California Forum

In the coming weeks, a group of Bee journalists will be updating our newsroom's ethics guidelines.

It was surprising to note that The Bee's editorial board supported California Attorney General Jerry Brown's flip-flop on the legality of Proposition 8, whose passage defined the word "marriage" as a union between a man and a woman.

A Bee reporter looks ahead to Barack Obama's inauguration and back to a childhood framed by his father's connection to the Deep South.

Today marks the end of a notable era, for both The Sacramento Bee and for public life in California.

In 1994, we founded KIPP, the Knowledge Is Power Program, by starting one middle school in the South Bronx and one in Houston.

Those of us who began as print journalists in the 1950s belong to what was probably the luckiest generation in the business – a rich and rewarding half century with a strong and confident press that knew it was an indispensable part of American democracy. But this is another era, and for me, after 55 years in the business – 31 of them associated with this newspaper – it's time to pitch it in. This is my last regular column for The Sacramento Bee.

Can Gottschalks be saved?

Matt Miller gives me a headache. If his name doesn't ring a bell, wait until his new book, "The Tyranny of Dead Ideas," gains traction in the debate about how to fix The Current Mess.

As a new year begins in troubled times, eight Californians search for what may lie ahead.

Neng Vang: California must invest in young people now, or pay to jail them later

Leon E. Panetta: Governance, budgeting require full overhauls – and we can do it

Charles D. Kolstad: Less traffic, a better life

Julia Connor: Try viewing these tough times as great opportunity

Mark G. Yudof: Reinvest in public higher education to reap the benefits of human capital

Anna Tuttle Villegas: Future success shines from a system that often seems to be failing the state

Ward Connerly: Our spirit will be the force that gets us through

Anh Do: Despite its woes, California remains the right place

Years ago, when I was a reporter, a woman named Carol wrote to let me know how distasteful she found a passage in one of my stories.

There were no champagne corks flying when Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's budget team held a dour briefing on New Year's Eve to unveil his budget proposal for 2009-10.

A week after a gas explosion shook a Rancho Cordova neighborhood and blew up a house, killing one man and critically injuring his daughter and granddaughter, Pacific Gas and Electric Co. finally released its rule book for handling gas leaks. Incredibly, the public still can't see it.

Sacramento dodged a bullet, barely, with the city's first New Year's ball drop at 10th and K. This uncontrolled crowd situation was marred by pockets of disorder. If Mayor Kevin Johnson and event organizers want people to come back a second time, they need to do a post-event analysis – and much, much better planning for 2010.

I'm not much on New Year's resolutions, perhaps because I've never managed to stick to one for more than the first few days of a new year. But I'm going to make one in public and see if that helps.

BAGHDAD – As violence diminishes and U.S. troops draw down, Iraqis are trying to figure out what kind of political system will emerge when American influence fades.

When the new Congress begins this week, many familiar faces will be missing. While the most notable absentees will be Barack Obama and Joe Biden, something tells me we will see plenty of them in coming months.

Like pebbles tossed into ponds, Supreme Court rulings can radiate ripples of consequences. Consider a 1971 ruling that supposedly applied but actually altered the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

Earlier this month, The Bee's editorial board repeated its call for the state to eliminate the Integrated Waste Management Board, calling it a "patronage plum" for termed-out legislators, such as former state Sen. Carole Migden.

Members of the Sacramento Regional County Sanitation District are glad to read that The Bee acknowledges that science should drive policy concerning the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. We have been advocating the same point for years with little traction.

California lawmakers are skilled at issuing resolutions. In the last session, the Assembly alone issued 267 resolutions, ranging from Take Your Dog to Work Day (ACR 103) to other important proposals, such as new postage stamps.

The world has bigger problems than the media's current miseries, so you may have missed these reports from two days last week: Macmillan Publishing eliminating 64 jobs, New York magazine announcing its first layoffs, top-level execs getting the ax at CBS, Crain Communications dumping 6 percent of its work force, a pay freeze at the New York Times, eco-themed magazines succumbing to slumping advertising, National Public Radio laying off 64 staffers, Detroit's two dailies cutting home delivery to three days a week.

When I speak to community groups, I usually begin by describing new or improved Bee coverage, and here at year's end the list is pretty long.

The miracle of bird migration is on full display in the Sacramento region for the next few months, as the large birds – cranes, swans, geese, ducks, and hawks – that nest and raise their young in the far north take a seasonal respite from the harsh arctic winter to enjoy the temperate weather and abundant food sources of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Valley.

Once again the Sacramento Bee has used cheap, sensational headlines to drive a wedge between the government employees on whom so much of our local economy depends, and private-sector employees. While the Dec. 21 story on the amount of overtime earned by firefighters in the Sacramento Fire Department was well written and factual, those facts were not seen by anyone who was too infuriated to read beyond the charts and first few sections of the story.