Reading a letter to the editor in the local paper puts one in an exclusive and shrinking group of fortunate folks. These are the folks who realize a local paper delivered free to your home is a priceless part of a functioning American democracy, not a worthless piece of litter.
Laguna Beach is in a shrinking group that still has a local paper. Lots of towns have lost theirs and the unifying sense of community only local papers can provide. While some folks use newspapers to wrap up fish and chips, the Indy wraps a robust real estate marketing insert to pay the bills. If our housing market ever collapses, bye bye Indy.
There have been complaints recently that Laguna’s Indy is biased against them. That it is slanting its coverage of the news and commentary in favor of the other side. Some folks blame the new editor.
What puts paid to this notion is that these complaints are coming from all facets of Laguna’s political spectrum. When both the preservationists and the developers think the paper is biased against them, it must be doing something right. While everybody isn’t happy, being equally unhappy is progress being made.
A local paper is the best venue to sort out our local issues. Things must get really corrupt and starting to stink to high heaven before the regional papers think they are worth the ink.
Only a local paper would explore in depth the financial peccadilloes of a city council member failing to promptly pay a substantial health insurance bill owed to the water district they are a director of. Or the city council candidate being evicted by their landlord and cited by the city for municipal code violations. Local developers raising $80,000 to support their candidates wouldn’t be explored in the regional papers either.
For many readers the best part of a local paper are the sports scores or the police reports. There’s a real feeling of small town connectedness in reading that the Marine Room’s ball team beat the Sandpiper’s team in last week’s game. Or that the high school girls water polo team is fielding Olympic level players.
Even better is reading that the jerk down the street was arrested for DUI and learning they were one of the approximately 10 percent of DUI’s in Laguna that are local residents.
Lately some of those details have vanished from the paper, but as long as we have a paper we can fix that. So thank you Laguna Beach Independent. May you live long and prosper.
JJ Gasparotti, Laguna Beach
