Good Ol' Community Journalism

Monday, January 24, 2005, at 07:33AM

By Eric Richardson

The local community paper Canyon News today has a short piece titled "Downtown Skyscraper to be Built." Fascinating, if true, but I have to think this building isn't to be. As I posted ten days ago on blogdowntown, the PR piece that "unveiled" the building seems nothing more than a ploy for somebody to hire the company.

I'm posting this here and not over at blogdowntown because I find the community journalism aspects much more interesting than an imaginary tower. I like the idea of little superlocal papers serving LA neighborhoods, but the fact that your paper is little doesn't mean you can put aside basic journalistic practices, such as not printing a free press release as fact.

The number of names on their staff page is certainly impressive, and it includes three editor-type positions. But then two stories farther up the page we find that Matt "Leinhart" is returning to USC for the 2005 season, so maybe those positions are more titles than functions.