AOL Patch finds another leafy town

AOL's Patch has added South Pasadena to its growing network. Sonia Narang, who's worked as an online producer for PBS Frontline and NBC News, will cover the leafy city known for its parks, virulent opposition to the 710 Freeway extension, and public schools that attract discouraged couples from Pasadena.

Indeed, Patch sites are springing up with greater frequency across the Southland, and mostly in towns with that single-family, real-estate rich, suburban feel. (You can find the list here.) Whether the Patch network ever earns a reputation for digging or watchdog reporting, it increasingly seems to me to be a stable model for a form of hometown news.

By hopscotching over cities that are too big to be covered by one person, or present challenges with low readership or lack of business (cities that deserve and need to be covered, by the way), Patch can avoid "wasting" resources. By paying a better wage than most area newspaper chains, it will earn a reputation among reporters as a step up, even if the coverage is softer and less newsy. And, most importantly, it has the ability to become the local newspaper, for lack of a better term, in cities with populations that have the time and inclination to read and talk about hometown news. Indeed, many of these places once had city papers before the chains came in to gobble them up.

The drawback - and the biggest challenge - is the mission. Single editors are being asked to do a lot with a little, including that fancy multi-platform journalism, which requires video and sound and images and words all neatly and compellingly sewn together by one person. Additionally, hometown papers often thrive because they are owned by a local with a deep investment in journalistic standards and civic life. For Patch, some editors will get it and others won't.

And as someone who started at a twice weekly in a leafy town (Claremont), I know how easy it is to beat the bigger guys and earn local respect. If AOL encourages this kind of journalism to flourish (and I have my doubts, having read some of the Patch work produced in West Hollywood, for example) this could be a useful service. If AOL sees Patch as a series of straws to siphon local ad dollars into a national bank account, it will only add to the misery visited upon local journalism by newspaper-chain gangs.

Of course, I still lament the loss of tough city reporting, whether it be South Pasadena or South Gate. Patch isn't a solution to this, but it can be something more than over-the-fence gossip and the latest senior center press release.

Dumb bills

Assemblyman Anthony Portantino, D-La Cañada-Flintridge and a Republican from Santa Clarita have authored a bill to designated the first week of March "Cuss Free Week."

The legislation comes three years after McKay Hatch of South Pasadena launched his No Cussing Club. Apparently, Hatch and his legislative allies think cussing is a gateway to greater sins. From the Sacramento Bee:

"McKay reasoned that if pupils could say no to cussing it would be easier to stay away from drugs, violence and pornography, and to turn their focus to positive aspirations and goals," the Assembly proposal reads.

Schwarzenegger vetoes 710 tunnel bill

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger today vetoed a bill that would have required any extension of the 710 Freeway to be built below ground.

The decades-long campaign to close the 4.5-mile gap between Alhambra and Pasadena has faced stiff opposition, none more resolute than the city of South Pasadena, through which the road would have to travel. Senate Bill 545 from Sen. Gil Cedillo was sold as a compromise that would let the freeway be built so long as it tunneled underneath the city's historic homes and tree-lined streets.

Some - including some of the bill's supporters - think the bill would have killed the project given the prohibitive price tag - $3.6 billion for a tunnel versus $850 million for a surface road.

In his veto message, Schwarzenegger called the bill "unnecessary":

There is absolutely no need to enact statutory restrictions that would mandate certain project design options or remove others from potential consideration. In addition, several properties belonging to the state would be subject to sale for less than fair market value as a result of this bill, resulting in the loss to the state of hundreds of millions of dollars.

The properties Schwarzenegger refers to are homes, many abandoned and in disrepair, that sit in the freeway's path. Had the bill become law, Caltrans could have sold many of these properties, something South Pasadena and Pasadena would like to see happen. Would the governor have signed the bill if the housing market was in better shape?

Four today

1. Social-media networks continue to tune their tools to respond to public interest in the Iranian protests. Facebook recently launched a Persian-language site and now Google has added a Persian-to-English/English-to-Persian translator to its Google Translate function. Google

2. Jakarta correspondent Paul Watson has left the Los Angeles Times to return to the Toronto Star. LAO

3. The city of South Pasadena has found a unique way to raise revenues in this down economy. It involves the police department and a school bus. LAT *Updated: Looks like the SPPD wants to make this go away. LAT

4. Californian vs. Californian. Rep. Loretta Sanchez, D-Garden Grove, cast the deciding vote to squash an amendment from Rep. Jerry Lewis, R-Redlands, that would have forced the federal government to keep funding the Guantanamo Bay prison. Politico