SFGate.com City Brights 'No-Edit' Policy Is A Sham

This blogger felt it necessary to add a post regarding the issue of being blocked from posting at SFGate.com and, according to the emails and exchanges received, due to the Rick Perry blog posts, and the new SFGate.com Executive Director Alana Nguyen's fear that the take presented, and the way it was presented might "get them sued."   (And for the record, my blog posts and videos about LGBT issues have always been consistent and supportive of the LGBT political community.)

First, thank you to the many people who have chimed in with words of support.  The news is that there has been no impact on revenues generated by Zennie62Media properties in the wake of the SFGate.com action. Indeed, only 3 percent of total video view come from blog posts, and about half of the video views are from return visitors. And while the full list of sources of views will not be revealed here, of late, SFGate.com's impact has been minimal at best.

And for those who haven't seen it, here's my video on this issue:

Second, thank you to those bloggers who have joined Zennie62.com in the one day since the blocking action. We will be adding more bloggers, and I encourage SFGate City Brights bloggers to join Zennie62, where frequent bloggers will be paid for special assignments, and who's content and work will be honored and promoted.

Third, regarding what was posted this blogger was operating under this City Brights stated policy:

Editor's note: This is an SFGate.com City Brights Blog. These blogs are not written or edited by SFGate or the San Francisco Chronicle. The authors are solely responsible for the content.

That policy is a sham in my view, and for good reasons.

That appears on all City Brights blog post main pages.  It's a policy that, until the arrival of Alana Nguyen a few months ago, was followed by SFGate.com Executive Producer Kevin Skaggs, and by SFGate.com Director Michelle Slack - both are gone. 

It was also a policy respected by SFGate.com News Director Vlae Kersher and by <em>San Francisco Chronicle</em> Executive Vice President Phil Bronstein.   That written, this blogger has never activity tried to blog a post that would get SFGate.com sued, but has followed this supposed credo of City Brights:

City Brights are prominent local citizens and experts with a unique Bay Area perspective that is often enlightening, sometimes infuriating and always thought-provoking.

The "sometimes infuriating" part was what has came to define my work. At Zennie62 the idea is to take people on.  When Nikky Raney came to blog for our site, where she's now Executive Editor, she went on the march to uncover the truths behind the actions of reality TV show star Tila Tequila.  Nikky was relentless and I encouraged it.  But she never once insulted Tila, even as Nikky was the butt of intense online bullying.  Eventually, Nikky emerged from the effort with a lot of insight and an excellent work of blog posts. 

Still, the standard procedure at both SFGate and Zennie62 has been only to correct something that may be a bit too on the edge.  The practice for every SFGate.com manager has been to send an email or more often readers would send emails, and in both cases, the messages were addressed immediately.  It's outside of City Brights policy - see above for editors themselves to fix the bloggers' blog post. 

That's why Ms. Nguyen's claim to me in an email that her staff would have to spend too much time correcting my blogs, was way outside of City Brights' policy.  The staff had no business taking time to correct my blogs.  As I told Alana, and said in my video, I have a unique style of blogging designed to get search results.  I don't profess to be a "great writer" and I think such concerns are the province of people who don't get media today. 

I haven't the time for that. Moreover, I have not the slightest interest to ask SFGate.com editors to post on their site.  I don't even want to call them.

There are people who thought that I posted a lot for reasons having to do with the SFGate.com front page on that little site.   That some thing that shows how little they know about new media, let alone my focus.  My focus is content for search - period.   Regardless of what the SFGate.com minders did, it never impacted my search results - my high-level of visibility on the Internet never waned.  And I can certainly say that I'd carved out a unique role using my methods. 

SFGate.com should have been mine to run, not Nguyen's.  No disrespect intended, but I'm light-years ahead of her in this avenue. That's a fact. 

But it's too late for that. 

Developing the Zennie62Media network is my focus, and beating SFGate.com along the way is one of my objectives.  I'm declaring media war and will win it!

Herst Corporation has benefited from my efforts without publicly acknowledging them.  When Steve Schawrtz was head of the company's news division, he said that he would take me to dinner in New York as a way of saying thanks for the millions visitors generated during my time (which included an average of 65,000 unique visitors a day).  Never happened.

That's not a problem.  In fact, the blame is on me for taking my eye off the ball of developing Zennie62 - that's not a problem any more. 

To City Brights Bloggers - Be Careful

In closing, to those City Brights bloggers who think they can be a blogger on SFGate.com, you're really just unpaid content producers for the company.  You're not bloggers.  You're not really expected to blog, and if your name gets too big for them, they will try and cut you down.   

Better off jumping ship.  Come to Zennie62, where we'll make a star out of you. 

Stay tuned.

Transbay Joint Powers Authority Approves Historic Labor Agreement

SAN FRANCISCO — Earlier today, the Board of Directors of the Transbay Joint Powers Authority (TJPA) approved an historic agreement with organized labor (*see list of signatory unions below) designed to ensure labor peace and equal opportunity for small, local, disadvantaged, union, and non-union businesses throughout the construction of the $4 billion Transbay Transit Center Project. 

Construction of the Project will create more than 125,000 jobs.  The Project Labor Agreement (PLA) is a pact that all construction and trade workers, both union and non-union, must abide by while working on the Transbay site.  Under the pact, all workers agree to work by the same rules, on an equal playing field.  In return, workers are provided uniform benefits and protections.

The Transbay Transit Center Project will require workers from diverse crafts, including plumbers, carpenters, operating engineers, ironworkers, sheet metal workers, electricians, and laborers.  These workers are represented by 28 separate unions, each with its own separate contract.  Because of the Project Labor Agreement, all unions are now bound to a single labor agreement, maximizing the economy of operations. 

The nature of this construction project will require that multiple contractors and multiple crafts work on the job site at the same time, over an extended period of time, creating a substantial potential for work disruption.  The PLA ensures that construction of the Transbay Transit Center will not be delayed due to strikes or other labor-related issues. 

“This is a critical tool for us,” said Maria Ayerdi-Kaplan, TJPA Executive Director. “Project Labor Agreements have been used successfully since the New Deal to complete major public works projects.  A PLA was critical to the construction of BART, and more recently played an important role in the renovations at the San Francisco International Airport and in the seismic upgrades to the Hetch Hetchy water system.”

“The Project Labor Agreement is a testament to the commitment and hard work of both the Transbay team and organized labor,” said Supervisor and TJPA Board Chairperson Jane Kim.  “Fostering harmonious labor relations on the job site is critical to the success of this transformative project.  I’m particularly happy to see the PLA promotes job opportunities for young people and workers from disadvantaged communities.”

The PLA provides a range of benefits to the Project: standardizing working conditions and wages; minimizing uncertainty about the supply and cost of labor during the project; preventing work stoppages; fostering productive labor relations; reducing the likelihood of cost over-runs; increasing the likelihood of on-time performance; increasing productivity and job site safety; and many others.

The agreement is especially notable for its commitment to small and disadvantaged business enterprises.  It ensures these businesses can compete effectively with large-scale, national construction companies by creating equal opportunity.  The PLA also contains strong, enforceable protections against discrimination, a top priority for the TJPA.

In addition to these benefits, the TJPA is proud to announce a series of provisions that seek to assist veterans and disabled veterans through the “Helmets to Hardhats” non-profit organization and the “Wounded Warrior” program, which connect National Guard, Reserve and transitioning active-duty military members with career training and employment opportunities in the construction industry (for more information, visit http://www.helmetstohardhats.org).

"The Veterans Affairs Commission of the City and County of San Francisco extends its hearty congratulations to all parties to the Project Labor Agreement for the massive construction project which will, under the Transbay Joint Powers Authority bring a modern Transit Hub to reality," said Raymond Wong, President of the Veterans Affairs Commission of San Francisco. "We are particularly gratified that all parties to the agreement have seen fit to insure that under the Community Outreach terms of the agreement, concrete efforts are made to insure that area veterans are afforded specially identified employment opportunities under the Helmets to Hardhats program..." said Wong.

Additional unique and innovative aspects of the agreement include sections that will:

·         Assist local youth to pursue careers in the trades, by a commitment to engage in outreach efforts with high school students to promote involvement in pre-apprenticeship and apprenticeship programs; and

·         Assist women and economically disadvantaged individuals to pursue careers in the trades, with a commitment to recruit applicants for apprenticeship programs from appropriate community-based programs.

The Transbay Transit Center is a visionary, $4 billion transportation and housing project that will transform downtown San Francisco and the Bay Area’s regional transportation system by creating a “Grand Central Station of the West” in the heart of a new, transit-friendly neighborhood surrounding the Transit Center.  Phase 1 of the project (the Transit Center) is set to be completed by 2017 and will serve up to 45 million people annually.

The Transbay Transit Center project is managed by TJPA staff and is overseen by its six-member Board of Directors.

For more information about the project, visit www.transbaycenter.org.

Oakland News: Mayor Jean Quan's Husband Wants Oakland City Council Replaced

Apparently giving a response to efforts to recall embattled Oakland Mayor Jean Quan after her bungling of the Occupy Oakland effort, her husband Floyd Quan wrote an email that has many Oakland insiders up in arms.

The basic read of has Mr. Quan calling for the removal and replacement of the Oakland City Council, and with a form of what he calls "direct democracy" via neighborhood organizations, like the Montclair / Oakland Democratic Club. Many have taken the email as Mr. Quan retaliating for the recall effort.

Here's the email posted "as is":

The idea if neighborhood assemblies is exactly what the Town Halls were meant to be; we did 8 of them with the last being the biggest, almost 600 people at the Oakland Asian Cultural Center. It you see this is as a alternative power structure, so be it. The ideas of issues that flowed from these are the basis for us to work on as priorities for the city, neighborhood by neighborhood.
We wanted to use these to judge the next group of canididates for council next year.

Could these eventally replace the council in that neighborhood meetings could become a direct form of democracy using the NCPC approach ? Of course they could . It could begin with the budgetting process going forward.

But starting all over again does not REQUIRE rejecting everything we have in the meantime. It requires sophistication in building the new community within the old one. That is why we ran Jean for Mayor and that is what we are trying to accomplish. All of these proposals are up for discussion and trying out. The whole purpose of Block by Block Orgnanizing network is the beginning of this new type of organizaition in each neighborhood: based on block by block. The Inside work within the government must serve the outside work: the building of block by block and neighborhood by neighborhood organiatization to activate ALL residents of Oakland to govern themselves. We just celebrated our first annivesary the same night as the city council meeting.

I think the vision of both movements is very similar.

However if Jean is recalled this will suffer a big setback. The situation at City Plaza must be resolved soon. There must be some form of meaningful negotiation so that the larger goals can be worked out together. The GA's can keep on happening at the plaza observing the time limits. The sleeping overnight can occur somewhere else; or decamping and coming back together can and should continue.

Floyd Huen

The idea itself is an undemocratic overthrow idea. But more important, the email itself was ill-advised. Why Floyd wrote it, I have no idea.

Stay tuned.

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Oakand Blogger Banned From SF Chronicle For Rick Perry Gay Rumors

Here's an update to the original Zennie62.com blog post: it seems a Houston-based blog picked up my lasted re-telling of the "Is Rick Perry Gay?" question the mainstream media has avoided asking.

Here's what Chicago Pride wrote:

Houston — Some bloggers want Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry to answer one simple question: "Are you gay?"

The issue is being dredged up again on the San Francisco Chronicle's website by blogger Zennie Abraham.

"It's a good question to ask that's not been asked: why has CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC not followed up on the long-time claims that Rick Perry may be Gay, or at least had a romantic encounter with a man, but they're all over the Herman Cain rumors," Abraham wrote on Monday.

The details of the Perry rumor -- as presented by blogger Mike Starks and the venerable newspaper the Austin American-Statesman -- are that the Perry's wife discovered him in a compromising position with a male staff person in early 2004.

This came on the same day that SF Gate.com Executive Director Alana Nguyen emailed me, and I called her back, about her concerns about my Rick Perry blog posts where, even though the first one was about Herman Cain, she totally removed the post, and did not tell me she was doing that, then I had to repost it.

The point is why does the mainstream media jump all over Herman Cain on the sexual harassment issue, but leave Rick Perry alone on the gay story that's been flying around for some time.

What was told to me by someone at SFGate.com (not Nguyen) said that "She must be getting push back from New York. If they Google 'Rick Perry Gay,' they find your work on SFGate. Also Houston is where our sister publication The Houston Chronicle is."

"New York," is where Hearst Corporation is located.

That was all before the sudden act of being blocked from blogging at SFGate.com happened on Tuesday.

What does this say? It says that suddenly, Hearst Corporation is protecting Rick Perry. My posts on this subject go back to October of 2010.

Here's my video:

Stay tuned.

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