Last week we published a piece distancing this newspaper from the political campaign to oppose Measure J, which has prominently featured our logo. The campaign is centered around some quotes picked from a May piece that represents the opinions of community members who served on a volunteer editorial board.
Last week we published a piece distancing this newspaper from the political campaign to oppose Measure J, which has prominently featured our logo. The campaign is centered around some quotes picked from a May piece that represents the opinions of community members who served on a volunteer editorial board.
Last week’s editorial was written in the newspaper’s name and I take full responsibility for it. The company that owns this newspaper is the shepherd of a 128-year-old brand and is legally responsible for what’s printed each week on its pages. So when I felt that our name was being misused, I believed it was time to speak up. Not everyone agreed with me, including our editor who has historically written the editorials based on the committee’s input. That’s fine, since it’s healthy for an editorial organization to represent a mix of views and approaches.
Several readers have asked about my personal views, and this is a good time to introduce myself. I’m not an expert on whether injecting 600-degree steam into an oil well can lead to earthquakes or contaminate water aquifers, so I cannot say definitively whether this practice should be banned, along with fracking and acidizing. But as both a working editor and investor in newspapers in Northern California, I do take an interest in the economic well being and development of the four counties where we publish weeklies. In Sonoma County, for example, we’ve been a champion for sensible agriculture and viticulture practices that have helped that area flourish.
I have lived in two counties next-door to San Benito County for 37 years, so that makes me a neighbor, not a local. I’m more local, however, than the previous owners, who lived on the East Coast, or the ones before that, who were based in New Zealand. I met Josh Jensen in the early 1980s when he gave me a tour of the Calera Winery, years before he was on the cover of Wine Spectator as one of the world’s finest producers of Pinot Noir. And I met and interviewed Luis Valdez at El Teatro Campesino a few years after that.
I was shocked when I saw advertisements by the “No” campaign quoting the Free Lance and calling the Measure J’s supporters “extremists” engaging in “fringe-level politics at its worst.” Jensen and Valdez are leaders in their industries, internationally renowned, and not people I would consider extremists. Ranchers and farmers like Joe Morris and Paul Hain are not fringe players. Neither are elected officials like Congressman Sam Farr, Supervisor Robert Rivas and the majority of the San Juan Bautista City Council, all of whom have endorsed Measure J.
I did not want a message attacking these folks—and anyone who put up a “no fracking” lawn sign—to go out under our logo. A campaign that strays from the issues and starts calling their opponents names is not one that we could attach our name to.
The other issue for me as a businessperson who likes to see communities develop healthy economic lives is whether an expanded oil industry will actually bring the benefits it promises. The No-sayers have run television ads claiming Measure J “eliminates millions in current and future funding for schools and public safety.” If petroleum production was so good for host communities, San Ardo would be paradise. Instead it has an abysmally low 28 percent rate of home ownership and a median household income of $25,208. Bakersfield, another oil town, consistently ranks as one of America’s least educated metropolitan areas, and Kern County has the 20th lowest household income of California’s 58 counties. (San Benito is the 14th highest.) Richmond, Calif., another place where oil companies are spending ridiculous amounts of money to influence a local election, worked its way off the charts as one of the nation’s most dangerous cities, only to have a car fall into a sinkhole and see a refinery catch fire.
The decision San Benito County voters will make on Tuesday will be whether the economic future of San Benito County is better secured by leveraging its natural beauty, vineyards and natural farms — or by exploiting high-tech extraction techniques to expand the number of oil fields. I’ll await Tuesday’s results in what is shaping up to be a watershed moment for the region.
Dan Pulcrano is executive editor/CEO of New SV Media, which owns the Free Lance.
