Eye Level Pasadena

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.

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.

MountainViews news magazine has video interviews with San Gabriel Valley business people and short video spotlights on local businesses. Here’s the Pasadena page: http://mvn.tv/pasadena.html. I like seeing and hearing the people behind the signs and storefronts around town.