The Tattler is 15 Years Old

Emeryville's Oldest and the Longest Lived Independent News Source

The Tattler is 15

The Tattler is 15 years old today!  That makes us the oldest and longest running news site about Emeryville in Emeryville history.  And like 15 year olds everywhere, we’re rebellious and we're generally pissed off.  We are little but we punch up.  We take on authority.  A decade and a half is a long time to be taking on the rich and the powerful for a scrappy little online news outlet that doesn't take a penny from anyone.  So our 15th birthday is fairly noteworthy.

Back when we started, business was king in Emeryville, controlled by corporate developers with an obsequious four person City Council majority willing to rubber-stamp every development proposal.  Now, business is still king but we have an obsequious four person City Council majority willing to rubber-stamp every development proposal.  Wait…what?…

We're 15 and we're pissed.

It’s true, we’re sad to report: the elite power dynamic in our town is precisely what it was 15 years ago.  Fifteen years of gum shoe reporting has amounted to the following change: Whereas before, developers wanted to build suburban style auto-centric shopping malls, now they want to build all rental market rate apartment blocks.  Fifteen years on, developers are still having their way with us but the profit maximizing overlord these corporate developers pray to has changed the building type.  

The people of Emeryville have nothing to do with this.  They're outta the loop.  But the Tattler has been trying to cut average citizens back in.  If history has taught us anything it's that persistence is needed when it comes to the question of control of the public commons.  The people with money have persistance.  Ordinary people generally don’t.  Against this dreary backdrop, the Tattler continues on.  

We did have a short lived flowering of democracy in Emeryville some 13 years ago when citizen activism and the Tattler helped deliver a two person progressive City Council minority with a discredited and dispirited conservative majority that was willing to break bread with the progressives.  It was during that brief 4-5 year progressive period when Emeryville took leadership status in the Bay Area and the Council passed our landmark minimum wage ordinance, showing everyone the dynamism of people power.  That enlightenment period didn’t last long and rejuvenated conservative forces soon took power back at City Hall.  But it was people over profits for a New York minute in Emeryville.  Alas, progressive movements always tend to be short lived and a conservative and angry majority can always be counted on to come roaring back.  Sound familiar?

Doing the kind of work the Tattler does always brings the haters.  They seem to come in waves, dependent on how far up we stick our head.  Progressives are rarely as angry and passion filled.  They tend to stick to the business of delivering public policy that works for the public.  Irrational conservatives are where the anger has always resided in our town (and beyond).  It's what you would expect.  What’s new, is the Emeryville City Hall that itself has joined with the traditional haters and even surpassed them.  Our City Attorney is actively trying to take the Tattler down, so perturbed is he at the prospects of local journalism pushing for accountability at City Hall (more on that in a coming Tattler story).  Readers should know, the Tattler has never backed down from a fight.  We will continue on even with the full power of the entire City Hall leveled against us.  They have been going extra-legal in their attempts to shut us down recently but we have the law on our side and we intend to use it to our advantage.

15 Years Old:
If the Tattler were a young Mexican woman,
we'd be wearing this dress today.

We’ve made a lot of powerful enemies doing what we do here and we've always managed to hold our own. But with a rogue city hall now enjoined, the consequences of the new paradigm are likely to get conspicuous. 

It should get pretty exciting around here.

So change happened in Emeryville years ago but then it changed back.  There have probably been some nation-wide mega trends at work adversely influencing our politics in our little town.  One change that appears to be permanent is the fact that most City Council members now ride their bikes, even some of the ones who support the takeover of our public housing policy by YIMBY Real Estate Investment Trust corporations.  That’s a positive change we'll take….we suppose. 

In the ways we've elucidated here, one could argue that the Tattler has a juvenile take on what the ‘adults’ in Emeryville do.  We’re outraged at their audacity and we’re rebelling against these power elites, be they in City Hall or in the far flung corporate boardrooms that control our town.  Like we did 15 years ago when we took up this fight for the public commons, we do this work because nobody else is doing it and because we believe that people, ultimately, will act in their interests if they have the information they need to see how their interests are being subverted.

It’s all quite rebellious at the Tattler.  But it’s also optimistic at its core.  Optimism that democracy will have the final say: that’s what separates the Tattler from most 15 year olds.  At the risk of being branded as a pollyanna, we're going to continue on telling Emeryville residents what they need to know about what's going on in Emeryville.

So while it's true we're rebellious at 15, we've always been rebellious.  Fifteen years old: that’s usually around the time people expect little rebels to morph into adults, to settle down and accept life as it is.  Here at the Tattler, all we can say on that score is don't hold your breath: we're going to continue fucking shit up (journalistically).

Interested readers can track these birthday celebrations at the Tattler.  We celebrated at one year, five years, and ten years.  You can track how we saw ourselves at one year and at five years as being pugnacious with massive forces aligned against us until at ten years, we were starting to say the Tattler had achieved some level of victory, and how Emeryville had transformed into a much better town (only to see it fall back into the clutches of conservatives with today's fifteen year story).