Time for a talk show

Here's a quiz for you Los Angles Yahoo users who cannot help but be drawn to the line item of local news stories that you see when you open the page to get to your mail:

1. Story and photo of a one-legged man who overcame 30 years of alcohol and drug abuse to win the L.A. Marathon (guess the city name on the lead line)

2.Photo of big waves challenging surfers (guess city name on lead line)

3. Sunset photo featuring kite-flying contest. (see above)

If you guessed San Pedro in the first inspirational story, you would be right. The second and third: take your pick of Palos Verdes, Redondo Beach, Manhattan Beach, or, in the case of the kite-flying contest, possibly land-locked Torrance.

After a couple of years reading the Daily Breeze, which also feeds Yahoo these local stories, it came to me: I might possibly be in danger of turning into one of those loud-mouthed opinionated, semi-paranoid talk show hosts who can't shut up when they get on a tear.

These days information comes at us from thousands of sources and this fluid ocean of data may seem innocuous when you can pick and choose the things you relate to, but once a person (say, me) sees a trend in the way news is being reported, the pattern that emerges is so striking it's time to start putting foil on the windows and replacing the metal fillings. At least it would be if I was actually paranoid.

San Pedro, in my opinion as you all know so well, is a victim of this kind of pattern reporting, and it didn't take long for me to start complaining, even though I wasn't sure that anyone in a position to do anything about it would even listen. At least not enough to make a difference to the lackluster traffic in our newly restored downtown, or the general mud slinging that goes on in chat rooms where anonymous posters refer to San Pedro as 'little Mexico', and a 'slum'.

I had a lot of statistics to back up my claims that Pedro was getting the shaft. Crime in this city of 81,000 is merely 'average' compared to LAPD statistics (with six incidents including a bar fight and four burglaries in a recent week). In a timely check of high profile crimes like murder and assault I found that my old stomping grounds in Los Feliz (part of the Hollywood Division) was worse. Not news to me: When I lived there cars were stolen off the street regularly, air support helicopters hovered, graffiti to be painted over, and once a police chase ended right under my bedroom window, tires squealing, bullhorns, the whole bit. And yet, Los Feliz has the halo of a place where the buzz is good, where the hipsters congregate, and it's written up in French tour magazines as a gem in Los Angeles.

San Pedro's image problem was really galling, so about six months ago, armed with a list of all the front page stories about our town along with a list of the 'feel good' photos they posted regularly, I wrote a letter to the publisher of the Breeze. I simply pointed out the pattern, and asked her why the paper focused on the poorest population of our city, and never once sent a photographer to capture our beaches, sunsets, or the vast seascapes we share with wealthy Palos Verdes neighbors. Food drive? San Pedro. Toxic port issues? San Pedro. Rising above adversity? San Pedro. Sober living? San Pedro.

Somebody was writing these stories, and some editor was directing the editorial content. It seemed that the folks at the Daily Breeze were of the same opinion as the anonymous racists, and had written off this port town long ago.

My other complaint focused on the city crime stats reported every day. Torrance, a larger city with it's own socio-economic issues, (and home base to the Breeze) seemed to be a very special, clean, and safe place to live. San Pedro, on the other hand, featured a slap-up of some kind followed by home burglaries and what they referred to as 'shots fired'. No one was killed in these altercations, and the injuries were not listed, but anyone reading these reports would give the place a wide berth. And who could blame them? They'd never set foot in San Pedro and were never likely to.

Unless you were a New Yorker, maybe.

I must have intuited something because soon afterwards the news stories changed a bit, and the San Pedro focus shifted from misfit makes good (inspirational) or downtown struggling (hard news) to a wider variety of human interest and news features. Not a major sea-change, and certainly no color piece of some of our beautiful coastline or beach areas has yet to grace the front page, but an improvement.

As for my charge that the crimes were not accurately being reported on a weekly basis for media release, I was vindicated yesterday when the L.A. Times (the real big city newspaper) reported that the City of Torrance Police Dept. was selectively filtering out certain crimes from these reports and skewing the stats. Rapes, assaults, robberies, missing. In my letter to the publisher, I surmised that LAPD, which reports for San Pedro (we are in their Harbor Division) has no agenda for promoting tourism or property values so they just say it like it is. But all the other cities in the South Bay have their own police departments, and I suspected they were joined at the hip with other city officials, cognizant of their city image, and there was no independent monitoring of the accuracy of their stat reports.

I love it when I stumble on something.

The battle to accurately portray San Pedro goes on, and this is as much a PR issue as it is a media issue. We have only a tiny (and nascent) citizen-run Visitors & Convention Bureau because like everything else that was taken away when Pedrans were duped into voting for annexation to Los Angeles in 1909, the big budget Los Angeles Visitors & Convention Bureau doesn't do squat for us. And I mean that nicely.

I've been asked if I'd be interested in running for City Council if Janice Hahn makes it to Congress. This is probably the only time I've really regretted not being a citizen. But I can continue to work from behind the scenes to make this place as transparent to the rest of Southern California as it should be. Not perfect, but a work in progress. Not unlike the human condition: always room for improvement but does better when given a compliment now and then.

I think San Pedro needs a publicist.