by Timothy Rutt
It's October: a significant month for us.
Outside of a few experimental posts we made in September, Altadenablog officially was started six years ago this month, October, 2007. We've told this story many times: how, after five years of living in Altadena, we despaired of finding anyplace to go about news of this community. Information about our vibrant arts and cultural community was scattered all over the place. Crime news only appeared when something really bad happened. Bread and butter local government news, i.e. town council and land use committee, wasn't being covered at all by anybody. Wonderful only-in-Altadena events, such as the summer concert series, the Waldorf School Elves' Faire, and Christmas Tree Lane, weren't being given their due. A unique local culture centered around small-scale, artisanal food, was in its infancy. So much else. So we tried this out to see what would happen.
A few significant events come to mind:
- Among the first things was we picked up in the first few months was a couple of sponsors, and one of them, Webster's Fine Stationers, is still here with us and under Lori and Scott Webster's tutalage, has itself grown beyond stationery into a place that celebrates and promotes local arts and culture, a true gem that celebrates Altadena. They deserve a sincere thank you for seeing something here that was local and worth supporting.
- The second significant event was, of course, the Station Fire, which put us on the map as a serious contender. Jim Rainey, in a feature about us in the LA Times, criticized that we weren't running pictures of firemen on the front lines, which was true; for various reasons, that couldn't happen. But we always felt that, if you wanted pictures of firemen, you could get them elsewhere. What you couldn't get was real-time news about whether your Altadena neighborhood was going to be evacuated, or where to put your pets and horses to keep them safe. That's the level of news we're all about, and we've always been about telling the stories that weren't being told, here in Altadena.
- The third significant event was that it reinforced the value of giving the people a place. A lot of our coverage of the Station Fire came in from people in the streets and in the neighborhoods, telling us what was happening when it was happening. The people of Altadena are all deputized as our correspondents, and one of our tasks is letting you tell your own stories, too. In that spirit, we have to credit, among the many extraordinary local correspondents, the peripatetic Bill Westphal, master of the Weather Cam that graces the top of our page, and photographic man-about-town; and our reliable go-to freelancer, Laura Monteros, an old Herald-Examiner news hound, who always gives insightful and interesting local stories that we can't get.
- Number four for us was a job offer: AOL's Patch offered us the job as their local editor when they were moving in on Altadena. It would have been nice to draw a regular salary, but (1) we didn't think their cookie-cutter business model, of fitting every city in America into a Patch-shaped box, did justice to the unique place that is Altadena, and (2) we thought we would have a better idea of what served the people than a business that took its marching orders from New York City. Don't get us wrong: Patch had many good people working for them over the years, and, under its first local editor Dan Abendschein, certainly kept us on on our toes. They also had the resources to cover things we couldn't. But we didn't want to work for a place that had no room for, for example, long feature stories about individual Altadenans, which is our favorite kind of story to do. They didn't have the buy-in to the community that requires us to cover every single town council meeting, as we have for over five years (Patch has only showed up once or twice in the past year, and that was only because of the promise of a fight loomed). We turned Patch down, because we like what was being created between us and the people of Altadena. Don't regret that decision for a second -- it's the best one we've ever made.
- And number five was being named the Altadena Chamber's first Business of the Year. We're not a big business, in any sense, and we operate largely out of our home and sometimes out of the library or the Coffee Gallery. But we think it was a nod to our significance to the community, and a tip of the hat to the many small and home-based businesses that operate here. We're pretty proud to be a part of this community, and the longer we live here, the more interesting and important it proves to be. This is the best job we've ever had.
We love this work. We love Altadena!
But we couldn't be doing this without the Altadenablog sponsor team of local businesses and organizations. Thank you to all of them for their support, and when you're patronizing them, and you like what you see here, tell them "thank you," too.
Time for our monthly salute to Altadenablog's sponsor team:
Friends of the Altadena Library
Judy Rubin Architectural & Previews Specialist
Linda Seyffert & Associates/Podley Properties
Please thank our local business sponsors by patronizing them -- and tell them you read about it on Altadenablog!
ALTADENABLOG IS ALTADENA BUSINESS!
