If you’ve ever spent time in Colorado, then you know all about the Rocky Mountain Daily News. Within 55 days of celebrating its 150th year, it shut down today joining many other newspapers that have died due to new technology, the bad economy, and the inability to adapt to change. More of less, Craig’s List, Ebay, and even stuff like this blog, has relegated the printed press as being too slow, too expensive, and too inefficient to survive. Suffice it say, other papers will be joining them soon including the McClatchy’s Daily Olympian.
The Daily Zero has been dead for sometime even though we receive roughly 6 pages of Associated Press “cut and paste” usually (but not always) every day. And with everyone from editor’s in chief/ publisher, to production staff, and finally writers leaving the Olympian and not being replaced, it’s only a matter of time before the vacuum of local news just simply becomes slightly more noticeable (maybe)…
For those of us who work the streets and respond to emergencies, you wouldn’t believe how much stuff the public never knows about. Stuff like murders, house fires, fatality or serious car accidents, shootings, and more, never make the local papers! And as a result, politicians can tell the public that fire fighters do nothing, even though for example a house fire occurs on average every day in Lacey and the surrounding community!
So that’s what this section of the web site is about. If its opinion, we’ll tell you that upfront and not call it news like some other local “bloggers”. If really is something that happened, we will be objective and tell you straight up what happened and get it to you in detail that exceeds anything that you’ve seen in local media before. And if nothing else, we hope you will be more informed to current events which will include things like fire department politics, to quotable (or not) politicians, and emergency responses and events. Really, we want you to know about it and to be in the position to make more educated decisions in the future. There should be no doubt that if you live in Thurston County, you will as a voter or a consumer of emergency services be in the position of making some very critical decisions in the months ahead.
If you’re a fire fighter/EMT/Paramedic or a cop, welcome. If you’re a citizen both local and maybe abroad, please come on in and read a while. If you’re a local politician, thank you for coming by and getting some information that isn’t pre-digested and spoon-fed to you in private email.