When they write journalism’s obituary, will they spell its name right?

Coming soon, to a journalism school near you: students covering local government commission meetings.  Whatever else one might say about journalism students (other than my sister and her friends), they are certainly capable of doing this.  It wasn’t so long ago that I was paid to do exactly what UC-Berkeley students are going to be–depending on how you look at it–either doing for free or paying to do.  Not that I was raking it in, exactly, but it’s hard to imagine someone charging me for the right go to and write about those meetings.

I was thinking about those meetings recently when I read the news about the tragic passing of Rosemary Stasek, former Mountain View Mayor and City Council Member.  Before she moved to Kabul and briefly made the Voice the smallest paper I knew of with an Afghanistan correspondent, Rosey was the coolest thing going at city council meetings.  She could be as good at cutting people’s arguments down as The Professor thinks he is, and was always the one leading the party train from the council chambers to the dive bar.  Aside from one small typo in the headline, the Voice’s coverage — as well as that of larger papers — has been fittingly excellent.