UPDATE: Recent comments are back on the home page.

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You’ve probably noticed that there hasn’t been a lot of news on Coastsider this week. At least, I hope you have. I’m in in Amherst, Massachusetts, speaking at a conference on citizen journalism.  I’m out here with a bunch of A-list journalism bloggers, j-school professors, newspaper executives , and (first and foremost) people who are doing in their communities what Coastsider is doing in ours. It’s exciting and inspiring to be among so many people who are moving in the same direction to remake community news. I expect to return with a new sense of purpose and lots of new ideas.

I’ve got a number of stories in the queue that I hope to post from the road, and I’ll keep moderating comments, but Coastsider will be relatively quiet for the next few days.

I’m on a couple of panels this afternoon, including one called “Can Free Media Sustain Democracy?” It would be an understatement to say I’m optimistic. 

If you had a problem loading our latest video from the construction at Devil’s Slide, please try again. We have fixed a small bug in the markup that affected some users.

Click on this link to see Coastsider’s visit to the Devil’s Slide construction site.

I wasn’t able to spend a lot of time patrolling the comments last week, and things have gotten out of hand in some places.  Coastsider is a place where people should feel free to participate without being attacked. I can see that the Golden Rule is not sufficient when someone is spoiling for a fight.  Here’s what I ask:

• Respect your opponents


• Stick to the facts


• Avoid labeling your opponent. The label “no-growther” is especially irritating. I’m not sure there’s an exact equivalent for the other side. If there is, avoid it too.


• Avoid ad hominem attacks (based on the identity of the person making the argument, and not the argument itself)


• Refer to people by name to clarify whom you’re talking to, not to be condescending (e.g. “Jane, you ignorant...")

I probably missed something, but this is a good start. It all boils down to respecting your opponents. I shouldn’t have to tell anyone this.

Despite the rain at around 6:00pm, Rock the Block is going strong downtown.  I’m logged on from our booth via Coastwave wireless. It’s not too late to come downtown, enjoy the music and meet us here on Main Street.

When the Half Moon Bay Review launched the redesign of their paper and website with a couple of snide, gratuitous remarks that seemed directed at Coastsider, I let it go. Why spoil their party?

What continues to set our newspaper and Web site apart from others is that all news content is collected and written by our editorial staff here at the Review. We don’t simply pull news stories from other sources over the hill and post them on our site.

One more thing: We promise to apply the same journalistic standards to our work on the Web that readers have become accustomed to in our news pages over our long history. Just as we don’t rush things into print, we will do our best to assure that what you read on our Web site is accurate.

Maybe they weren’t even talking about us. After all, Coastsider doesn’t “simply pull news stories from other sources and post them on our site.” We do link to interesting articles about the Coastside in the media, about once a week. But we’ve also earned our reputation for breaking hard news on the Coastside.

The wheel of karma has turned, as it always does. It’s time to return to the Review’s 108-year reputation for journalistic standards and not rushing things into print.  Tuesday night, the Review reported breaking news that Caltrans had announced a new left-turn lane on Highway 1. Caltrans had announced no such thing. And the Review only corrected their error after Coastsider posted an accurate report. 

I’m not busting the Review’s chops over a goof. We all make mistakes.  I’m asking that the Review acknowledge that they no longer have a monopoly on the facts.  Besides, it’s always a bad idea to be too full of yourself, especially if your mistakes are likely to wind up in the newspaper.

Yesterday’s coverage of the Coastside’s communications disruption would have been impossible without the contributions of the community.

Coincidentally, I spent Saturday night in Palo Alto.  When I woke in my hotel room, I had no idea what was happening on the Coastside. When I checked my mail in the morning, I found a posting from a reader about the outage and was able to get a story online by 10:00am.  I was able to supplement this by talking to the Sheriff’s Office. Another reader talked to the AT&T crew on the scene and emailed us photos from a Starbucks on the Bayside.  Other readers contributed important information about what services were disrupted and how they were affected.  We updated the story continuously until about 10:00pm.  Until Sunday evening, the only public information about the outage, besides a 9:00am story (projecting a 10:00am restoration of service) from Bay Cities News on KCBS.com, was the ongoing story on Coastsider.

The credit for that goes not to Coastsider, but to the community.  Without your attention and assistance, we couldn’t have done it.

A couple of people saw us in our photos on Devil’s Slide without any head protection and advised us to get some hard hats (and a better tape measure). Cheryl Sinclair of Seton Medical Center Coastside went out and got us some. They’re not going to protect us from the 4-ton boulders, but they’re still a good idea.

When will the Slide open again?

It’s the subject of speculation and rumor.  We’ve heard plenty guesses and we’re sure you have, too. Here’s your chance to go on the record, participate in an experiment, and maybe win yourself a nice dinner.

Give us your best guess as to when you think the Devil’s Slide will open.  When the Slide opens, the closest estimate will win a $100 gift certificate from the Half Moon Bay Brewing Company in Princeton, the sometime home of Devil’s Slide Ale.  If we have more than one correct guess, we’ll pick the winner randomly from among the prescient few who got it right.

To enter, click on the graphic.  Give us your best guess and information on how to contact you if you win.  There are a few questions about how you’ve responded to the traffic problems in your own life.  You can choose to answer these questions or skip them. One entry per person, please. Entries close at 11:59pm on Sunday, April 9.

CLARIFICATIONS: “Open” is defined as reliably usable for the foreseeable future. Interpretation is at the sole discretion of the judges (me).  Employees of HMB Brewing Co and Coastsider and their families aren’t eligible.