EDITOR'S NOTE

We on the CityBeat editorial team have a major inferiority complex, and it's caused by people like Paul Maco, the guy the San Diego City Council hired to investigate the alleged nefariousness that caused the colossal pension-plan deficit, the guy who submitted the documents that City Attorney Mike Aguirre derisively calls the “whitewash” reports.

In his second investigative report-the one that was required because his first report was deemed incomplete-Maco cited a story by Matt Hall in the Union-Tribune that details a highly newsworthy memo that Richard Vortmann, then a member of former Mayor Dick Murphy's “blue ribbon” committee on city finances, sent to a Murphy staffer, saying the committee had perhaps done the city a disservice by downplaying the pension system's financial problems. Vortmann's memo also intriguingly mentioned “the committee's unstated concern” about financing for construction of Petco Park.

Maco referenced Hall's story even though Hall credited CityBeat for unearthing the Vortmann memo. It was CityBeat politics reporter Dan Strumpf who scooped the entire San Diego press corps on that story. I ask you: Where is the justice? Maybe Maco was still smarting because, back in September 2004, CityBeat published a story questioning the wisdom of the city hiring Maco's law firm, Vinson & Elkins, to both investigate the city and represent it. (Until last week, Vinson & Elkins was representing the city before the Securities and Exchange Commission, which was, and still is, investigating possible securities fraud on the part of city officials.)

All this is to say that life sure ain't easy for a little alternative newspaper trying to make its way in this big, cold, hard world.

CityBeat turns 3 years old this week. This is the first issue of Volume 4 and is as good a time as any to reflect on stories like Strumpf's on Vortmann's memo. That was an exciting week for us; it was when those in San Diego politics and journalism first realized that we were going to be a force in this town. Pretty good for a paper that Bob Kittle, the U-T's editorial page editor, once dismissed as “trash.” I assume Bowtie Bob still refuses to appear with me on KPBS' Editors Roundtable radio show because he was offended by one of our columnists' use, once upon a time, of the word “cornhole.”

One guy who's not offended by such colorful terminology is Dan Savage, editor of The Stranger, one of Seattle's alternative weeklies, and author of “Savage Love,” a rather risqué syndicated sex-advice column. Before CityBeat launched in 2002, we had an internal debate over whether we should carry “Savage Love.” One side thought it would be a bold move that could attract readers because no other local media would be so daring-especially the gay-unfriendly Reader, which would never publish the work of such an unapologetic gay columnist; the other side considered it an unwise gamble that could alienate readers and advertisers. (Let's do a little survey: read “Savage Love” online and tell us if you think CityBeat and San Diego are ready for it.)

Savage is on my mind because he was the anchor speaker at an alternative-journalism workshop I and two members of my staff (Strumpf and associate editor Kelly Davis, the best two-person team a guy could ever hope for) attended last weekend at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill. (Quick shout out to brilliant La Jolla writer Mike Sager: Thanks for inspiring us at the workshop, man. If the journalistic planets are properly aligned, your talk will make CityBeat a better paper.)

Savage's lecture, in the spirit of alternative journalism, was on “how not to suck.” He told the 80 or so assembled writers, essentially, that, if they do their job right, alternative weeklies and the country's progressive-minded urban dwellers will lead a cultural revolution against the likes of George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, the religious right and Fox News. He repeated a common refrain of mine-that journalistic objectivity is a dangerous myth-and said the mainstream media's attempt to “balance” the news renders it powerless. He said alternative weeklies must identify likeminded politicians (he specifically mentioned Donna Frye) and have their back when the going gets tough. He said we have to push the envelope or die. We shouldn't be afraid to sacrifice a few readers, advertisers or distribution sites for direct, honest political commentary or off-color humor. Boldness will serve us well in the long run.

I told Savage that after the 2004 election, I participated in a post-mortem e-mail session with my editor counterparts across the country by angrily lashing out at the jackasses in “flyover country” who reelected a president who's ballooning the national debt in order to take care of his wealthy patrons and who lied his way into a deadly quagmire of a war. And I told him that some of my colleagues lashed back at me for being part of the problem. Elitists like me in the left-leaning media, along with the country's progressive leaders (who are they again?) had failed to understand and empathize with the so-called “values” voters who reelected Bush, they said. What about that? I asked. Should we seek to understand and empathize with the opposition?

“Fuck 'em,” Savage responded-we in the alternative media should be elitist when we're right.

Not everyone agreed with Savage's specifics, but his overall message was generally accepted. Plenty of food for thought, at the very least. One thing that can't be discounted is that Savage's The Stranger, launched by the people who brought us The Onion, has become a more relevant paper in Seattle than the older Seattle Weekly. We at CityBeat consider The Stranger, Portland's Willamette Week, the San Francisco Bay Guardian and Orange County's OC Weekly-not to mention Jon Stewart and The Daily Show-our role models. They're hard-hitting and irreverent, a one-two combination that, to my mind, can save the world.

That two-pronged attack brings to mind Colleen Windsor, press secretary under former Mayor Murphy. We once published an ongoing e-mail thread between Windsor and me that detailed, in a fun way, my efforts to score a one-on-one interview with Murphy that I knew I'd never get. Windsor's in the paper again this week, this time in the sights of Dan Strumpf, who questions City Councilmember Jim Madaffer's use of Community Development Block Grant funds and redevelopment tax-increment money to pay her to do a job for which she seems dubiously qualified. Irreverence and hard-hitting reporting-that's our goal.

CityBeat is young and sometimes immature and we occasionally drop the ball. We're never as good as we think we should be. But we think we're gradually getting better. We'll try not to let our feelings of inferiority-which sneak in whenever we're not invited to a major press conference, we don't get our calls returned or get disrespected in a city report-get in the way.

In a July 24, 2002, story about CityBeat's launch in the U-T, Tim Wulfemeyer, coordinator of San Diego State University's journalism program, said that given the state of newspapers in this country, CityBeat's prospects weren't good. “I'm very skeptical that a new paper will be able to get a foothold here,” Wulfemeyer told reporter Frank Green.

We're 3 years old now, Tim. How are we doing?