What Others Are Saying

A brand management and crisis communication professor I know at a leading university contends that brands reside in the minds of customers, not at company headquarters. So, when crisis strikes, he argues, protecting the brand boils down to this: protecting your customers.

The California Legislature is wrapping up the 2019-2020 legislative session at the end of this month, making decisions in what is one of the most challenging periods in recent history.

On Monday August 10, 2010 Assemblywoman Blanca Rubio (D- Baldwin Park) announced the introduction of Assembly Bill 323 (AB323), the Save Local Journalism Act.

In this moment of reckoning with systemic racial injustice, our country’s ethnic media outlets are serving an important role that mainstream media alone cannot fill. Throughout the years, these outlets have spoken for marginalized and vulnerable communities, serving to improve civic engagement and support cross-cultural communication within American society.

The personal and economic toll of the pandemic is painfully clear. Tragically, we have lost more than 100,000 Americans, and many businesses have eliminated jobs. Local newspapers have kept citizens and consumers informed throughout the crisis, but these outlets also suffered due to COVID-19 and need support to continue to provide valuable information in these uncertain times.

I support local journalism because the Constitution demands a free press to protect our democracy. That sounds very big and conceptual, so let me break it down to what I understand and why I care. My career inside local government has taken me to four great cities — Palo Alto, Boulder, Ventura, and Santa Barbara. The common thread between these diverse cities is an enlightened populace that actively participates in their city government. In other words, cities work and communities thrive when the people control local government, never the other way around. “Of the people, by the people, for the people” means we are accountable to ourselves, as Santa Barbarans and Americans, for building a great community.

We are living in a time when accessible, accurate information is extraordinarily important. Local news outlets are foundational to that purpose. They illuminate the details of a protest movement determined to overwhelm historic oppression. They provide critical updates and context about a deadly pandemic that’s transformed how we live. Local news outlets reflect change. And they effect change as well.

Last month, the Baltimore Sun won a Pulitzer Prize for local reporting for uncovering a scheme in which the mayor of Baltimore sold thousands of copies (in some cases, nonexistent copies) of a children’s book she had self-published to Maryland’s flagship hospital network, which she helped oversee. The mayor resigned.