ST3441 by Signal Tribune

ST3441 - March 15_Layout 1 3/15/13 1:16 PM Page 4

4 SIGNAL TRIBUNE

Reporters

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open the ongoing case of LA County Assessor John Noguez, who has been arrested on several counts of forgery, fraud and taking bribes. Speaking at a recent engagement at McKenna’s on the Bay in Long Beach, the investigative-reporting duo said that, if they win, they would use the national attention to shine a light on community newspapers. “If we are fortunate enough and blessed enough to win the Pulitzer… we’re going to have a national platform to be able to really talk about the importance of community newspapers,” Economy said. “…Don’t give up on your community, and don’t let a little community newspaper go away.” Longtime investigative reporter Dave Wielenga, who has written for numerous local publications and now publishes GreaterLongBeach.com, arranged the event, which he titled “Reassessing the Power of the Press,” to talk about the significance of traditional journalism in a time when newspapers are suffering from budget cuts, small staffs and dwindling advertising revenue.

NEWS

“I think at this point, rethinking the power of the press is what we’ve been doing for the last 20 years, as it seems the power of the press is diminishing, [and] we’ve almost gotten to the point where a lot of people are ready to write it off,” Wielenga said before talking about the 1st Amendment of the United States Constitution, which includes freedom of the press. “I think we need to ask ourselves, before we decide that newspapers and traditional journalism is no longer relevant, if we really know what we’re throwing away.” Transforming the weekly newspaper from what Hews called the “hearts and flowers” version to a more aggressive publication now known for covering regional enterprise stories has created some flak from readers, who have called for more local news, said the publisher of the free, weekly newspaper. “We’re a community newspaper, so our readers don’t like us to cover anything outside of the city, and they’ll let us know,” Hews said. However, Economy added, “We had to basically educate our readers of what the role of a good community newspaper should be, and it’s basically to do what we’ve been

Thoughts from the Publisher

by Neena Strichart

With so much seriousness around me over the last few weeks, I am compelled to share some silliness with our readers. See the puns below. One of our Signal Tribune friends sent them to brighten my day. Enjoy! I tried to catch some fog. I mist. When chemists die, they barium.

Keeping Spam from being a scam

doing for the last year and a half. It’s being able to go ahead and be real raw, but have our facts completely lined up and fact-check, over and over and over again.” The reporters explained that the story began to develop after receiving their first confirmation from a public official that, indeed, the district attorney’s office was investigating Noguez. However, they didn’t stop there. The two reporters continued on their own investigation, making several Public Records Act requests and discovering that the very contributors to the 2010 campaign of Noguez were in fact listed as the property owners or propertytax agents involved in some 177 properties being reappraised at lower values. The lower, reassessed values, which were approved through an appeals process, provided property owners with a lower property-tax obligation. The County would then cut checks for the difference between the old and new property taxes, which went into the millions of dollars per property, that would then be split between the property owner and the property-tax agent, who helped get the lower rate, Economy explained.

OPINION

Jokes about German sausage are the wurst. I know a guy who’s addicted to brake fluid. He claims he can stop anytime. How does Moses make his tea? Hebrews it. I stayed up all night to see where the sun went. Then it dawned on me. This girl said she recognized me from the vegetarian club, but I’d never met herbivore. I’m reading a book about anti-gravity. I can’t put it down. I did a theatrical performance about puns. It was a play on words. They told me I had Type A blood, but it was a Type O. A dyslexic man walks into a bra.

J.R. Nelson Long Beach

Mea Culpa The article titled “State senators take ‘field trip’ to high school, college in LB to see innovative programs” in the March 8 issue of the Signal Tribune should have stated that the California State Senate has a total of 40 members.

Long Beach always seems to have a difficult time dealing openly with residents. It often talks of transparency, then makes its actions as opaque as possible when doing something it believes might face opposition. Take the additional traffic signal proposed for Wardlow Road at Pacific Avenue as part of a new Pacific Avenue Bike Corridor. Residents of Wrigley Heights have had an increasingly difficult time getting out of our neighborhood onto Wardlow Road since the Blue Line was built because there is only one exit (Magnolia Avenue). Eastbound traffic often backs up for blocks, and the City has known about the problem for many years. So when Long Beach held meetings about the design of the bike path and the additional traffic signal that will cause even longer delays, did our 7th District councilmember, James Johnson, notify any of us? No. In 1993, the MTA was considering relocating the Wardlow Blue Line station to the north, near Los Cerritos Park. Then-City Traffic Engineer Richard Backus sent a March 12, 1993 memo to thenCity Environmental Planning Officer Gerhardt Felgemaker regarding the possible effect on the intersection of Pacific Place and Wardlow Road. (Pacific Place is just a few hundred feet west of Pacific Avenue and already has a traffic signal.) Backus said, “The subject intersection is already operating at an unacceptable level of service (Level E or worse) during the afternoon peak period.” Level E is defined: Severe congestion with some long-standing lines on critical approaches. Level F: Total breakdown with stop-and-go operation. Remember this was in 1993. Blue Line trains, already three cars long, then averaged 36,553 riders each weekday. By September, 2012, that average had climbed to 92,120, requiring more frequent trains. Still Long Beach insists on another traffic signal when bike riders could easily cross at Pacific Place. Jeannie Hoffman Long Beach

To r e a d o r d o w n l o a d f u l l i s s u e s o f t h e S i g n a l Tr i b u n e , v i s i t

w w w. si g n a l tri b un e. c om

ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER

MANAGING EDITOR

Stephanie Raygoza

ASSISTANT EDITOR/STAFF WRITER

Sean Belk

COLUMNISTS

Jennifer E. Beaver Carol Berg Sloan, RD

Leighanna Nierle

ADMINISTRATIVE ASSISTANT/WEBSITE MANAGER

STAFF WRITERS

CJ Dablo

DESIGN EDITOR

Cory Bilicko

ADVERTISING CONSULTANTS

Jane Fallon

PMS jokes aren’t funny. Period. We are going on a class trip to the soda factory. I hope there’s no pop quiz. Headline: Energizer Bunny Arrested. Charged with Battery. I didn’t like my beard at first. Then it grew on me. What do you call a dinosaur with an extensive vocabulary? A thesaurus. When you get a bladder infection, urine trouble. What does a clock do when it’s still hungry? It goes back four seconds. I wondered why the baseball was getting bigger. Then it hit me! Broken pencils are pointless.

Growing pains?

Stephen M. Strichart

Neena R. Strichart

that they had accumulated some 1,000 documented sources. He said, at one point, in a bar miles away from their news office, they met a “Deep Throat”-type source, who provided the reporters with a list of Noguez’s campaign contributions. Economy added that Cooley said he “didn’t know the evidence of the case until he started reading our paper.” Asked whether pursuing the story was “good for business,” Hews said, “not so far,” however, he added that the story has put the small newspaper in the spotlight, boosting the readership of the newspaper’s website visits to 1 million per day from all over the world. The reporters have since been interviewed on numerous mainstream radio and television shows, and even 60 Minutes has contacted them for a possible news segment about a community newspaper revival. “I know some things are going to come out of it,” Hews said. “It’s certainly gotten us a lot more notice and the community newspaper in general… I hope that Randy and I are stirring up more community newspapers to do this kind of stuff because we get tips every day that we can’t follow.” ß

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

Finally, the authorities have decided to break the back of the Jamaican scam artists who have been ripping off Americans for years with the promise of huge wealth for very little effort. I know how compelling it is to be faced with thousands of dollars of promised wealth for just a small deposit for good faith or something, but remember, older people especially– the money you will send them is real. The check they will send to you for any reason is not. Case in point: I received a check for $30,000 from that scam, and the letter accompanying the check explained why I had received it and how to verify its authenticity. I called the police department in the city I was living in and told them about the check and if they would like to have it for reference. The person I spoke with told me not to do anything and she would send an officer over to check it out. When the officer looked at the check and noticed the telephone number to be called for reference, he suggested I call that number to find out if the check was authentic. (I didn’t say anything, but I realized this must be a very new man on the job to not realize that any number they give me to call would be someone they have in their scam unit.) Anyhow, I wrote “scam” across the check face and sent it to my daughter to see how much money she would have had when I passed away if all I had to do was send a couple of hundred dollars to the addressee. Older people are such targets for these people and, because they are so embarrassed when they discover what really happened to them, it is often not reported to the authorities. Before you send a dime to anyone that promises you huge rewards, call your police department and ask if they are familiar with anything like what you received. Your police should be able to tell you “there ain’t no free lunch,” so be wise and keep your own counsel and money.

PUBLISHER/EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

The scheme, in some cases, involved having the reassessments applied retroactively, ultimately leaving the County to lose millions of dollars in tax revenue while refunding money back to property owners. After scouring through stacks of emails and documents, the reporters eventually uncovered what they called “pay for play” politics in the county assessor’s office, where property owners who contributed to Noguez’s campaign were the ones receiving lower property-tax rates, they said. After their first story broke in February 2012, they began receiving threats from attorneys and a major political consulting and public-relations firm known as Englander Knabe & Allen, which represented Noguez in his campaign. However, Hews said the threats only proved that they had hit a big story. “We knew we had something at that point,” said Hews, who said the Los Angeles Times eventually picked up the story but didn’t give the reporters credit for breaking the story. Economy said they had also received calls from people inside and out of the county assessor’s office, praising their work. He added

MARCH 15, 2013

Nick Diamantides

Shoshanah Siegel

Tanya Paz

CULTURE WRITERS

Daniel Adams Vicki Paris Goodman Gregory Spooner CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER

Matt Sun

EDITORIAL INTERN

Ariana Gastelum

CONTRIBUTING WRITER

Rachael Rifkin

DESIGN INTERN

Kaelyn Bruno

The Signal Tribune welcomes letters to the editor, which should be signed, dated and include a phone number to verify authenticity. Letters are due by noon on the Tuesday before desired publication date. The Signal Tribune reserves the right to edit letters for grammar, language and space requirements. The Signal Tribune does not print letters that refer substantially to articles in other publications and might not print those that have recently been printed in other publications or otherwise presented in a public forum. Letters to the editor and commentaries are the opinions of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the Signal Tribune or its staff. Although the editorial staff will attempt to verify and/or correct information when possible, letters to the editor and commentaries are opinions, and readers should not assume that they are statements of fact. Letter-writers will be identified by their professional titles or affiliations when, and only when, the editorial staff deems it relevant and/or to provide context to the letter. We do not run letters to the editor submitted by individuals who have declared their candidacies for public office in upcoming races. This policy was put in place because, to be fair, if we publish one, we would have to publish all letters submitted by all candidates. The volume would no doubt eliminate space for letters submitted by other readers. Instead, we agree to interview candidates and print stories about political races in an objective manner and offer very reasonable advertising rates for those candidates who wish to purchase ads. The Signal Tribune is published each Friday with a circulation of 25,000. Yearly subscriptions are available for $45.

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