Davisville

If you follow California politics, then you’ve probably encountered the work of Dan Walters. For 33 years he wrote a column for the Sacramento Bee, writing about this state’s extensive cultural, demographic, economic and political changes since the 1960s and 1970s. He left the Bee this month, signed on as a columnist with the nonprofit journalism venture CALmatters, and joins us today to talk about our complex state, where change is constant and common ground can be very hard to find.

Today’s guests talk about two internet subjects in the news – net neutrality, the rules of which the Federal Communications Commission recently began to repeal, and the status of the civic effort to build a municipal fiber-optic network in Davis. The outcome of each could greatly affect your experience using the internet in Davis. The guests are Mac Clemmens, founder of Digital Deployment in Sacramento (and a well-regarded recipient of a UC Davis MBA) and Steve McMahon, a broadband expert and longtime board member of the Davis Community Network.

Maya Sinha writes a new Davis Enterprise column, “Lowbrow,” about “the hidden value in despised things.” Davis, like any place, has its conventions, and on today’s show we talk about bad music, schlocky TV, the value of not being pretentious, the relief it all provides, and how far she’s going to take this concept.

Today's program is a KDRT it's-fundraising-week-so-let's-do-something-different kind of show. Several years ago, a friend at UC Davis asked if I’d consider speaking to his class someday about what I’d learned as a reporter and editor during my newspaper days. I’ve never recorded that talk, but today’s show is based on my notes. So if you're interested in one community journalist's take on the trade, tune in. Among other things, you'll hear segments about what many people seem to really want from the media (“Protect me! Expose them!”); the day a Berkeley City Council member did me the favor of pointing out an obvious hole in a story I'd been proud of; and Ray Bradbury’s advice, when he spoke at Freeborn Hall in the early 1980s, about the best place to get advice when you're trying to figure out how to do something you love. As a news person, you get to talk to many people and learn from their experiences; I try to distill a little of that in today's program.