Jeff Pelline's Sierra Foothills Report

In a coup for the Golden State, California-trained “I’ll Have Another” won the Kentucky Derby in an upset victory.

“I’ll Have Another’s” home is at Hollywood Park in Southern California and is trained by Santa Monica-resident Doug O’Neil. It was O’Neil’s first Kentucky Derby win.

After the race, in an endearing moment, O’Neil’s school-age son told a national TV audience that he was going to get a hot tub as a result. (His dad promised him one if “I’ll Have Another” won the race).

Our family met up with O’Neil — a longtime figure on the California racing scene — in a breakfast gathering at the Del Mar Racetrack last summer, along with other early-morning fans. He’s a gregarious character, wearing a colorful hat.

I asked him about Lava Man, a famous retired racehorse that O’Neil also trained, who now works as a “stable pony” — escorting horses including “I’ll Have Another” onto the race track. Lava Man was present in today’s Kentucky Derby.

Owner J. Paul Reddam is a former teacher of philosophy and logistics at the University of Southern California. The young jockey Mario Gutierrez races in Vancouver and Southern California.

Here’s O’Neil winning at Santa Anita with “I’ll Have Another” (a wonderful name for a racehorse).

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Today is Cinco de Mayo but it also is Kentucky Derby Day. Here are recipes for the margarita, as well as the mint julep.

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Blogging and social media continue to reshape our local media landscape, as I’ve written many times before.

After belittling and being defensive about my “scoop” on an upcoming meeting to consider merging the Grass Valley and Nevada City school districts (including the mention that one meeting was held), The Union newspaper ran a big story on the unprecedented merger talks this morning (behind an online “paywall.”)

There’s a pattern here. This comes after recent “new media” scoops of American icon Willie Nelson coming to Nevada County this summer and the “mega-resort” proposal for our county being discussed — first reported on Sierra Foothills Report.

In a recent article, the Mountain Messenger pointed out: “Getting local news in a small community like this has always been a problem. There have been two traditional sources, a daily newspaper and a radio station, and, if a news event is spectacular it might be given a few seconds on Sacramento television. All that has changed.”

“Who is opening or closing a local business? Pelline will probably have it first. What was NH2020 all about, really? R. L. will tell. What’s that burning? Is the fire coming this way? Go to YubaNet to find out.

“The Union newspaper, often referred to by its critics as the “Un” paper, and the “Tea Party Gazette,” has distanced itself from its modern-day readers by putting up a paywall – making its access by Internet something like the old toll roads that once spotted this area: expensive and, it seems, something to be avoided.”

What’s interesting is that while The Union is belittling bloggers, the Sacramento Bee is collaborating with them. It is aggregating blogging content from all over the region and selling ads around them — a practice that is a growing money-maker.

A former staffer of the Nevada-based newspaper chain that owns The Union recently won a prestigious Knight Fellowship at Stanford and “will test a revenue generation system for local news websites combining advertising and social media,” as I reported the other day.

Change is at our doorstep.

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“Drivers moving along Chicago’s inbound Eisenhower Expressway on Friday may have been surprised to see Ted Kaczynski, the so-called Unabomber, staring at them from a massive billboard. “I still believe in global warming. Do you?” the billboard read in large maroon letters. Just below was the Web address http://www.heartland.org,”; the New York Times is reporting.

“Hours later, the digital billboard was gone. It seems that the ad campaign, sponsored by the conservative Heartland Institute, had bombed.

“We know that our billboard angered and disappointed many of Heartland’s friends and supporters, but we hope they understand what we were trying to do with this experiment,” the institute said late Friday afternoon said in a statement. “We do not apologize for running the ad, and we will continue to experiment with ways to communicate the ‘realist’ message on the climate.”

“In opening the campaign, Heartland had said that Mr. Kaczynski would not be the only persona gazing down on Chicago’s commuters. Among his brethren would be Charles Manson, Fidel Castro, Osama bin Laden and James J. Lee, the institute said.



“The Heartland Institute, a libertarian think tank based in Chicago, describes its chief mission as promoting free-market solutions to social and economic problems. Recently, though, the institute has drawn considerably more news media attention for its efforts to advance skepticism about climate change.”

The rest of the article is here.

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