Journalism, once a noble calling, is now an embarrassment; reporters have reputations worse than used car salesmen.
I did newspaper work 35 years, then morphed into a private investigator. Asked about my former career I tell people I managed a sunglass kiosk at Coddington.
It wasn’t always so, or even recently. In Ukiah during the 1980s and ‘90s there roamed honest reporters and editors determined to pierce veils of secrecy hiding unsavory deeds. Hard-edged reporters like Charlie Rappleye, Peter Page and Gale Holland kept their fingers on the pulse, noses in the air and eyes on the powerbrokers in Mendocino County.
That trio, and others, once made the Daily Journal a strong, respected publication statewide. Now KC Meadows, the Journal editor and a top shelf reporter herself, is down to one (1) reporter on a newspaper that for a time boasted a newsroom of more than a dozen.
(Justine Frederiksen would have complemented newspaper staffs of the 1980s and ‘90s but she was only about eight years old at the time.)
Today the world of journalism is a hollowed out remnant; famous newspapers once held in high esteem have withered and died or turned into weak online versions. They don’t get much funding, they don’t get much advertising and they don’t have many readers. They don’t have much future.
We needn’t wonder who is keeping an eye on government and its actors as they push big stacks of chips across the poker tables of municipal and national politics. It’s never been a pretty sight, watching laws being created in congress or state legislatures (the process is often compared to watching sausage made in a slaughterhouse) but in 2024 it must be ghastly.
Amid this grim business has come news the Anderson Valley Advertiser has succumbed to the triple onslaught of reduced circulation, lowered income and advanced age. Result, and probably only a temporary one, requires moving its operation out of the past (paper, ink, delivered to your door) and into the present (it would be charitable to call it the future) of online websites or whatever temporary stopover the Mighty AVA is forced to make.
And yet: Old school bolts of news from elderly veterans from days of yore, are once again splashing across front pages in local newspapers. Big stories are being covered comprehensively.
This sudden burst of punchy reporting is partly the work of the long-retired Mike Geniella, a veteran bear who recently emerged from his cave, looked about, and did not like what he saw. He may have growled.
Geniella, ex-Press-Democrat reporter, did some PR work for county DA Dave Eyster, and all went well until it didn’t; Geniella lumbered back to his cave.
But the pervasive scent of smelly business proved too much. A plea bargain for an ex-UPD police officer had a fishy aroma; Geniella took to the keyboard and said so repeatedly, always with a kidney punch for Eyster. From there Geniella became Born Again journalist, spreading the news that most of those in power would have preferred to keep behind the veil. He watched as county supervisors terminated elected officials and got to work railing at them. He dragged Eyster back into the spotlight for more abuse.
The past year has been uncomfortable for the DA, Ukiah boss Sage Sangiacomo and his heavy, Shannon Riley. Deals and the oily machinery that makes them run have come under scrutiny. Plans to rebuild the Palace Hotel were aired out and the fumes gagged readers and forcing leaders to interrupt meetings, re-schedule hearings and panic in private. Chips have fallen.
Geniella’s not alone. Doing the hard work but for a lot longer and minus the retirement frolics has been the unsung hero of the AVA, Mark Scaramella. Scaramella has toiled for decades within the penumbra of the countywide shadow cast by Emperor Bruce Anderson, but remains as anonymous as an offensive lineman with the 49ers.
Scaramella does the hard, tedious work of keeping every department in Mendocino County government under scrutiny. He reads the budgets, he interprets dodgy, misleading responses to straightforward questions, he knows where a lot of skeletons are buried and he’s forever in the hunt for more.
Mark Scaramella is a true hero, and I don’t have to ask if Geniella and Anderson agree. Mark has been at it so long and has done it so well that it’s a shame his work tends to blend in with the wallpaper of the AVA’s ever-gray columns (and columns and columns) of gray print.
He too grows old. We will not see any of their likes again. When Geniella, Anderson and Scaramella shuffle offstage, and that day can’t be far off, our information sources will suffer immediately and political operatives will rejoice heartily.
(To be absolutely clear, I finished this column on Tuesday, June 11, 2024, and emailed it to the Daily Journal for publication Sunday June 16. Minutes later wife Trophy read a sweet Facebookie thing by Geniella himself praising something I wrote. Quid pro Quo!?! I’d rather he paid me $50. TWK says to relax because nobody will read either.)
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