Oakland Focus News | Oakland News Online Blog

More at East Bay Express I just saw this over at the Express Blog... “The East Bay Express is moving to Oakland's Jack London Square area on May 16. The Express has been in Emeryville for nearly eight years, after spending its first 23 years in Berkeley. The paper is leasing office space at 620 Third Street, between Martin Luther King Jr. Way and Jefferson Street, three blocks west of Broadway.” GREAT! Welcome to Oakland Bob Gammon, but does that mean your newsroom staff will diversify? Would be nice to see a video with some people of color representing the Express. At any rate, welcome to Oakland.

More at Today in Montclair : “In Oakland, the best-known White Elephant Sale is about to celebrate its 50th birthday!  There’s a preview sale tomorrow, followed by the full event in March. The Oakland Museum Women’s Board (OMWB) organizes this annual extravaganza to raise funds for the museum.  They raised only $500 back in 1959, the first year the sale was held.  Fast forward, and the OMWB hauled in a whopping $1.28 million last year.”

The once popular news site "The Grand Lake Guardian" is in a coma and according to my source, it's not coming out of it anytime, soon.   "He's gone on to other things" my source said, "He's not done anything in a while." That's for sure.  The topmost post is dated "2008-02-13" which was last year before Valentine's Day.  It's too bad for the area around Lake Merritt, which came to adopt the site in a way, if only because Jim Ratiff, the founder, had collected a group of some of Oakland's most involved Lake citizens. But as happens with blogs from time to time, the people lose interest.  A blog must be updated each day just to keep fresh.  And that's the problem.   Jim's site was more of a website than a blog, which causes more work just to update.  I can see why he may have tired of the whole effort: he used the wrong kind of platform. If you're going to do this you have to make it easy on yoursel...

I saw what is an interesting take on Blogging and how it's like an election campaign, and since we just experienced and participated in one, I thought it was appropriate. I found it at Problogger and it's by "Trish" of "Ideas for Women." I disagree that a Blogger should take a break, not that Bloggers should not, but one has to make sure there's a constant churn of information -- posts -- daily. I read somewhere -- I think here at Technorati -- that the most successful blogs had between four and 30 posts a day. That's work. Here's an excerpt: I followed this year’s U.S. presidential election pretty closely on T.V. and also volunteered for one of the candidates. Over I time I began to notice some parallels between running a successful campaign and a successful blog. I don’t plan to ever run for president - but I would like to have a more successful blog. I would also like to share what I learned and hope that it will be helpful to ...

I just saw the SFGate online article about Oakland City Admininstrator Deborah Edgerly and it has the headline, "Paid to do nothing". That's an insult and a smear, especially since the same article explains that Edgerly ran a meeting because Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums was late to attend it. The Chronicle's Chris Heredia wrote: On Friday, Dellums asked all city department heads to report directly to him until further notice. Edgerly, however, ran the first half of a weekly meeting of city department heads on Monday when Dellums was running late. So that means she's not paid to do nothing -- she's doing something . But most SFGate readers will just see that stupid headline and then make dumb comments in the comments section. Then they will communicate that to others and the public will have the wrong view of Miss E. Look, I don't think the SF Chronicle should do that. It's not right and it's certainly a smear of the first order.

Starting today, Rich Lieberman, the Oakland-native and Skyline High graduate commonly known as "Big Vinny" from his two-year stint as the character "Big Vinny" for Round Table Pizza, has joined the Blogsphere. Currently, Rich appears in the online column section for Matier and Ross in the San Francisco Chronicle. Rich has a long history in Bay Area media circles and knows what's going on with whom and where. Rich's new Blog is called "Big Vinny's Bay Area" and features items, jokes, and news from one of the best connected people in the Bay Area. Visit http://bigvinnysbayarea.blogspot.com