As I was driving back from a short sojourn in Southern Calfornia to visit family and friends for the Christmas holiday, and as the latest rain storm pelted my windshield with heavy winter precipitation, I had the opportunity to reflect about the end of the year and some of the personal and professional accomplishments of this past year. A programmer on KPFZ radio, Lake County’s public station asked this question of listeners and so I too pondered the highlights of 2019.
This activity was made that more pronounced as I had just finished helping our staff put together our annual end of the year recap, so some of the events of 2019 were still pretty fresh in my recollection and in my subconscious. One accomplishment which immediately sprang to mind was my weekly meetings with the public and local officials which I started when I was editing the Willits paper and which I revived here in Lake County. I will like to take this chance to thank the staff at Angelina’s Bakery in Lakeport for providing me and some of our Record-Bee staff with a regular community meeting place since mid 2018. While I am at it, I should also thank some of the other venues throughout the county which were equally gracious including the Clearlake Senior Community Center, Buddy’s Coffeehouse in Clearlake Oaks, the Lucerne Euro Market and Bistro and the Main Street Bar and Grill in Clearlake.
Another accomplishment I had only a hand in but was very happy to help shepherd along was the conversion from our old Record-Bee website to a more robust and hopefully more user-friendly website and content management system for our readers and subscribers. Technology cannot remain static and so for us, it became imperative to upgrade from the archaic site which the newspaper had been using to a new format. This is a task we started in mid to late 2018 but didn’t really get up and running to what it is today until 2019.
This year we also made some strides in getting our brand and our reporters out into the community and beyond the confines of our comfortable home base here in Lakeport. Recently, deputy editor and reporter Aidan Freeman was asked to join a broadcast on KZYX Mendocino Radio featuring a twice-monthly roundtable of reporters that cover the region called “Byline Mendocino.” As the only Lake County reporter contributing to the program every other Friday, Aidan will be able to offer a fresh local perspective on issues. This should make for an informative media convergence.
In an effort to foster community relations and to promote education and career training, the newspaper partnered with the Lake County Office of Education and was able to host an intern through the work training and transition program, a partnership which we may be looking to revisit in the coming year and beyond. I would like to take this opportunity as well to recognize the efforts of Destiny Mahan, a junior at Clear Lake High School during her tenure with the Record-Bee. Destiny’s dedication proved helpful in our digital transition and with some of our day to day operations during this past 2018-19 school year. This young lady went to class and helped us following her classes for several weeks.
In terms of publication partnerships we were very proud to participate in collaborations with other reporters in northern California and throughout the country to bring our readers a number of special series focusing on issues which impact them both at the state and regional level. One example is the “California Divide” series, a statewide media collaboration with CALMatters and other media outlets designed to raise awareness and engagement about poverty and low-income inequality through in-depth local storytelling and community outreach.
Another example was the “Destined to Burn” series in which USA TODAY Network-California, McClatchy and Media News teamed up to find what can be done to reduce the devastation of devastating wildfires in California. Another such series focused on the issues plaguing the homeless and yet another on our senior citizen population.
The Record Bee offices will be moving from its current location at 2150 Main Street to another location in downtown Lakeport this year. Since the printing presses were dismantled this past year as most of our printing happens off-site, there really is no need for our present cavernous location so our staff and various departments will be operating out of a more streamlined home base in 2020. I am looking forward to helping make sure that transition goes smoothly and I hope that if you have supported the paper this year and in previous years that you will consider doing so in the new year and beyond.
Ariel Carmona is a the managing editor of the Lake County Record Bee.
