Let me open this post by commending Ron Gonzales, News Team Leader and City Editor Theresa Cisneros of the Orange County Register for hosting a Readership Meeting in the Saddleback Room of the Mission Viejo city hall this evening. They also brought Reporter Erika Ritchie and Community Reporter Amanda Glowish to participate in what amounted to a “focus group” evaluation of the local Saddleback Valley News.
In the nearly two hour exchange with residents of the city we covered a multitude of local and regional issues, several of which we suggested requiring further investigative reporting. Beyond that we made suggestions for improvements to the paper and were given an update on future positive changes to come.
With topics that are related to ongoing city funded Capitol Improvement Projects, and other expenditures, we were disappointed that not a single member of our five member city council took five minutes to make a cameo appearance to hear our concerns at this publicized meeting. I can only surmise that they already have all of the answers even before knowing the questions on the many topics we discussed.
As I am sending email copies of this report to each council member I will not be listing specific issues that the residents raised. Let them read about it in the papers as they are published.
We did express our gratitude for specific stories and publication of some of our Letters as well as their support for community activities such as the annual Fun With Chalk Festival.
We were asked to provide suggestions about future columns and encouraged to send data and photos on stories that we feel should be covered. That’s cooperation! While our council has to some degree shut down “open government” we at least have the local Saddleback Valley News leadership that is willing to listen to valid documented concerns and hopefully will give equal coverage to our side of the story.
In time I hope to report back as to how effective we were in convincing the O.C. Register staff that we are coming from facts and figures, not emotion, as our tips become future news reports.
Larry:
So you expected those council dolts to show up and attempt to defend the indefensible. Your getting senile in your old age.!
Jim Zarkov
The good news is that this event was posted on our city web site. As such there is no excuse for not making a brief appearance.
That slight should not sit well with the four representatives of the Orange County Register who took time out of their lives, after hours, to gather feedback from all sides, including city management or elected officials, neither of which group was in attendance.
Perhaps they felt that the newspaper would simply take their Mission Viejo press releases and not challenge the content.
The above “deletion” was due to my double click. I did not remove another’s comments.
too bad the members of the mission viejo city council chose not to attend last nights forum. they could of learned something about the benefits of public participation.
ron gonzales chaired a productive and lively meeting with a free exchanges of ideas. everybody came with an open mind and i have no doubt that we all left on a positive note. i look forward to a newspaper that is striving to be both informative and reflective of community interests.
i appreciated the time the crew at svn gave to listen to the public which they serve – its’ readers.
cathy schlicht