The Tattler at Ten

Ten Years of Punching Up

The Tattler Celebrates a Decade of 
Muckraking and Shit Stirring

Ten years ago today three of us started the Emeryville Tattler with a mission.  Concern over a ‘develop at all costs’ juggernaut ensconced at City Hall serving as the impetus, we thought we could flip the City Council and therefore the whole culture in Emeryville politics, ushering in a new era we hoped.  We thought the interests of the residents and average people could be risen up and take precedence over those of the business class and the developers, many of whom had become very chummy with the Council members.  Considering the forces allayed against us, including the then mighty Emeryville Chamber of Commerce, it was pretty audacious of us in retrospect.  But we started up our scrappy little news site nonetheless, knowing we’d make plenty of enemies along the way (and boy, have we).

The idea was as simple as it was brassy.  We thought Emeryville needed a newspaper like our neighboring cities had.  We looked around and seeing the demographic populations of our neighbors with their center-left proclivities, we thought the extreme pro-developer culture at Emeryville City Hall was an anomaly, an accident and therefore not sustainable.  It just needed a little push.  We could see no reason why Emeryville should stand out so starkly among our Bay Area neighbors.  We thought the people here were like the people around us and all we would need to do is to inform them and let democracy take over.  So we did.

While acknowledging there is still work to be done, it is no exaggeration to say Emeryville has indeed flipped.  The former clubby atmosphere at City Hall with developers, businessmen (yes, men) and Council members literally mixing over drinks at the Townhouse or at closed door Chamber functions is bygone.  Our town hall now much more faithfully reflects the resident’s interests.  Emeryville, no longer a throwback curiosity among Bay Area cities, can now be called a leader among them.  We’ll take some small measure of credit here at the truculent little Emeryville Tattler.  The change has been great to be sure but we're still keeping their feet to the fire.

Readers of the above three paragraphs will detect a level of cocksureness if not arrogance.  We don’t deny it.  We always knew we’d have to fight hard to take down the connected wealthy business/developer class and their government sycophants here in Emeryville and we came ready for the fight.  Our pugnacious nature has served us well.  We noted everywhere we looked in this little town, we found rot and we knew we’d have to take on all comers.  And that’s the reputation we cultured.  Our reputation has preceded us. We developed a backchannel cadre of moles who informed us.  That’s how we found out how effective we were being.  There has always been a bit of fear of the Tattler mixed in with the anger in the corporate boardrooms and in government back rooms.

Ten years ago if you had asked us how long our little project would take, we would have guessed about ten years.  We got that right.  Emeryville is now poised to become the town the people here want.  But there are storm clouds all around us.  Senate Bill 330, as of January 1st, the law of the land and the proposed SB 50, stand to take away the democratic autonomy we fought for just as we take our bows.  This new suite of ‘develop at all costs’ laws are coming now not from City Hall, but from Sacramento and they threaten our town much more fundamentally.
We don’t know if the Tattler is ready to take on Sacramento.  We’re audacious, but not that audacious.  Maybe someone else can come in and take over the fight for Emeryville.

In the meantime, we’re going to do a little celebrating.  We celebrate our ten years with selections from the archives.  We’re going to re-post our favorite stories and reader favorites every couple of weeks starting from 2010.

The Tattler is ten!  Our masthead says it all: We're here working for the residents and average people- against those who would take away from the commons.  Looking back, there have been victories and setbacks in that fight.  Reporting on that struggle, it's always easy to see the glass half empty, concentrating on the work yet to be done.  Looking ahead, it's pretty scary.  But ten years on after the Tattler's audacious beginning taking on all comers among the power elite in Emeryville, there's no doubt there have been more victories than setbacks.  We didn't just sit on our duffs and watch our town change around us.  We got involved. And that has served us well.  We feel pretty good about this.