( A few videos from SBTV21 in Santa Barbara showing Tony Strickland and Hannah-Beth Jackson. Have you seen either of these on television? Click here to see more videos about other candidates.)
The Santa Barbara Independent has endorsed Hannah-Beth Jackson for state senate.
Click here for the endorsements from the Santa Barbara Independent.
I don't read the Santa Barbara Independent much because I live in Simi Valley. What is the reputation of the paper? Many alternative weekly papers lean far to the left. The Independent endorsements clearly favor Democrats ( They endorsed Marta Jorgenson, Pedro Nava, and Lois Capps.) but their news coverage seems to be equitable. If you live in a community that reads the Independent, what do you think of their reputation with readers?
Anyways, in the coming weeks more newspapers are going to make endorsements. What do you think they are worth? Feel free to preemptively spin if you don't think your candidate will earn a particular paper's endorsement.
In a campaign with low name ID they would seem helpful. I would be curious what % of district voters are following this campaign. If they didn't mean anything at all or it was already obvious who they were going to endorse. rival candidates wouldn't waste their time trying to explain themselves to the community advisory group that The Star puts in charge of their endorsements.
Click here for their recent articles about this campaign.
Click here to see Ventura County Star Editor Joe Howry's explanation of the endorsement process.
This link is a better compilation of the candidate video statements in Santa Barbara
http://www.sbchannels.net/browse/channels/z/5/1/FeaturedChannels
One should be wary of who and how many people really decide the endorsement of a newspaper. With Santa Barbara Independent, it really is only one and a half people who decide.
With Santa Barbara News-Press, it is just half a person, the same one who made up the "taxin" epithet repeatedly cited by Strickland with a picture of the News-Press editorial.
Phony-Tony will have to form a fake newspaper like his fake energy company if he is going to get any endorsements. The LA Times article today made him look like a total bozo. Then again, that ain't too difficult a task after all.
You're right about that one, Barbarenyo.
The "Taxin' Jackson" label was first applied by a right-wing extremist radio talk show host and it was picked up by his buddy who writes editorials for the News-Press, and repeated several times in his articles and editorials. In his typical style, he would write, "some (without identification) refer to her as 'Taxin Jackson' " or "she has earned the nickname 'Taxin Jackson' in some circles." This guy has maintained persistent vicious personal attacks against several elected officials, the vast majority of whom are Jewish women.
So Strickland has been picking this up and using it but it isn't very credible, in my opinion.
Did everyone read the article in the L.A. Times today on SD-19? They picked up on the Phony Tony, which I believe was coined right here on the Dennert blog.
We adults can be so childish sometimes...
Careful what you read on blogs; specifically, the commenter above, "Barbarenyo" offers incorrect information about the composition and form of our endorsement process.
This statement "With Santa Barbara Independent, it really is only one and a half people who decide," is incorrect.
At least four people directly researched and worked on our latest endorsements.
--Randy Campbell, Publisher
Santa Barbara Independent
independent.com
Randy,
Thanks for your input.
The value of your URL must be really high. When did you reserve it?
Careful what you read on blogs; specifically, the commenter above, "Barbarenyo" offers incorrect information about the composition and form of our endorsement process.
This statement "With Santa Barbara Independent, it really is only one and a half people who decide," is incorrect.
At least four people directly researched and worked on our latest endorsements.
--Randy Campbell, Publisher
Santa Barbara Independent
independent.com
Randy,
Thanks for telling us more about the process you put in place to make you decisions.
Which of the contests was the hardest to endorse in?
Thanks for clarifying, Randy. Please note my comments were not in reference to the Independent, but rather the News Press, just to be clear.
The Independent does a great job balancing its coverage.
[sorry for the double post -- your website was a little sticky accepting my initial post]
We got our URL in 1997 I believe; blind, dumb luck, as I wanted "santabarbaraindependent.com."
We began trying to turn it into a real newspaper website in the summer of 2007.