I’ve covered Santa Clarita on this little blog for 2.5 years now. It’s been a great run, and I’ve learned a lot. But I am so close to burning out on this website and this town.
I think that’s probably why I changed the layout last week. The old layout felt stuffy, constrained, boring, standard, conventional, conformist and predictable. It had rows, boxes, lines, color patterns, all designed to make things fit properly. In a sense, it was a master-planned blog, just like this is a master-planned community.
That layout, just like this town, influenced my own behavior. I felt compelled to write as best I could in a journalistic style. I even used an AP Stylebook in some stories to make sure things appeared Just Right. I wanted to write as well as the best journalists I read, and my subject matter was Santa Clarita, for whatever its worth.
But really, who the hell was I trying to impress? I certainly have no career possibilities growing out of this website and its readership of less than 500 a day, the advertising money I receive is nice but amounts to little more than spending money for various other hobbies. There’s no independent blogger awards coming my way, no one who does “Citizen Journalism” even knows where Santa Clarita is at!
I’ve tried to mix it up by bringing in other writers, but for better or worse, it seems this is my blog and other people aren’t comfortable writing posts on it.
One thing I’ve learned about Santa Clarita in the 2.5 years I’ve covered it is that the stories don’t change that much. X Development equals Y level of outrage. X Petty Crime Story yields Y comparison to the San Fernando Valley. X story on traffic congestion yields Y motorist outrage. X Gala Event was attended by Y Group of Good Ol’ Boys. And so on, you get the picture. I’m of the opinion that there’s far more to Santa Clarita than stories like these, and one goal of this website was to find them and report them. Yet, now even I’m losing interest.
The most interesting story I’ve blogged about in the lats two years may surprise you. It wasn’t the claims of collusion at City Hall, the murders I’ve researched and asked about, the never ending chain of development approvals, or the sporting events. No, the most interesting story in my mind was a Daily News article about a year ago in which Judy O’Rourke wrote about the discovery of some very old pottery and tools used by the original inhabitants of the SCV, the Tataviam people. The artifacts were unearthed during the construction of West Hills (or West Creek, I can’t remember) and were hundreds of years old. The idea that something so old used by a vanished people was found in the dirt in a place so new and ever-changing has stuck with me for the last year.
But stories like that are few and far between.
These are some of the reasons why the new layout is so different. It’s just free-form. No lines. No constraints. Just black text on a white screen. Chaotic yet ordered enough that it can’t be mistaken for a CalArts production. It is, in effect, an empty piece of notebook paper, ready for my doodles, chicken scratchings, and copious misspellings. Heck, I might even fold it up into a paper airplane and just set it off into the distance.
In short, I’ll continue writing on this site, and I’ll continue doing the Daily Brief in the style you’re accustomed to (80% said not to end it after all!) but you can expect other things to change. Hopefully you’ll stick around.
Thanks.