Eye Level Pasadena

James Macpherson of Pasadena Now emailed me this weekend (and I’m posting this with his permission):

I wanted to ask you if you know of 2-3 bloggers who are foodies who would agree to review Pasadena restaurants for me… a lot — like WEEKLY.

Advantage: They can get into any restaurant and eat for free!!!

Advantage: Their article in PN will drive traffic to their blog!!!

Disadvantage: They could not post their story on their blog, because: (a) I want to retain exclusivity on stories they write for me; (b) they get to eat for free!!!!!!

I would love to post 3 new restaurant reviews a week, so I am looking for 3 foodies (one person would just explode if they ate that much!!!)

He’s hoping that they can take pictures to go with the reviews, too. Please contact James Macpherson for more information about how to get started.

Water drops on my copy of the Pasadena Star-News

The morning was still cool.

I walked out in my bare feet, and pieces of pine needles stuck to them.

I’m a subscriber

I’m taking a couple of journalism classes at PCC because I think it will help me become a better blogger. One of the classes requires students to subscribe to a physical newspaper, so I chose the Pasadena Star-News. I read the Star-News (as well as Pasadena Now, of course) online already. I like to read my news online. Even more specifically, I like to read it in my RSS reader. But I also want to support local professional journalism. I’ve been thinking about this lately, and even after this class is over, I’m planning on keeping my subscription to the Star-News because I want to support local journalists. I wish there were subscription options for people like me who don’t want paper dropped off at their house every morning.

The Pasadena City College Courier is using WordPress for its new website. Comments are enabled (although you need to register with the site before you can comment), articles have permalinks, and the site publishes an RSS feed.

Hats after hours at World Hats Mart

Rubber duckies in the window of the California School of Culinary Arts

Cliff’s Books was open

Pasadena Star-News offices

I just noticed that Pasadena Now has comment fields in the bottom portions of its new stories. I don’t know of any other comprehensive Pasadena news source that is doing this. This is a big step in the direction of encouraging active community discussion about local politics, programs and events. Kuddos to James Macpherson and the Pasadena Now team!

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Update: Whoops. Maybe I got too excited too fast. Right now, the comments are posting (after review – which is understandable) to the “Letters to the Editor” section of the Opinion page. Imagine what it would be like if comments were posted under the articles they were about, though. People could have more productive online conversations and build on each other’s ideas without needing to go hunting for all of the pieces of what’s been said already about an article.

Pasadena Now has activated its RSS feed! The feed contains article titles only, but this is groundbreaking. It looks like Pasadena Now is the first comprehensive Pasadena news source to offer an RSS feed of any of its content.

(Wondering what RSS is? More info here.)

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Update 8/15/07: Jeremiah Small points out that the Pasadena Star-News publishes an RSS feed, too. It’s a feed of the titles and descriptions of the most popular articles.

There’s a special section called To stop the killing over at the Pasadena Star-News website with links to stories about the recent gang violence in our community, video footage from the march earlier this month, and letters from residents about what should be done. The Star-News invites us to participate in the conversation:

“E-mail your hopes and fears — and your best suggestions…. Your comments will be posted on our Web site in the effort to bring peace and reconciliation to the community.” (link)

Cross-posted at Pasadena Conversations.

Great ideas by Hugh Macleod of Gaping Void (Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs-NonCommercial 1.0 license)

This cartoon at Gaping Void today made me think about all the uproar online about James Macpherson of Pasadena Now‘s hiring of Indian writers to report on Pasadena city council meetings.

City Comforts: How to Build an Urban Village by David Sucher

City Comforts blog: Distance sometimes provides objectivity

Sucher’s City Comforts is one of my favorite community building books. It shows how to arrange city space to encourage neighborly community interaction.