Q&A

We Want to Know

SLO County Supervisor and dog lover, Adam Hill, takes our questions. With Alice and Nora, his Australian Shepherds listening in, he shares his thoughts on politics, journalism, and water…

How did you get involved in politics in

the first place? I worked for Senator Bill Bradley after studying political science as an undergrad. I grew up in Rockaway, New Jersey, the town next to the one Bill Bradley was from. He was my hero as a basketball star when I was kid. Then later he became our senator and I volunteered on a campaign. Then I became an intern and, after that, a staffer. When you are in your twenties it’s an incredibly idealistic time and D.C. was different then. There are many more crazy people running the place now. Do you miss it, even a little bit? No, no— not at all. I realize now that local politics is the best. You can really get things done in a way that you can’t in Washington or Sacramento, which now has absolutely no appeal to me. Here, as a supervisor or a member of a city council, you can really have an effect on the community. You know, we live here. We’re here everyday. We have meetings every Tuesday. People have access to us. Sometimes I learn more about what’s going on in the community just by running into people at the supermarket.

So, how did you end up teaching English at

Cal Poly? I’d always really liked to read, but I started to fall in love with books when I was in college. After my experience with Senator Bradley, I decided to go to grad school to study English. I wanted to write and do those sorts of things. When I was a student at LSU I did a lot of freelance writing for newspapers and magazines, mostly book and music reviews. I wrote for everything from Spin Magazine and Esquire to the LA Times and the San Francisco Chronicle. The newspapers were doing well and you could earn a decent living freelancing.

What’s your take on the state of journalism

today? People start blogs and create phony stories and attack people everywhere. I think it’s problematic because we see less of a connection to real journalism today, particularly from younger generations. I mean, when I was at Cal Poly the students weren’t reading newspapers whether they were online or not. We were able to give them free subscriptions and they wouldn’t take them. If they got the news at all, it was likely they were getting it from Jon Stewart.

Doesn’t all the chatter you see following articles online tell a different story?

In the comments that follow articles online people can say some incredibly nasty things anonymously. These are things they would never say to people in person because it’s just too vulgar or rude or mean; but on the internet people can do it. There are some responsible news outlets that make it so that people cannot post anonymously. If you make people put their name to it, they are probably going to be more thoughtful and less ad hominem in their remarks.

But, isn’t that a good way to at least get a

conversation started? I don’t think it’s good. I just don’t think it helps people in any way. It hurts people and it keeps people believing the worst things without really being able to make critical judgments. I think it’s important that we have dissenting, critical voices. But if you publish something that you know is not true, or badly sourced, or based on innuendo or driven by a desire to get back at people— those aren’t principles that journalists live by.

Okay, we can’t let you go without talking about water. Paso, Cambria, and now Nipomo are

running out of water. Who’s to blame? I think the truth is that we’ve had this problem for a while and I don’t think you can blame one factor. We just haven’t addressed it.

Certainly the wine industry has grown, but so has residential development all without addressing the underlying issue, pardon the pun. From my perspective, it’s always easy to blame the corporate interests. I’m not looking to blame anybody. We’re trying to get the big guys and the small guys and everyone else to understand that we are all in this together. SLO LIFE