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Local Stories by Local People
An Update On Josh Molina
by David Pritchett, Santa Barbara Westsider
Fans of print news about Santa Barbara city government will be interested in the next career chapter of Josh Molina, the veteran reporter for Santa Barbara News-Press who rose up and mastered the City beat during the last half of his 8 years at News-Press. A refugee from the NewsPressMess in early August, Molina landed a plum job with San Jose Mercury News, one of the largest newspapers in California with a daily circulation of almost 250 thousand and covering all of Santa Clara County and portions of adjacent counties.
Molina's first article for the Merc (as the locals call it) was published on Monday, 16th October 2006, and is about the City Council election in East Palo Alto, a struggling and now gentrifying compact city slightly smaller than Goleta and nothing like its famous namesake town to the west. Molina profiles the 6 East Paly City Council candidates competing for 2 open seats. His writing is probing, contextual, and lively in typical Molina fashion, no doubt enhanced by creative pressure building up during his sabbatical of almost 2 months between newspaper jobs.
Mr. Molina has noted that his newspaper bosses hired him with the intention of moving him up to the downtown office on the San Jose City beat, after a few months of seasoning in the Silicon Valley hinterlands.
While the Santa Barbara City Council candidates and incumbents always have their quirky and challenging moments for a reporter, they seem to be quite boring in comparison with the cadre of East Palo Alto candidates profiled in Molina's debut article, entitled "council race features old faces, high stakes". Some of his subjects even have criminal records and a propensity not to return Mercury News phone calls. Molina investigated and wrote up an insightful article anyway, available at the link provided here. (The web site may require free registration to read, but it is easy and worth the trouble.)
Molina's First Article
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