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I was just informed today, Saturday evening January 10th, 2009, that BART is holding a "community meeting" on Sunday, January 11th, which is tommorrow, from 2 PM to 4 PM at 101 Eighth Street, the Joseph P. Bort MetroCenter in Oakland, off Lake Merritt BART. The timing of the meeting is questionable because I got the intel on it today (Saturday) in the afternoon. And it was clear that today was the date of the creation of whatever release went out on the meeting. I think BART's officials were trying to prevent the activation of New Media to annouce the meeting to any possible "undesirables" that may attend. In other words, they were trying to control the spread of the message. It's clear BART has learned NOTHING from this entire affair. The knoweldge of the shooting and the reaction to it was the child of New Media. Traditional media played a bit part because it was not able to do what New Media can do, constantly repeat an event in the pasttim

More at Inside Bay Area : “RICHMOND — News this week of arrests in the Dec. 13 gang rape of a lesbian brought relief to many in the community, some of whom were so outraged that they led police to breaks in the case. But even as the resolution is lauded, gay-rights advocates and local and national crime statistics portray a gloomy truth about hate crimes against people based on their sexual orientation. Until the root causes of bias toward lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people are addressed, "we'll continue to have hate perpetrated against us," said Shawna Virago, a program director for the San Francisco-based advocacy group Community United Against Violence. The group reported 304 crimes against Bay Area gays in 2007, the latest year for which complete statistics were available. That amounted to an approximate 6 percent increase from 2006.” -- What I want to know is who's doing this and why? What's the deal?

More from "BIG VINNY" : “MASS LAYOFFS AT BAY AREA TV/RADIO TO BEGIN NEW YEAR; TED ROBINSON AS NEW 49ER VOICE: CLOSE HAPPY NEW YEAR? AS 2009 hITS, A "HUGE" AMOUNT OF INDUSTRY PINK SLIPS WILL FLOOD THE SF-OAKLAND RADIO/TV MARKET, THE NATION'S 4th LARGEST. AN INDUSTRY SOURCE SAYS RADIO WILL GET THE BRUNT OF THE HITS, PARTICULARY THE "SECONDARY" SOURCES STATIONS USE, LIKE METRO TRAFFIC. KGO RADIO, OWNED BY CITIDEL, WILL SEE SIGNIFICANT LAYOFFS, AS WILL KNBR, OWNED BY ATLANTA'S CUMULUS BROADCASTING. THE SOURCE OF THE LAYOFFS? CONTINUING AD REVENUE SHRUNK TO RECORD LOWS DUE TO A STRUGLING ECONOMY. WATCH FOR DETAILS” Richard Liberman, AKA "Big Vinny", has done a great job covering the Bay Area Media scene. Visit his blog at bigvinnysbayarea.blogspot.com

More at The Oakland Tribune From the Trib: "OAKLAND — Barring any deadly New Year's Eve revelry, Oakland is poised to finish with 124 homicides in 2008, three fewer than the 127 recorded in 2007. Regarding numbers, it is not much of a change. But in a city where homicides seem to get more public interest than other crimes and in a city looking for any kind of good news when it comes to crime, it was reason for optimism. "I'm the eternal optimist," Assistant Police Chief Howard Jordan said Wednesday. "Three less is better than three more. But we are not satisfied with that, and we will work harder to get those numbers down to double-digit reductions." There were eight homicides in December, six fewer than in December 2007. One of the eight was a man who died from a beating in April. Another was a determination through new evidence that what had been considered an accidental killing in July was actually a homicide."

More at Big Vinny's Bay Area : “A 'good tip' from someone in the biz: not confirmed, but developing...Monday, Dec. 22, 2008 Ted Robinson, a prominent national and Bay-Area broadcast veteran, is set to become the new radio voice of the San Francisco 49ers, according to an industry source. Robinson, who is NBC's lead announcer at Wimbledon and who also covers the US Open Tennis Championships for USA Network, is set to take the prestigious spot vacated by Joe Starkey, who announced he is leaving after the conclusion of this season, Starkey's 20th year. He will continue to announce Univ. of California college football.” -- Big Vinny's the source for all that's happening in Bay Area media! Check him out!

More at Editor and Publisher : “CHICAGO David Cohen founded the newspaper group in California that became Silicon Valley Community Newspapers (SVCN), and became its principal owner and CEO when it was spun off as a separate group. It grew from six to 11 weeklies. When Cohen sold SVCN to Knight Ridder, he stayed on as group publisher and retained the position when the weeklies ended up with MediaNews Group as part of its acquisition of the San Jose Mercury News. But now Cohen joins the large ranks of newspaper veterans laid off by the brutal industry economy. In a literal exit interview with his newspaper, the publisher told reporter Dale Bryant he understood the move. ”

Publisher’s Blog : postnewsgroup.net LOL!!! After his handshake and talk about having me help him -- no charge from me -- Paul Cobb of the Post Newspaper Group and the start of this video series where Paul expresses a desire to team-up -- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vFEDJaW8M74 -- has what is the most awful blog I've seen by a newspaper. Well, that's what he gets for not following up with me -- a disaster of his own creation. It makes so many technical errors I'm in stitches! If someone in house convinced Paul they could do it on their own, they were just nuts in my view. The result's just not workable and proves that people violate this rule: "Having a blog is more than having a blog" -- again and again.