We're continuely on the look out for local bloggers -- Batavia needs more of them.
In checking member profiles tonight, we found the blog of Arlana Pathammavong.
Mostly, it's a personal blog of her interests and observations, but she's a good blogger and includes some tidbits of local interest, such as this post about the Pok-A-Dot.
Who would steal a laptop and computer and then send it into the manufacture for servicing?
Whomever swiped Rich Clark's laptop last week, that's who.
Mr. Clark, 27, just dropped by The Batavian office to let his know his computer arrived safely at the service center today.
On Thursday, we highlighted a classified Clark had posted on The Batavian noting that a black box had been stolen from his work truck.
It turns out the box contained a laptop, valued at $1,000, that Clark and labeled and set up to send back for service. Whoever took it -- whether he saw the post on The Batavian or not -- dropped the box in the mail and it arrived safely at the service center.
Clark, who operates his own satellite installation company and works for IGT, said he couldn't believe the computer had been returned. "It's just amazing. Amazing," he said.
The Holland Land Office Museum is proud to announce it’s first ever snowman building contest. The event, sponsored by thebatavian.com, will take place on the east lawn of the Museum on Wednesday, December 31st from 9:00 a.m. until noon.
If there isn’t any snow outside, we’ll build them inside!
Prizes will be awarded. And, we are planning to have a celebrity judge. We can't announce the name yet, because this person isn't confirmed.
Check out www.wonderlandoftrees.com or call the Museum at 343-4727 for more information.
For any of our readers who stopped by our booth at Christmas in the City and answered the question on video of "What Christmas means to you?" and you're wondering why we haven't posted that video ... truth is, I lost it.
I remember just before leaving the office, I stuck the tape in my jacket poket, but didn't have it the next afternoon when I went to edit the video. I was afraid, or hoped, I left in my truck, which I took in for service Saturday morning and didn't get back until last night.
It wasn't in the truck.
So I double checked the office.
Today, I stopped in at Sunny's, where Hilly and I went for dinner that night, to see if it fell out of my pocket there -- no luck.
Well, there's always next year ...
One of our periodic reminders about how The Batavian works.
At The Batavian, we work hard to gather news and keep area residents up to date with what's going on around Genesee County, but we also make the site available to any community member who has something interesting to share with his or her friends and neighbors.
We've got the stranged problem with the site at the moment, and it won't be fixed until tomorrow some time -- from the home page, and only the home page, you can't click on the "Sports" tab or the "Announcements" tab.
For Sports: Click Here.
For Announcements: Click Here.
I thought it was kind of odd that since creating the "Housing" section on the web site, no listings had been posted yet, but I just figured I needed to get out and talk to some real estate agents.
A little while ago while I stopped into a local real estate office and the agents there were very happy to see me -- they had been having trouble getting their listings published.
It turns out, there was a misconfiguration I couldn't see with my superuser login. It's fixed now.
So for any agents or landlords who have tried to post listings in the past, please try again. Click here to add a listing.
Do you use Twitter? If so, you can also follow The Batavian on Twitter.
The first hint of trouble came in early May, when The Batavian was but a sprout on the Genesee County media landscape.
After initially welcoming The Batavian enthusiastically, we found out that Batavia City Manager Jason Molino told city employees not to cooperate with The Batavian. We could not even get copies of City Council agendas.
We eventually overcame that specific disability, but we've had an ongoing problem with getting answers from Mr. Molino to basic questions related to city governance, and a general lack of full disclosure form the city and its staff when we've sought it.
Two weeks ago, we took our case to the Batavia City Council. The response was, shall we say, tepid.
And we're disappointed.
Here's our position: The Batavian is a legitimate news organization. We may be web-only; our approach to news may be non-traditional; we may be new to the community, but the First Amendment doesn't address any of those issues. It merely enjoins government agencies to respect press freedom.
To us, that means not merely the right to publish as we see fit, but to have free and unfettered access to the government taxpayers support.
For the past several months, we've found that while the city manager will willingly speak with the Daily News and WBTA, he has completely cut out The Batavian as a channel for information to the citizenry on his positions, policies and actions.
He also maintains an inexplicable and unusually tight reign on the tongues of other city staff members.
At first, we hoped for improvement, but with none forthcoming, we began documenting Mr. Molino's failure to respond to interview requests. We documented 13 such instances, including instances where he would later be quoted in other media on the same topic, as well as an instance where Mr. Molino had the new fire chief cancel a video interview with The Batavian.
We've kept quiet about this issue because we were hoping for a friendly resolution to the disagreement over fair access, but since the council meeting two weeks ago, we've been trying to get a lunch appointment with Mr. Molino (The Batavian will pay: Larry's Steakhouse, any afternoon on 24 hours notice). Mr. Molino has declined the invitation.
Given his lack of willingness to fairly discuss this issue, we've decided it is time to offer readers of The Batavian full disclosure about what has been going on.
As a matter of fairness to readers of The Batavian, we believe we are obligated to keep them informed on any issue that inhibits us from fully and faithfully gathering and disseminating information of public interest. While we regret withholding information about this lack of access until now, we hope readers will understand we did so only because we were seeking to settle this issue amicably long ago, and have persisted in this effort in good faith.
The readers of The Batavian have the same rights as the subscribers of the Daily News and the listeners of WBTA to have a representative of this news organization call upon city officials, ask questions and get answers. It's a fundamental right under the U.S. Constitution.
Clearly, not all city officials agree.
When we first launched The Batavian, we were happy to find in Mr. Molino a welcoming attitude to the expansion of Batavia's media choices. Unfortunately, only days later, he clammed up. In fact, he told all city employees not to cooperate with us in any manner, including denying us access to routine government documents, such as City Council agendas.
Upon further investigation, we learned that City Attorney George Van Nest had told city officials that The Batavian was not "official media" therefore not entitled to any communication from the city.
That was a curious statement for an attorney to make, so I called Mr. Van Nest and confirmed that he did indeed make that statement. I reminded him that under the First Amendment, there is no such thing as "official press." After much discussion, he agreed to allow the city to release routine government documents to us and promised full and fair access.
We have not gotten it.
After our presentation to the Council two weeks ago, only one council member spoke to the topic of our speech. The lack of interest by the Council may, frankly, have owed to the degree to which we placed the burden for lack of access on Mr. Molino. We've since heard that some council members objected to that tone of the presentation, even those who had encouraged us to make a public plea for greater access, not just for The Batavian, but all of the local media (Mr. Molino does not allow any city staff to speak to any media).
The lone council member to speak on the topic was Bill Cox. He made the clearly contradicted statement -- he had in front of him contrary evidence at the time -- that The Batavian was receiving the same access as any other media outlet.
Since we've reached what seems to be an insurmountable impasse, we think it's only fair we bring this subject to the attention of our readers.
We're not looking for a fight. We could, if we wanted, start posting Jason's phone number and e-mail address every time we had a question and ask readers to get the information needed; or, we could openly encourage city employees to give us anonymous tips on city business; or we could file a lawsuit.
The first two options would only serve to cause further hard feelings, and a lawsuit, costing taxpayers money, would subvert our goal to do what is best for Batavia.
So we are left with but a third option: To just drop the issue.
We're doing quite well without the city manager's cooperation, and we imagine we will continue to do quite well whether Mr. Molino favors us with a word or two from time to time or not.
We're not here to be the "official" news source of Batavia. We're quite happy to let the Daily News carry the mantle of "paper of record." We just think it would be nice to get questions answered when we are curious about an issue or event. If Mr. Molino is unwilling to do that, we think in the long run he is causing more harm to the city than he is to The Batavian. If we're right about that, our best course may be just to let well enough alone and trust that eventually, Mr. Molino or his successor, probably many years from now, will find it counter productive to give any media the silent treatment.
I've uploaded two related documents to our position -- a PDF of court cases that support our position, and a letter from the New York Newspaper Publishers' Association specifically encouraging the city to cooperate with The Batavian.
Of course, we continue to make improvements to The Batavian.
You may have already noticed the weather on the right side of the page.
We've also striped along the top of the page links to an About page, an Advertising page and now a Help/FAQ page.
If you scroll down the left side of the page you'll see a new menu block called "Featured Topics." This will be kind of a free-form place for us to feature topics that seem to have special interest among The Batavian readers.
As a reminder: Help wanted advertisements and classifieds and homes for sale can be posted to The Batavian for FREE -- just the primary links above for more information.
As to the question who can be post to The Batavian, the simple answer is: Anybody.
As to what you can post: Whatever you find interesting, or whatever you want to say.
We'll only promote to the home page posts we believe have a general interest to the audience of Genesee County. We're pretty liberal about what we decide to put on the home page, but neither should you be disappointed if we don't promote it. The post will still appear in our own personal blog.
If you tag your post for certain sections we've created on The Batavian -- such as Nation and World, or the community links (like "Batavia" or "Byron"), or Sports, or Announcements, your post will appear in those sections immediately.
We're interested in what you find interesting. That might be a fire in your neighborhood or who recently got married. Just about anything related to local life in Genesee County is a great idea for a post on The Batavian, and even your views on national politics or world events have a place (the Nation and World section) on The Batavian.
The following links are designed to help you better understand how things work on The Batavian.
Most viewed posts for October:
• Ron Paul: We're going to destroy the dollar, by Howard Owens
• Stabbing in downtown Batavia, by Philip Anselmo (Yep, it's that mug shot!)
• O-A stuns Pembroke in final seconds, by Brian Hillabush
• Blackboard awards at Batavia schools, by Philip Anselmo
• Oakfield-Alabama gets nine GR all-stars, by Brian Hillabush
• Liberalism has changed to Socialism, by Guy Gabbey Jr.
• Three Questions: Mike Ranzenhofer, by Philip Anselmo
• A sad loss for the Section 5 football family, by Brian Hillabush
• The case of the missing Democratic congressional candidate, by Howard Owens
• From Batavia to Radio City..., by Philip Anselmo
If you have a "favorite" post that maybe wasn't one of our most viewed for October, please add it in the comments section. This is a great way for folks to go back and check out what they may have missed. I'm going to go ahead and nominate my two videos on Rolling Hills Paranormal Research Center—the interview and the tour—along with Jim Nigro's coverage of the Notre Dame loss in the finals as my favorites of the past month, not including the few that already made it onto the most viewed list, including Hilly's great coverage of the first O-A vs. Pembroke match—sports writing at its best. That's if I'm allowed to nominate my own posts.
We're going to get a little air time on WHAM tonight. Evan Dawson has invited me to appear on the the station's 10 p.m. election coverage. I'll be there to talk about the 26th District Congressional race.
For anybody visiting The Batavian for the first time from the link on Evan's blog, you can check out our congressional race coverage on this link or this link.
And Evan called me a Libertarian. I'd never use the big L -- being non-partisan, or the slightly insulting "blank" in New York political lingo -- and I think more apt is decentralist and localist, and of course a strong belief in individual liberty.
Thanks to my friend Rottenchester of the Fighting 29th blog for arranging this. It will be the first time 16 years that I've been on TV as a journalist to talk about elections.
OK, I've never called out a listing placed in our classified section before, but man, I'm drooling over this boat. It suits my needs and tastes so well -- wish I could afford it!.
Ever since moving to Western NY, I've dreamed of owning a boat. My boss has gotten me into fishing. There are so many neat lakes around.
A couple of people have asked how to make friends ...
Well, I could recommend a good book, but on The Batavian, there are two easy ways.
First, go to the People link up top and scan all of the people who have registered and look for people you would like to be friends with, click on their names, go to their profile pages and you'll find a link that says "Add to Friends." Click that link and then click "Yes" on the next page. You can go through that same process for as many people as you like.
The second method is to click on the "My Friends" link in the left-side navigation. When you go to that page, you'll see a series of links across the top of your friends list that allows you to manage your friends (haven't we all been tempted to do that sometimes!). There is one link called "Invite Friends." You go use the form on that page to invite people you know, people you have an e-mail address for, to sign up for The Batavian and become your friend.
Also, a word about guestbooks: We've added the guestbook function so you have a more direct way to communicate with other members of the site. Guestbooks are not private messages, but they do allow for more direct communication (rather than, say, through a comment on a post). I've already noticed one member has left a couple of messages like, "Hey, didn't I go to high school with you?"
I'm already having fun with the new "Friends" feature. I see other people are, too. If you haven't tried it yet, please check it out.
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