Jeff Pelline's Sierra Foothills Report

Editor’s note: Much of the journalism news is negative nowadays, with cutbacks, declining ad revenue, “paywalls” and more. A bright spot, however, is the Sacramento Bee collaborating with other journalists and bloggers. I’ve noted before how the Bee republishes articles from our free, quarterly magazine, Sierra FoodWineArt and companion website, SierraCulture.com.

It also is collaborating with other food and wine bloggers. Here’s a meeting I’ll be attending tonight in Sacramento, for example. The bottom line: A newspaper’s success will depend on how well it embraces and collaborates in the new media world — rather than fight it.

Dear Sacramento Connect Food Bloggers,

At The Bee, we’ve been talking about you all, wondering how we can make Sacramento Connect better for each of you, The Bee and all our readers.

We’ve also been chatting about what a great food and wine region we live in and some of the fun and exciting things we might do by working closer on some events and coverage. We’d like to invite each of you to sit down with a group of Bee editors and reporters involved in food and wine coverage and discuss ideas aimed at improving what we offer readers.

We want to share our ideas but, more importantly, get feedback, learn what your needs and interest levels are, and get further ideas from you all. Among the ideas we’d like to discuss and brainstorm with all of you:

Collaborating on some content for The Bee’s Food & Wine section, with free-lance money offered for those willing to share some work already done for a blog or take on an assignment (hint: we do pay more for original work).

We’re also interested in offering workshops on food reporting, food photography, writing headlines to improve SEO, etc.

Crowd sourcing and food reviews on The Bee’s dime or with a media credential through The Bee … want to help us review food at the State Fair, rate the wine at Grape Escape?

Want to help plan events involving readers and local chefs, merchants, farmers, winemakers and/or UC Davis faculty aimed at building our knowledge about food and wine in our region?

We hope you can join us for a 90-minute discussion on Wednesday, March 21, at 6:30 p.m. at The Bee in what we hope will be the start of something truly special for all of us and all our readers.

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“The 2012 Republican primary season has featured many head-scratching moments. From audiences that cheer the macabre and the cruel, a fratricidal nomination process in which the front runners seem intent on destroying one another, and a collective descent into madness where the most fringe Right wing values such as nativism, conspiratorial Birtherism, old fashioned white racism, and puritanical Christian theocratic identity politics are on full display, it seems that the bizarre has become the new normal,” writes Salon magazine.

“Since the election of Barack Obama, the Tea Party GOP has embraced a kamikaze-like politics in which they are willing to destroy the proverbial village in order to liberate it. This appetite for destruction has reached a fever pitch during the last few weeks. Rick Santorum and the Republican Party have called for limiting women’s reproductive rights under the guise of defending ‘religion’ from the ‘tyranny’ of the Obama administration.

“A Federal Judge was caught forwarding an email to his friends suggesting that Barack Obama’s conception was the product of drunken sex between his mother Ann Dunham, and a dog. And Rush Limbaugh launched a viciously misogynistic attack on Sandra Fluke, a private citizen, who dared to testify before Congress in defense of a woman’s right to have equal access to birth control.

“On the surface, these incidents appear to be unrelated. They are simply the desperate graspings and mouth utterances of an increasingly fringe and desperate Republican Party which is determined to defeat Barack Obama by any means necessary.

“However, these events are all symptoms of a bigger problem. In the Age of Obama white manhood—and a particular type of conservative white masculinity—is frightened, unsettled, and terrified of its obsolescence. White (conservative) masculinity finds itself in an existential crisis.”

The rest of the article is here.

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Have you been following the travels of OR-7 — the first known wolf in California in 87 years? The young male left Oregon last fall and traveled more than 1,000 miles before arriving in Northern California.

Since then, OR-7 been back and forth across the California and Oregon border. Wolf experts believe he is looking for a mate.

We’ve been having fun with OR-7 at home, joking in our family that he’s crossing the border, because he has a romantic interest in our beloved dog, “Whiskey.” The other day, I printed out a copy of wolf’s photo and showed it to our dog to gauge her interest. She seemed unimpressed.

When the phone rang one day, we joked that it is OR-7, calling from a phone booth in northeastern Oregon to speak with “Whiskey.” (In fact, it was a fax).

Silliness aside, the lone gray wolf — which is wearing a radio collar — has inspired a conservation push to develop a plan to further protect them. Here’s a video:

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