Good news versus bad news
by Linda Martin
Happy Independence Day! It seems like a good time to introduce this new page to our website. Our country is 225 years old – not a long time, but enough time to really muck the government up a bit. Still, the foundation is solid, so hopefully things will get better in the future rather than continuing to deteriorate.
I know we at the new Happy Camp News should be reporting all the news, both good and bad, however since this is a new venture, I don’t want to tackle the controversial topics too soon. Part of me would like the whole world to think that Happy Camp has no problems. It is one of the most remote towns in California, a village of 1100 deep in the Klamath National Forest. We live seventy miles from the nearest California city, which is only about 7,000 people. To the north, we’re forty miles from a small town in Oregon.
I would like to think that people can go to a remote town in the forest and live a crime-free existence, with only good things happening. But reality is that even here, there are problems every now and then. Why, back in the seventies, there was even a bank robbery according to an old news article I read at the Siskiyou Historical Society Museum in Yreka. I can just imagine the robbers trying to make a “get-away” on the Klamath River Highway! How far did they get, anyway?
My plan for this online news service is to report on the good news to begin with. There’s plenty of that going on here, especially with all the celebrations of the 150th anniversary of the founding of Happy Camp. Later, once I’m used to news writing again, I’ll probably feel motivated to report bad news too. Let’s just hope that this summer there won’t be anything “too” bad, that can’t be ignored.
My main news writing experience comes from working for a Libertarian newspaper in the Central Valley ten years ago. I have never been a member of a political party, so I’m not planning to feature any one political ideology over another, but I liked the newspaper’s philosophy of printing all the news, including news that the major dailies are afraid to print. Naturally here, I’m not selling advertising as the print newspapers must do, so I won’t be constrained by worries about losing my major advertising income if I say the wrong thing. Also there’s no corporate interests owning this news service, dictating what I can or cannot print. I like that. [Happy Camp News started as a public service venture.]
I have my issues I would like to write about, but am holding off, in large part because I know they are not your issues. I would like for the website to reflect the many opinions of the people in this forest, and hope some of you will feel motivated to write something for your neighbors to read here.