter was up for renewal. The teacher turnover rate has consistently been around 50% since our principal arrived. This year, for example, just eight of our 18 teachers were here at the end of last school year. Some of our 6th grade students have experienced four separate teachers this year. This is obviously a detriment to our students given the number of lost instructional days, and a lack of consistency for the kids. In total, we have lost nine teachers out of 18 positions since last June, and we still have three months to go in the school year. The ability to hire and retain high quality teachers is a core function at a charter school, and unfortunately, for many reasons, it has been lacking at Tubman.

After the teachers spoke, several parents addressed the board as well, including two who voiced support for the principal. The principal spoke defiantly, reciting their test scores and attendance statistics. "I cannot apologize for putting children first because that is what I signed up to do. Today is not for talk about one confidential personnel matter involving a Teach For America teacher. This is not the time or place for it."

Janelle Ruley, the attorney representing the charter school, took the mic and stated, "As a reminder, the District must consider, must consider, increases in pupil academic achievement as the most important factor for renewal."

The response from the school board begins at about 2:20 on the video. Board members have been told they have very limited options. After some heated discussion, they vote to approve the charter's renewal, with some assurance from staff that a serious investigation has been initiated.

The teachers at this charter school are represented by the San Diego Education Association. The local president, Bill Freeman, also addressed the school board and encouraged them to investigate. In spite of their concerns, the teachers and parents were united in asking the board to renew the charter. But the level and persistence of these issues raises questions about whether there is any effective oversight in place.

[Note: Chris Bertelli, TFA's Communications Director for California, stated via Twitter this afternoon: "just wanted to clarify that Sarah Jenkins was not a TFA teacher." (Mar. 14, 2014)]

This thread got too hot for City Beat to handle--City Beat erased my comment

UPDATE 8 AM MAY 8, 2014

I see that my comment about Irwin Jacobs and the firing of Voice of San Diego education report Emily Alpert is back on the City Beat website.

MAURA LARKINS' UPDATE 6 AM MAY 8, 2014

We seem to have a bit of a problem with journalistic ethics in San Diego. Voice of San Diego is so beholden to its donors that its behavior doesn't surprise me. But City Beat? What's your excuse?

A thread about the Randy Dotinga/Aaryn Belfer/Dagmar/Aloha brouhaha got to hot for City Beat to handle. I posted the following comment around 7 pm last night. Then I noticed it suddenly became hidden, and in its place was a message, "View 1 more." When I woke up this morning, I discovered that the comment has disappeared completely. What exactly is it that upset City Beat so much?

"Maura Larkins · Top Commenter · UCLA

"At the time Emily [Alpert of Voice of San Diego] was fired, her investigation of SDCOE had been stopped in its tracks and VOSD had ended its much vaunted policy of allowing reporters to decide what they would write about.

Can you give a reason for Emily being chosen for layoff? Obviously, there were reasons that VOSD chose Emily, Adrian Florido and Sam Hodgson, but those reasons were unknown at the time.

We have more information now. Do you deny the truth of this statement, "Since then, the VOSD donor trio of Buzz Woolley, Irwin Jacobs and Rod Dammeyer have made clear that they passionately desire to have their money bring about the expansion of arbitrary power for school administrators"?

When we see the enormous passion that these three donors have for bringing about specific changes in schools, it ceases to appear merely a coincidence that VOSD's widely-admired education reporter was terminated."

[If you want to see the context in which this comment appeared, look at the bottom of this post, or go to this page in City Best. Ironically, it comes very shortly after I wrote, "And City Beat is also sometimes a bit too quiet about certain issues." I'd say I was clearly right about that.]

It's lucky I had posted a copy of the comment in my own blog. Otherwise, it would be lost forever--which, I'm sure, is exactly what City Beat--and Voice of San Diego--hoped for. Sorry, you fearless purveyors of truth!

In place of the above comment City Beat has published an extra copy of this comment that I posted this morning:

Maura Larkins · Top Commenter · UCLA

When a pet project of Irwin Jacobs (such as Voice of San Diego) has major financial problems, it's because Irwin Jacobs wants it to have major financial problems.

Irwin Jacobs, net worth $1.9 billion. When a pet project of Irwin Jacobs
(such as Voice of San Diego) has major financial problems, it's because
Irwin Jacobs wants it to have major financial problems.
I'm guessing that the reason VOSD suddenly had a financial crisis
and "laid-off" its widely popular education reporter Emily Alpert
has a lot to do with stories like this one. It should be noted that
Jacobs' fellow SD4GS supporter Rod Dammeyer is also a member of VOSD's
donor trio of Jacobs, Dammeyer and Buzz Woolley.
When the voters of San Diego refused to give up control of the schools
they pay for, SD4GS folded and many of its supporters moved to UPforEd,
which is now a "community partner" of Voice of San Diego.


It looks like Emily Alpert (now Emily Alpert Reyes) was "laid-off"
because she wasn't adequately supporting the agenda of Irwin Jacobs
and other donors. The donor trio didn't hurt Emily; she now has a
better job at the Los Angeles Times. It's the students of San Diego
and California that were harmed. Emily was terminated just months
after writing this story about SD4GS,
an organization that sought to get voters to pack the SDUSD school
board with unelected members. It probably didn't help that she
also wrote about me.

I have to agree with Voice of San Diego CEO Scott Lewis' New Years concerns about his own journalistic integrity. See all posts re Scott Lewis. And I think David Rolland might want to ask himself some of the same questions that Scott Lewis has posed.



HERE IS THE ORIGINAL REMARK THAT GOT THIS THREAD STARTED:


Randy Dotinga

Here is the remark that got Randy Dotinga in big trouble: "A feminist who depicts women as bimbos is no feminist." That's an rule? A feminist is not allowed to discuss the sexual behavior of women? But I think Randy was being rhetorical. He was saying he didn't like the way Aaryn Belfer depicted certain women as wiggly and under-dressed. I, too, didn't like it when Aaryn Belfer used the first names of two local reporters in her critique. That was unnecessary and self-indulgent. My first thought upon reading Aaryn Belfer's column on Randy Dotinga:

Let Randy talk. Dammit, let Randy talk. Especially since he's hilarious. I love reading his stuff.

Aaryn Belfer's criticism of Randy for speaking too much in an academic setting bothered me quite a bit. It disturbs me that anyone, anyone at all, should be pressured to be silent in an academic environment when they are trying to make a rational point. I've seen it happen at SDSU. I've seen cliques of women silencing people in two different creative writing classes with two different professors. In one of those classes, the professor was not involved. In the other class, the professor was the leader.

And then journalist Doug Porter of the OB Rag and San Diego Free Press chimed in on behalf of Aaryn, "Thank you for telling The Truth about a mean and horrible person." Really? For defending Aloha and Dagmar he's a mean and horrible person? At least Randy and Aaryn were talking about specific qualities that they saw in the other. Doug was judging the entire person.

Here's my message to Doug:

Wow, Doug. Let him talk. Dammit, Doug, let Randy talk.

And then Doug's defender David Budin went ballistic. David Budin threw out the word "asshole" at Aaryn. If he had just left out that one word, his comment would have been entirely reasonable.

But I'm thinking that was the response Aaryn was trying to elicit. Why else would she have made comments about Randy's weight, among other attempts to demean him? Randy was quite a bit more gentle with Aaryn than Aaryn was with female reporters. Aaryn is free to criticize women in high-profile positions who contribute to the public's view of women. But if she's going to attack them personally, she should expect a little blowback.

Women in television news face a quandary: should they object to pressure from their bosses to dress in a certain way--and risk getting fired? They'd likely be replaced by women who were willing to play the titilate-the-viewers game.

I wish journalists were more devoted to getting the whole truth out in front of the public. But journalists are similar to those women on TV: they have bosses that want to control them. I think both Randy and Aaryn should speak out about more important things--like the stories their bosses aren't covering.


AAARYN BELFER'S MAY 5, 2014 STORY ABOUT RANDY DOTINGA



Nobody puts Baby in a corner
On feminism and who gets to define my brand of it
By Aaryn Belfer
City Beat
May 05, 2014

"Oh, we all know that guy," my friend Heather said to me on the phone. "He's the dude who took a women's-studies course in college and knew it all. He wore a 'Free Tibet' T-shirt and monopolized every conversation."

Heather and I were talking about a non-vagina-having, self-important troll named Randy Dotinga who told me via Twitter that I'm no feminist. This bloviating nitwit, who likes to police me when I criticize other women, apparently suffered apoplectic seizures after reading part of one sentence in my last column. The offending 13 words referencing a pair of local meteorologists and their painted-on clothing had him stomping his feet. It was pretty darned cute.

"A feminist who depicts women as bimbos is no feminist," he fired off, with the back-patting superiority of a third-grade know-it-all.

Of course, I didn't depict any women as bimbos or even use such language. Nor did I "dehumanize women on tv" as he put it, which is impossible since that's totally redundant. Kudos, though, to him for taking up the banner on behalf of the poor, demeaned television ladies among us...



RANDY DOTINGA HUMOROUSLY DEFLECTS THE ATTACK

Here's Randy's mention of the issue in Voice of San Diego's Morning Report (probably the most gracious and humorous response of all):

"Not everyone’s a fan of your Morning Report scribe. That’s the word from a CityBeat columnist who calls me a “dough-faced,” “self-important troll” with “the back-patting superiority of a third-grade know-it-all.” So? What’s your point?



COMMENTS FROM THE CITY BEAT WEBPAGE ON THIS STORY:

Maura Larkins · Top Commenter · UCLA

The issue in the Randy Dotinga/Aaryn Belfer tizzy is whether certain things should be said. I'm glad the issue is being discussed.

Whether or not things should be said. Isn't this the basic question underlying every decision by media outlets, including Randy Dotinga's Voice of San Diego and Aaryn Belfer's City Beat, as to what's going to be published? Sadly, San Diego seems to be a place where media outlets leave too many things unsaid about serious issues, including the one we're looking at here: free speech.

I believe it's better to err on the side of discussing more issues rather than fewer issues. As Matt Taibbi says, the job of a journalist isn't to be nice. It's to tell the truth. What bothers me more than anything said by Randy or Aaryn is the manner in which Randy's employer, Voice of San Diego, seems to write what it's paid to write. Voice of San Diego seems to be developing an increasingly rigid culture that is largely based on the belief that certain people shouldn't be part of the public discourse. (Irony is everywhere in journalism, isn't it?) And City Beat is also sometimes a bit too quiet about certain issues.



Randy Dotinga · Works at Freelance Writer

"Randy's employer, Voice of San Diego, seems to write what it's paid to write." I'm not sure what you mean.



Maura Larkins · Top Commenter · UCLA

At the time Emily Alpert was fired from Voice of San Diego, the reasons were mysterious.

Since then, the VOSD donor trio of Buzz Woolley, Irwin Jacobs and Rod Dammeyer have made clear that they passionately desire to have their money bring about the expansion of arbitrary power for school administrators.

It wouldn't do to have an education reporter who knew her way around the school system and wanted to share her knowledge.

VOSD now produces stories about education that appear to be balanced, but in fact only present the opinions of the very powerful: the moguls, the administration, and the teachers union. There is no voice for those who are interested only in students rather than advancing themselves or their personal agendas. I believe that Emily Alpert would have given those people a voice.


Randy Dotinga · Works at Freelance Writer

Maura Larkins To clarify, Emily was laid off along with 2 other staffers when VOSD had major financial problems. I'm not aware of pressure coming from donors regarding her position. Neither are you.



Maura Larkins · Top Commenter · UCLA

At the time Emily was fired, her investigation of SDCOE had been stopped in its tracks and VOSD had ended its much vaunted policy of allowing reporters to decide what they would write about. Can you give a reason for Emily being chosen for layoff? Obviously, there were reasons that VOSD chose Emily, Adrian Florido and Sam Hodgson, but those reasons were unknown at the time.

We have more information now.

Do you deny the truth of this statement, "Since then, the VOSD donor trio of Buzz Woolley, Irwin Jacobs and Rod Dammeyer have made clear that they passionately desire to have their money bring about the expansion of arbitrary power for school administrators"?

When we see the enormous passion that these three donors have for bringing about specific changes in schools, it ceases to appear merely a coincidence that VOSD's widely-admired education reporter was terminated.

The above comment was erased by City Beat! Unbelievable! It just disappeared. Why?



Perhaps the following message on City Beat's website explains it:

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It appears that City Beat editor David Rolland is trying to become Scott Lewis of Voice of San Diego, which is a very sad thing. My conclusion is that Rolland got pressured to remove my comment by someone who supports Voice of San Diego. Perhaps a donor? Perhaps a very recent donor? Like, maybe, a donor who got generous last night? Or was it merely professional courtesy among journalists--working together to keep the public ignorant?


David Rolland

I do agree with most of Rolland's ballot recommendations.

Here are my responses to Rolland's assessment of the State Superintendent of Education race.

Let Randy Dotinga talk--and let Aaryn Belfer talk

UPDATE MAY 8, 2014 6:33 AM:

This thread got to hot for City Beat to handle! I posted the following comment around 7 pm last night. Then I noticed it suddenly became hidden, and in its place was a message, "View 1 more." When I woke up this morning, I discovered that the comment has disappeared completely. What exactly is it about this comment that City Beat is upset about?

Maura Larkins · Top Commenter · UCLA

At the time Emily was fired, her investigation of SDCOE had been stopped in its tracks and VOSD had ended its much vaunted policy of allowing reporters to decide what they would write about. Can you give a reason for Emily being chosen for layoff? Obviously, there were reasons that VOSD chose Emily, Adrian Florido and Sam Hodgson, but those reasons were unknown at the time. We have more information now. Do you deny the truth of this statement, "Since then, the VOSD donor trio of Buzz Woolley, Irwin Jacobs and Rod Dammeyer have made clear that they passionately desire to have their money bring about the expansion of arbitrary power for school administrators"? When we see the enormous passion that these three donors have for bringing about specific changes in schools, it ceases to appear merely a coincidence that VOSD's widely-admired education reporter was terminated.

[If you want to see the context in which this comment appeared, look at the bottom of this post, or go to this page in City Best. Ironically, it comes very shortly after I wrote, "And City Beat is also sometimes a bit too quiet about certain issues." I'd say I was clearly right about that.]

It's lucky I posted here in my blog a copy of the comment. Otherwise, it would be lost forever--which, I'm sure, is exactly what City Beat hoped for. Sorry, City Beat!

In place of the above comment City Beat has published an extra copy of this comment that I posted this morning:

Maura Larkins · Top Commenter · UCLA

When a pet project of Irwin Jacobs (such as Voice of San Diego) has major financial problems, it's because Irwin Jacobs wants it to have major financial problems.

UPDATED

Here is the remark that got Randy Dotinga in big trouble: "A feminist who depicts women as bimbos is no feminist."

That's a strict rule. A feminist is not allowed to discuss the sexual behavior of women?

But I think Randy was being rhetorical. He was saying he didn't like the way Aaryn Belfer depicted certain women as wiggly and under-dressed. I, too, didn't like it when Aaryn Belfer used the first names of two local reporters in her critique. That was unnecessary and self-indulgent.

My first thought upon reading Aaryn Belfer's column on Randy Dotinga:

Let Randy talk. Dammit, let Randy talk. Especially since he's hilarious. I love reading his stuff.

Aaryn Belfer's criticism of Randy for speaking too much in an academic setting bothered me quite a bit.

It disturbs me that anyone, anyone at all, should be pressured to be silent in an academic environment when they are trying to make a rational point.

I've seen it happen at SDSU. I've seen cliques of women silencing people in two different creative writing classes with two different professors. In one of those classes, the professor was not involved. In the other class, the professor was the leader.

And then journalist Doug Porter of the OB Rag and San Diego Free Press chimed in on behalf of Aaryn, "Thank you for telling The Truth about a mean and horrible person." Really? For defending Aloha and Dagmar he's a mean and horrible person? At least Randy and Aaryn were talking about specific qualities that they saw in the other. Doug was judging the entire person.

Here's my message to Doug:

Wow, Doug.

Let him talk. Dammit, Doug, let Randy talk.

And then Doug's defender David Budin went ballistic. David Budin threw out the word "asshole" at Aaryn. If he had just left out that one word, his comment would have been entirely reasonable.

But I'm thinking that was the response Aaryn was trying to elicit. Why else would she have made comments about Randy's weight, among other attempts to demean him? Randy was quite a bit more gentle with Aaryn than Aaryn was with female reporters. Aaryn is free to criticize women in high-profile positions who contribute to the public's view of women. But if she's going to attack them personally, she should expect a little blowback.

Women in television news face a quandary: should they object to pressure from their bosses to dress in a certain way--and risk getting fired? They'd likely be replaced by women who were willing to play the titilate-the-viewers game.

I wish journalists were more devoted to getting the whole truth out in front of the public. But journalists are similar to those women on TV: they have bosses that want to control them.

I think both Randy and Aaryn should speak out about more important things--like the stories their bosses aren't covering.

COMMENTS ON AARYN BELFER'S STORY FROM CITY BEAT:


David Budin
Works at Writer and musician
Wow -- what an asshole you are. (By the way, being a male feminist does not mean I can't criticize women, or whatever double-negative way you phrased that.) I'm a longtime journalist and editor and I've seen so many amateur writers like you try to score points, and make points, by being what you think is hard-hitting and tough, but is simply vengeful and mean.


Doug Porter
Top Commenter · San Diego City College
Thank you for telling The Truth about a mean and horrible person.


Randy Dotinga
Works at Freelance Writer
So you agree about the appropriateness of dehumanizing and bimbo-izing local women on television, Doug? Do tell!


Megan Koran
University of Wisconsin–Stevens Point
Take your own advice. Get over yourself.


[Maura Larkins' response: How about we let both Randy and Aaryn NOT get over themselves? How about we let them say what they have to say?]

Nobody puts Baby in a corner
On feminism and who gets to define my brand of it
By Aaryn Belfer
City Beat
May 05, 2014

"Oh, we all know that guy," my friend Heather said to me on the phone. "He's the dude who took a women's-studies course in college and knew it all. He wore a 'Free Tibet' T-shirt and monopolized every conversation."

Heather and I were talking about a non-vagina-having, self-important troll named Randy Dotinga who told me via Twitter that I'm no feminist. This bloviating nitwit, who likes to police me when I criticize other women, apparently suffered apoplectic seizures after reading part of one sentence in my last column. The offending 13 words referencing a pair of local meteorologists and their painted-on clothing had him stomping his feet. It was pretty darned cute.

"A feminist who depicts women as bimbos is no feminist," he fired off, with the back-patting superiority of a third-grade know-it-all.

Of course, I didn't depict any women as bimbos or even use such language. Nor did I "dehumanize women on tv" as he put it, which is impossible since that's totally redundant. Kudos, though, to him for taking up the banner on behalf of the poor, demeaned television ladies among us...

Here's Randy's response from Voice of San Diego's Morning Report (probably the most gracious and humorous response of all):

"Not everyone’s a fan of your Morning Report scribe. That’s the word from a CityBeat columnist who calls me a “dough-faced,” “self-important troll” with “the back-patting superiority of a third-grade know-it-all.” So? What’s your point?

The issue in the Randy Dotinga/Aaryn Belfer tizzy is whether certain things should be said. I'm glad the issue is being discussed.

Whether or not things should be said. Isn't this the basic question underlying every decision by media outlets, including Randy Dotinga's Voice of San Diego and Aaryn Belfer's City Beat, as to what's going to be published? Sadly, San Diego seems to be a place where media outlets leave too many things unsaid about serious issues, including the one we're looking at here: free speech.

I believe it's better to err on the side of discussing more issues rather than fewer issues. As Matt Taibbi says, the job of a journalist isn't to be nice. It's to tell the truth. What bothers me more than anything said by Randy or Aaryn is the manner in which Randy's employer, Voice of San Diego, seems to write what it's paid to write. Voice of San Diego seems to be developing an increasingly rigid culture that is largely based on the belief that certain people shouldn't be part of the public discourse. (Irony is everywhere in journalism, isn't it?) And City Beat is also sometimes a bit too quiet about certain issues.

Randy Dotinga · Works at Freelance Writer

"Randy's employer, Voice of San Diego, seems to write what it's paid to write." I'm not sure what you mean.

Maura Larkins · Top Commenter · UCLA

At the time Emily Alpert was fired from Voice of San Diego, the reasons were mysterious.

Since then, the VOSD donor trio of Buzz Woolley, Irwin Jacobs and Rod Dammeyer have made clear that they passionately desire to have their money bring about the expansion of arbitrary power for school administrators. It wouldn't do to have an education reporter who knew her way around the school system and wanted to share her knowledge.

VOSD now produces stories about education that appear to be balanced, but in fact only present the opinions of the very powerful: the moguls, the administration, and the teachers union. There is no voice for those who are interested only in students rather than advancing themselves or their personal agendas. I believe that Emily Alpert would have given those people a voice.

Randy Dotinga · Works at Freelance Writer

Maura Larkins To clarify, Emily was laid off along with 2 other staffers when VOSD had major financial problems. I'm not aware of pressure coming from donors regarding her position. Neither are you.

Maura Larkins · Top Commenter · UCLA

At the time Emily was fired, her investigation of SDCOE had been stopped in its tracks and VOSD had ended its much vaunted policy of allowing reporters to decide what they would write about. Can you give a reason for Emily being chosen for layoff? Obviously, there were reasons that VOSD chose Emily, Adrian Florido and Sam Hodgson, but those reasons were unknown at the time. We have more information now. Do you deny the truth of this statement, "Since then, the VOSD donor trio of Buzz Woolley, Irwin Jacobs and Rod Dammeyer have made clear that they passionately desire to have their money bring about the expansion of arbitrary power for school administrators"? When we see the enormous passion that these three donors have for bringing about specific changes in schools, it ceases to appear merely a coincidence that VOSD's widely-admired education reporter was terminated.

HAS VOICE OF SAN DIEGO SABOTAGED THE DEBATE ON TENURE AND TEACHER EVALUATIONS?

SDUSD trustee Richard Barrera

Updated--see bottom of post

San Diego's liberals seem to be far more obedient to the California Teachers Association than Los Angeles liberals, and students suffer for it. Here's a bit of the history of that subject. Shame on Richard Barrera for abandoning his principles, apparently in exchange for campaign contributions and a cushy job.

THE PROBLEM ISN'T TENURE--IT'S THE LACK OF EFFECTIVE TEACHER EVALUATIONS

I don't object to tenure. I object to the intransigence of the teachers union in the face of calls for education reform.

Getting rid of tenure will do no good at all, and would likely do harm, if teacher evaluations continue to be as worthless as they are now.

WE SHOULD LOOK AT THE PERFORMANCE OF PRINCIPALS BEFORE WE PUT THE ENTIRE SYSTEM IN THEIR HANDS

If we get rid of tenure we'll just have to worry more about the already-existing problem of principals protecting their own careers by making alliances with mediocre but popular and politically-strong teachers. I get the feeling that David Welch, mogul of Student Matters, honestly doesn't know that many principals are former teachers who switched to the front office when they realized that they don't have what it takes to make it in the classroom.

I get the feeling that Voice of San Diego's education reporter Mario Koran doesn't know this, either.

HAS VOICE OF SAN DIEGO SABOTAGED THE DEBATE ON TENURE AND TEACHER EVALUATIONS?


Emily Alpert Reyes

Voice of San Diego muzzled and then fired its education reporter, Emily Alpert (now Reyes), who knew what was going on in schools. The reason for this seems to be related to the politics and big bucks of VOSD's big donor trio Buzz Woolley, Irwin Jacobs and Rod Dammeyer who are deeply involved in charter schools and anti-union politics.


Voice of San Diego founder Buzz Woolley

Just before she was fired, Emily Alpert was one of the few people in San Diego doing serious research on teacher layoffs based on seniority. She dared to bring up the topic of teacher evaluations. If VOSD donor trio Buzz Woolley, Irwin Jacobs and Rod Dammeyer were really interested in improving education for all children they would have fallen all over themselves to keep Emily in San Diego. (Emily now works for the Los Angeles Times, but she's not writing about education.)


Irwin Jacobs, Voice of San Diego's major donor

My belief is that Buzz Woolley, Irwin Jacobs and Rod Dammeyer want to improve education for just enough students so that they can run their businesses with American employees--and they want those students in charter schools. They think they can have a flourishing society while the middle and working classes sink lower and lower.


Rod Dammeyer, charter schools advocate and political donor

Note: Buzz, Irwin and Rod also tried to remake the San Diego Unified School Board with appointed members who would undermine the elected members. They seems to think we'd do better without democracy.

IS THE CALIFORNIA TEACHERS ASSOCIATION TRYING TO SELF-DESTRUCT?

You might think that the teachers union could manage to do a better job of acting in the interest of all citizens than Buzz, Irwin and Rod have done.

Sadly, this does not seem to be the case.

I believe that schools can be fixed without getting rid of tenure (I have described one such plan HERE), but schools can't be fixed as long as the California Teachers Association stands in the way.

Something clearly needs to be done, but Richard Barrera doesn't seem to want to address the problem of rampant mediocrity among teachers. It's actually a bigger problem than the incompetence of about 10% teachers. I wouldn't use evaluations to fire teachers; evaluations are needed to help teachers become highly competent.

Sadly, Barrera will likely continue to toe the line for the people who control the California Teachers Association, so reform is looking unlikely. CTA doesn't want teachers to be held accountable; it wants to continue the politically-convenient system of principal evaluations.

The current system is such a joke that principals rarely even bother to observe teachers.

See all posts re teacher evaluations.

Teachers need to have a union. But why can't it be better than this one? Couldn't it be one without people like Tim O'Neill? (See comment at the end of this post.)


VOICE OF SAN DIEGO STORY ON RICHARD BARRERA'S TESTIMONY AT VERGARA TRIAL

Teachers Call Upon San Diego School Trustee to Help Save Seniority Rules
By: Mario Koran
Voice of San Diego
May 2, 2014

In 2010, when San Diego Unified was in the throes of a budget crisis and staring down a round of layoffs, school board trustee Richard Barrera told U-T San Diego, “Pink-slipping disproportionately affects poorer schools – absolutely.”

Now, that argument is the basis of Vergara v. California, a case that could blow up deeply rooted protections for California teachers. Barrera, who is now the leader of the San Diego Imperial Counties Labor Council, which includes the teachers union, changed his tune when he testified in the case.

Teachers see the policies that force the youngest teachers to bear the brunt of layoffs as the fairest possible, he argued. Replacing it with a system that requires administrators to make value judgments would erode trust as teachers vied for their spots, he said.

Along with attorneys from the state and the California Teachers Association, Barrera pointed to San Diego Unified as proof that a district can succeed because of the current policies – not in spite of it.

The case is the product of Students Matter, a group founded by Silicon Valley business mogul David F. Welch, a group of California students and a heavyweight cast of attorneys. They initiated the suit and claim the teacher protections violate students’ constitutional rights to equal access to quality education.

Voice of San Diego's Scott Lewis acknowledges that he's been playing it a little too safe; Matt Taibbi shows how it's done

Scott Lewis and Matt Taibbi
Matt Taibbi recently published DIVIDE, a book about our two-tiered justice system. He says, “Journalists should be dark, funny, mean people. It’s appropriate for their ­antag­onistic, adversarial role.”
See also Who is exposing the underbellies of school systems, U-T San Diego or Voice of San Diego?

UPDATE: WHAT DOES SCOTT LEWIS DO WHEN HE'S LETTING IT ALL "PLATEAU"?

Scott Lewis stops investigations. For example, he and Andrew Donohue stopped Emily Alpert's investigation into school attorney Dan Shinoff and Shinoff's pals at San Diego County Office of Education (SDCOE). And then Lewis fired Emily Alpert. (I imagine she was happy to be fired because it wasn't much of a job after her freedom to investigate was curtailed.)

But now that so many of Mr. Shinoff's public school clients have been charged with corruption, maybe Scott will restart the investigation?

I wouldn't count on it. VOSD has to pay its bills. And given the fact that VOSD features one of the lawyers from Dan Shinoff's law firm (Omar Passons) among the alternating photos at the top of its web pages, I suspect that someone at Stutz law firm is making it financially worthwhile for VOSD to ignore the backroom shenanigans at SDCOE. Also, VOSD's major donors, Buzz Woolley and Irwin Jacobs, are closely connected the non-teacher-union players in the education establishment. They will probably get their wish that the public never even learn what's on the FBI tape of Dan Shinoff's meeting with a witness in a school case.



Does this photo look familiar? It's Omar Passons' image from the header of a VOSD web page. Mr. Passons is a lawyer at Stutz law firm.

Tending Bar on New Year’s Eve in 1997 Made Me Resolve to Risk More in 2014
By: Scott Lewis
Voice of San Diego
January 1, 2014

...I’ve always felt a drive, an angst and worry. It’s made me always change, always want to keep improving.

Recently, though, something else has been happening.

Perhaps it has come from having kids and a mortgage. Maybe I feel more vulnerable. But I feel it. Like small tremors. They are these urges to want to protect what I’ve gathered. They are flashes of desire to be (gasp!) conservative.

I can’t have that. It’s not me.

[Maura Larkins comment: I think it is you, Scott. And I think you've been playing it safe for a few years now. You've been paid to protect some people and expose others (such as when you stopped the investigation of SDCOE by Emily Alpert and then let her go, but at the same time did a proper investigation of SEDC).

So this year I’m resolving to take more risks. I resolve to resist the urge to let it all plateau – to cruise. I want to keep building, keep dreaming and keep dancing with failure...

[Maura Larkins comment: Sounds like a typical New Year's resolution. It's April now. You've forgotten about it, right?]


Raging Against Hacks With Muckraker Turned Magazine-Maker Matt Taibbi
By Matthew Shaer
New York Magazine
3/9/2014

Matt Taibbi, the ­former enfant terrible of ­political journalism, limps into a cozy diner on ­Chambers Street, in Tribeca a ­Russian-style fur cap pulled over his ears, a half-formed apology for his lateness already on his lips. “I am—I must have—did I keep you waiting?”

Informed he is actually seven ­minutes early, his shoulders slump in relief. “Okay,” the lanky 44-year-old says, with a toothy grin. “Good. You’ll have to excuse me. It’s been a crazy time for me.”

This is Matt Taibbi, circa 2014: ­deferential, polite, very busy. In mid-­February, shortly after the birth of his first child, Taibbi announced he was leaving Rolling Stone, where he has worked for almost a decade, to start a digital magazine for First Look Media, the company owned by eBay billionaire Pierre Omidyar. The last few weeks have been consumed with business matters—hiring editorial staff, signing off on designs. Taibbi won’t discuss the exact format of the new venture, nor its name—that’s still being worked out, too—but he sees it focusing, in part, on the same matters of corporate malfeasance he’s been covering for years.

“What I’m hoping to capture is the simultaneously funny and satirical voice that you got with Spy magazine,” he says. “The whole thing will probably be a little different than what a lot of people expect.”

What people expect, of course, is the ­ribald, loudly antagonistic voice of a writer who is, in his own words, “full of outrage.” The guy who compared Goldman Sachs to a “vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money.” The reporter who dropped acid, donned a Viking hat and wraparound ­sunglasses, and had a nice casual chat with the former deputy head of the Office of National Drug Policy, the same policymaker responsible for the “This Is Your Brain on Drugs” advertising campaign. And the person who, as the editor of a Moscow paper, marched into the local offices of the Times and slammed a pie filled with horse semen into the face of a reporter he deemed a “hack.” The ­unfiltered, uncowed Matt Taibbi who once dumped coffee on an interviewer from Vanity Fair and then chased him down the street.

But despite his newfound personal courtesy, none of Taibbi’s anger at the “toothlessness” of the media has dissipated. “I think it’s a lost art in this country—developing that narrative voice where readers connect with you as a human being,” he says, harpooning a stray piece of scrambled egg. “They want to see how you react individually to things. And if you think something is outrageous, and you write about it in a tone without outrage, then that’s just deception, you know?”

Taibbi says his decision to leave Rolling Stone was predicated in part on the need to make a change and “keep from falling into a pattern,” and partly by his desire to “be on Glenn’s side.” Glenn being Glenn Greenwald, who, along with Laura Poitras and Jeremy Scahill, is currently editing another First Look property, the national-security-centric The Intercept, which has been live since February. “Glenn’s in this position of being a reporter trying to put out material that came from a whistle-blower, and now they’re both essentially in exile. It’s crazy. If the press corps that existed in the ’60s and ’70s had seen this situation, they’d be rising as one and denouncing the government for it,” Taibbi says.

Like former Washington Post scribe Ezra Klein, who recently moved to a new venture at Vox Media, Taibbi sees hope in the foundational, start-up mode of journalism. “You’ve got this widespread mistrust of media organizations,” he says, “and the feeling, from people on both sides, that the networks are in the tank for one political party or another. I think people are more willing to trust individuals than they are organizations.”

Taibbi grew up on the South Shore of Boston, where he was by his account a “depressive” kid, content to spend the day burrowing into old Russian novels. “I must have read Dead Souls a hundred times,” he says. “I had this fantasy that I was living in 19th-century Russia.” (It was his Russophilia that led him, in 1992, to move there, where he remained until 2002, working first at the Moscow Times, and then at the eXile, a news­paper he helped found with fellow expat Mark Ames.)

Taibbi’s father is the Emmy Award–­winning NBC reporter Mike Taibbi—and along with Gogol and Tolstoy, he also idolized the “middle-class, working-class people” who then populated newsrooms. “They relished their role as jerks who wouldn’t let anything slide. And I was attracted to that,” he says. “I mean, ­journalists should be dark, funny, mean people. It’s appropriate for their ­antag­onistic, adversarial role.”

Contrast that with today, he argues, when for a lot of reporters, “the appeal of the job has more to do with proximity to power. They want to say they had a beer with Hillary Clinton or whatever it is.” Espe­cially offensive to Taibbi: the ­ten­den­cy of his peers to go to great lengths to always give equal weight to opposing arguments. “If there’s one way of looking at things, and there’s another way of looking at things that’s totally ridiculous, you don’t have to give the latter point of view as much ­quarter as some contemporary journalism professors might tell you.”

He stands up. Time to leave—the day is full with appointments, and at home, in Jersey City, his wife, a family doctor, and his son are waiting. But first he wants to take a look at the waitress’s tattoo. She holds her hand ­forward: I FUCKING LOVE YOU, reads a line of blue cursive script. “Very nice,” Taibbi says appreciatively.

Outside, the temperature has dropped to 19 degrees. Taibbi, tucked into a boxy old coat, says it isn’t as cold as it was when he lived in Moscow, and it’s ­pos­itively balmy compared with the climes in ­Mongolia, where he, at age 25, had spent a season playing professional basketball. The team was the Mountain Eagles; Taibbi was a small forward. “I’d met this kid playing street ball in Moscow, and he told me about a pro league in Mongolia called the MBA. So I quit my job and took a train to Ulan Bator. They called me ‘the Mongolian Rodman,’ ” he says. “I would have stayed. I was having a blast. But I caught pneumonia and I had to go back to Moscow.”

Taibbi lopes southward, toward the cloistered streets of the Financial District. I wonder aloud if he feels that the work he did about Wall Street—on subprime mortgages, and the student-loan apparatus, and the “teeming rat’s nest of corruption” that led to the 2008 meltdown—had made a difference.

“I think the first clue I had was when Occupy happened,” he says. “And I could see that a lot of the stuff that I wrote about was in the background. People carrying papier-­mâché squids at some of the protests, which was cool. I think that’s part of what every journalist wants: to have an impact.” Still, that impact has only gone so far. None of the operators Taibbi regards as criminally liable for the crash has been punished; meanwhile, movies like The Wolf of Wall Street are, in his view, idolizing bankers in a way he finds unseemly. “It’s kind of the same way they glamorized the Mafia once upon a time,” he says. “But at least with the Mafia, there was always this lesson that you got at the end, that crime didn’t pay.”

Taibbi pauses at the top of the steps of the Fulton Street subway station. “Big companies like Goldman Sachs have billions to spend on their own publicity. They don’t need us to do that for them. And everyone else in this world does need us to do that for them,” he says, waving good-bye. “I think about that a lot.”

*This article appears in the March 10, 2014 issue of New York Magazine.




COMMENTS from Jan. 1, 2014 VOSD story above

... Scott Lewis administrator
Hi guys, I didn't mean politically conservative. I meant conservative in actions, ie, concerned with conserving what I have, not risking...Just want us to keep our edge, be willing to upset folks from time to time and make wise investments in broader coverage that we think can be sustained in future.

... Doug Porter subscriber
Excellent writing. Bravo to the story line, too! Happy New Year!

[Maura Larkins' comment:
I agree. Very good writing, Scott. As a journalist, I'm sure Mr. Porter genuinely empathizes with your story line. He, too, must feel the pressure to avoid controversy, to avoid truths that are unpleasant to him. But he's recovering from a bout of cancer. He has a lot better excuse than Mr. Lewis for "plateauing".]

Scott Lewis administrator
Happy New Year to you, too, Doug.

Jan Caldwell of San Diego Sheriff's Dept. disses bloggers because they "could be" 800-pound disabled men wearing fuzzy slippers, working at home on an Apple laptop

My favorite part of the following article is when VOSD's Kelly Bennett confesses to working at home on her Apple Laptop wearing slippers.


Ms. Jan Caldwell
Public Affairs Director
858-974-2052

Sheriff's Department: No Shoes, No Fancy Degree, No Service
Feb 22, 2013
by Sara Libby
Voice of San Diego

By Jan Caldwell's standards, I am a Very Serious Journalist.

This has very little to do with the fact that I run a news publication.

It has more to do with the fact that I'm nice (almost always), svelte, not disabled and have a fancy journalism school degree. Oh, one more thing: As a Very Serious Journalist, I always wear Very Serious Footwear.

Caldwell, the spokeswoman for the San Diego Sheriff's Department, spoke earlier this week at an event called Grade the Media, put on by the San Diego chapter of the Society of Professional journalists. (I didn't attend the event — I caught Caldwell's remarks on YouTube.)

There, she warned reporters of her No. 1 rule if they want to get information about the county's chief law enforcement agency: "My first point I want to make is: Be nice to me. I mean, seriously, be nice to me. Because I'm a mirror, and I will reflect how you treat me. If you are rude, if you are obnoxious, if you are demanding, if you call me a liar, I will probably not talk to you anymore."

Golden rule, got it. There's something a little unsettling about someone sternly ordering niceness and demanding that reporters not demand. But taken at face value, those aren't unreasonable requests.

Then Caldwell takes a turn. She says that it's time to revisit the issue of journalist credentials, because "you can sit with your Apple laptop in your fuzzy slippers, you can be an 800-pound, disabled man that can't get out of bed and be a journalist, because you can blog something. Does that give you the right, because you blog, in your fuzzy slippers out of your bedroom, and you don't go out and you haven't gotten that degree, should you be called a journalist?"

Disregard the fact that Caldwell went from insisting on niceness to vilifying the obese and the disabled in the next breath.

The stereotype of bloggers as slovenly basement dwellers is incredibly antiquated. Seriously, people were complaining about how antiquated it was years ago.

Bloggers rule the world. The New Republic wrote this month that blogger extraordinaire Ezra Klein's Wonkblog has, "arguably become the [Washington] Post’s most successful project, bringing in over four million page views every month."

But blogs that aren't hosted by the Washington Post are still perfectly legitimate. It's the journalism that's produced — how it's presented, the service it performs — that matters.

Voice of San Diego itself, by virtue of being an online-only venture, is probably considered a blog by some people. Kelly Bennett has admitted to occasionally wearing slippers while working from home. On her Apple laptop.

And though Caldwell described bloggers with by far the most disdain, she wasn't alone on the panel in expressing old-school notions of the media.

Darren Pudgil, who served as spokesman for former Mayor Jerry Sanders, said he too is very discerning about who he gives information to.

"We look at the entity. What type of audience does a media outlet have? What type of reach do they have? … Most of the bloggers are a little out there, and aren't informed and have agendas," Pudgil said.

I may be a Very Serious Journalist, but I think I'm missing something.

Even if there are thousands of these elusive, basement-dwelling, slippers-sporting, uninformed bloggers beating down the doors of local public affairs officers (I mean metaphorically, of course, you can't beat down doors in slippers and without leaving the basement), wouldn't they be precisely the people whose writing would be improved with the help of a robust, accurate source of information from their government?

This database lists the position of "public affairs officer, sheriff" for the County of San Diego at an annual salary of $68,640 to $131,040. If the county is paying someone upward of $130,000 to disseminate information, he or she should feel obligated to answer anyone with a notepad and an earnest question (asked nicely), whether they live in a basement, a mansion or a storm drain.

Caldwell and Pudgil aren't the first to confuse legitimate, journalism-performing bloggers with the rest of the vast, amorphous, anonymous internet. But given that they communicate with the press for a living, you'd think they'd have a better idea of who the press is.

I asked a few of my Very Serious Journalist friends what they thought made someone a Very Serious Journalist.

One, a journalism fellow at Harvard, said his criteria included "curiosity, tenacity and skepticism. … I think serious journalists must have a sense of civic duty and believe that their work serves the public interest."...

Love letter from Gil Cabrera to Voice of San Diego

A love letter filters down to us from the infatuation between Gil Cabrera and Voice of San Diego.

Who is exposing the underbellies of school systems, U-T San Diego or Voice of San Diego?

My challenge to Will Carless at VOSD and Jeff McDonald at U-T San Diego: Why don't you find out the truth about what's going on at SDCOE?

Now that Will Carless has replaced Emily Alpert at VOSD, why doesn't he conduct a "Crosier Watch" similar to the "Petty Watch" he conducted in 2008?

Over the past few years, only a few limited stories about the tactics of education attorneys have crept into the press. Reporters have to beg and plead and practically stand on their heads to get their stories published. Voice of San Diego dropped its coverage of SDCOE attorney shenanigans, and laid-off its stellar education reporter Emily Alpert. CEO Scott Lewis claimed that he didn't have enough money to pay her.

But that explanation doesn't hold water.

Voice of San Diego benefactors Buzz Woolley and Irwin Jacobs, who claim to care about education, could have easily paid Emily's salary with their pocket change if they'd wanted her to stay. And I suspect she would have wanted to stay if her job description had been made more appealing, which would have included being allowed to publish her stories freely. At one time she must have hoped that all her work would result in some changes for children in schools.

It seems Buzz Woolley, Irwin Jacobs and Emily Alpert weren't on the same page.

I recently discovered (in a story by Jeff McDonald at the U-T) that SDCOE executive Dan Puplava, whom Emily had started investigating, was fined $7000 and had his brokers license suspended while AIG Financial, which was paying Puplava big bucks for moonlighting with them, was fined $300,000 for not properly overseeing him. Still, Puplava retains his job as head of the SDCOE Fringe Benefits Consortium.

Voice of San Diego never even placed a link in its Morning Report to the U-T San Diego story.

To its credit, VOSD's Will Carless is doing a great job investigating a school bond scam in Poway pulled off by board members and their lawyers.

But if VOSD had been willing to aggressively investigate education attorneys, the Poway Capital Appreciation Bonds scandal might have been prevented. Of course, the downside of that for VOSD would be that it wouldn't have an exciting school bond story to write about.

It seems that journalists are a bit like Plaintiff lawyers: they actually benefit from corruption and wrongdoing because investigation it gets them money and fame.

All along, of course, the school attorneys are making work for themselves by advising school boards to ignore the law.

But the public doesn't hear much about this.

In fact, even private bloggers like me and Scott Dauenhaur get sued by SDCOE lawyer Dan Shinoff for defamation on behalf of himself and his pals at SDCOE. SDCOE should stop tax dollars to stop public discussion of school attorney tactics, but it won't.

Shockingly, it seems that U-T San Diego's Jeff McDonald is more willing to expose SDCOE than Voice of San Diego is. As a member of Voice of San Diego, I never thought I'd be forced to confess that we need the U-T in order to get balanced news reporting in San Diego. I never thought Doug Manchester's rag would sometimes do a better job on education than Buzz Woolley and Irwin Jacobs.

The U-T freely admits that it is using the paper to influence voters and officials. You know you're reading a biased paper when you read the U-T. The Union-Tribune has been killing important stories for years.

The problem with VOSD is that the bias is in the censorship--you don't know which stories they killed because donors didn't like them. Except, of course, in cases where VOSD started a story--and then killed it.

The media rates readers! Voice of San Diego news quiz winners

Link: Voice of San Diego

VOSD News Quiz The results are in for last week's VOSD News Quiz and we're quite impressed. Two members received perfect scores.

First place: Lee Swanson and David Gatzke win $500 vouchers for Co-Merge Workplace

Second place: Jo Brooks and Judy Radke win Voice of San Diego Photo Books

Third place: Bill Bradshaw, Pat Seabord, Dennis Doyle, David Inmon and Chris Metcalf win NEW VOSD T-shirts

The man who calls himself Papa Doug now owns all of San Diego's major papers

The UT-San Diego yesterday denied that it had bought the North County Times, but today admitted that it had. This makes Voice of San Diego all the more important to San Diegans.

U-T Buys North County Times
September 11, 2012
By DAGNY SALAS
Voice of San Diego

Developer and U-T San Diego owner Doug Manchester now owns two major daily newspapers in the San Diego region: The company jointly owned by Manchester and his partner, U-T CEO John Lynch, bought the North County Times for $11.95 million. Voice of San Diego reporter Rob Davis is on the story and has been tweeting about it this morning:

11 Sep 12
Rob Davis@robwdavis
NCT publisher confirms that, yes indeed, the sale is complete now. Today. For real...

11 Sep 12
Rob Davis@robwdavis
Yesterday's non-sale fiasco has the bad odor of a case of We Wanted to Control Our News So We Denied The Report...

11 Sep 12
Rob Davis@robwdavis
The man who calls himself Papa Doug now owns all of San Diego's major papers. Good time to reread my profile of him. [Click here.]

U-T San Diego to buy North County Times, Californian
MANCHESTER EXPANDS MEDIA REACH IN $11.95M DEAL
By BRADLEY J. FIKES
nctimes.com
September 11, 2012

U-T San Diego has agreed to purchase the North County Times from Lee Enterprises Inc., North County Times publisher Peter York said Tuesday. The price was $11.95 million.

The sale of the Times, including The Californian, its edition in Southwest Riverside County, had been rumored for some time. A story in the San Diego Business Journal on Monday said a sale had been completed...