Coverage area of the Daily Journal

Story pitches can also include situations in which someone believes they are treated unfairly, or that they haven’t gotten the results they want from a government agency. These are more story tips and people want us to look into things.

Beyond story pitches, we also pay attention to government meeting agendas, because the decisions there affect regular people. We also localize state, national and international stories when possible.

Then there is the police scanner, that helps us pick up on breaking news. Much of that is also fed through calls, emails and social media. Oftentimes people will call us if they see something strange and seemingly big, and we will check it out.

We have a small staff and we try to cover as much as we can, while making sure our stories are compelling and reflect the interests of our readers. We can do features on new businesses, or areas based on something we discover. We did a story on businesses on Railroad Avenue in San Mateo because I happened to walk down the street and thought the diversity of shops was interesting.

Our stories also come from a sense of wonder, and I don’t mean that in a navel gazing way, but more like, “I wonder what will be built on that vacant lot,” or “I wonder how Proposition 36 will affect our court system,” or “I wonder how many housing units these Senate Bill 330 development proposals will bring to the city of San Mateo.”

We are interested in investigative pieces and will take them on. But we are limited by the number of news reporters we have. At one time, the San Mateo Times had 50 reporters covering the county, we have three. And we don’t actually cover all of San Mateo County. When we started in 2000, we only covered San Mateo and Burlingame and added cities in a sort of concentric circle at first. We added Belmont and San Carlos along with Millbrae and San Bruno, then Foster City and Half Moon Bay. We added Redwood City, then South San Francisco, which was the last new city. That was in 2008. We had a pretty good run of adding cities, but revenue didn’t keep up with my dream of covering the entire county. So we don’t cover Menlo Park, East Palo Alto, Atherton, Portola Valley, Woodside, neither do we cover Brisbane, Colma, Daly City and Pacifica, however, we do have some distribution in those areas. If the circumstances are right, the next cities for our coverage would likely be East Palo Alto and Daly City. But not yet. And maybe not ever.

People sometimes forget that they get the newspaper they support, just like they get the politicians they elect. In this era, a newspaper is a luxury, since advertising revenue that would normally support it goes instead to social media companies and Google. A political adage goes, “Show me your budget, and I’ll show you your values.” Same with newspapers. People may say they value local news, but their ad spending and financial support doesn’t match that. These aren’t woes, just facts.

So the situation becomes, we can’t possibly match community expectations of coverage, which leads to frustration on certain people’s parts who may not understand the reality of our situation and frustration for us since we can’t possibly be everything to everyone.

This happens in sports coverage as well. We have two people covering the entire county (more than the news coverage area) and then some. They cover as many games as they can, and try to include all sports.

This week, we’ve been attacked several times for perceived slights in our coverage that really comes down to a lack of resources on our part. It’s part of the job, but I do think it’s better to ask a question rather than accuse someone you don’t know of something awful. My email is at the end of this column, and I ask that anyone use it any time if they have a question about what we do. I am very responsive, and I’m not saying that to be boastful, it’s just how I’m wired.

If you reach out to members of our team and don’t get a response, email me. Who knows, both of us may even come to a better understanding. But please be polite and professional, I promise to do the same.