Caltrans and the City of West Sacramento have jointly announced that on July 29, 2009, Caltrans will begin construction on improvements to the Harbor Boulevard interchange that crosses U.S. Highway 50 in West Sacramento. The scope of the project includes new alignment and realignment of the freeway ramp access, widening of the roadways, removal of pavement, and overcrossing structure work. The project is designed to accommodate increases in traffic activity on the Harbor Boulevard interchange. An information open house will be held in room 157 of the West Sacramento City Hall, 1110 West Capitol Ave., on Monday, July 27, between 3 p.m. and 7 p.m., and the admission is free. Caltrans sta

Sacramento, CA- Shortly before 3 P.M. Monday, in the 1500 block of 19th Street, two apartment occupants were kind enough to allow a transient woman to hang out with them and relax for a bit in their apartment. Per the occupants (who wish to remain anonymous), as the woman was getting ready to go, she asked to use their home phone. When they declined to allow her to use it she pulled a knife and began to threaten them insiting on using the phone. The two occupants restrained her as an on site worker called for police. Police responded rapidly, however were initially given the wrong address by the onsite worker, which put officers several blocks away searching for the incident. On dispatch

The Sacramento Press office was buzzing with questions at the Interviewing Techniques workshop on Tuesday, June 30.  Holly Heyser, Faculty Adviser for The State Hornet and Professional Journalist in Residence at Sac State, went over the key steps to a good interview.  About 12 people showed up and learned a lot about one another, firsthand accounts of what it's like to be a historian, what it's like to be a part of a television show and what it was like to offer aide to New Orleans residents as a part of FEMA. The Sacramento Press holds regular journalism workshops each month on various topics.  To sign up for the e-mail list and receive invitations to future workshops, please e-mail j

     Mike Luken, Port of West Sacramento Manager has announced that the Port of West Sacramento has been included in President Obama’s proposed 2010 Civil Works budget for $10 million to re‐launch its ship‐channel deepening project. Inclusion in the President’s budget proposal is a key step in securing the federal funding needed to move the $80 million channel‐deepening project forward.      By deepening the 43‐mile ship channel connecting the Port to San Francisco Bay from 30 feet to 35 feet along its entire length, more than 75 percent of fully loaded oceangoing freight ships will be able to serve the Sacramento region, compared to less than 40 percent currently.      Luken indicates tha

     Like a blast from the past, the parking lot at the oldest burger joint in West Sacramento was packed this evening with classic cars from Model T’s to custom Firebirds. It was “Cruise Night” again at Whitey’s Jolly Kone, a Jefferson Blvd. landmark since 1964.      Tommy Kale, the empirical master of ceremonies and all around car enthusiast was glad to show me around. Along with his cohort Frank Baschal, I got the grand tour and a little history of the River City Rodsters and “Cruise Night” at Whiteys.      The late Whitey Boisclair started hosting this local car show several years ago, the last Thursday of every month from April until October. Every year it grew larger until the parkin

The Sacramento Press was updated tonight with a grab bag of wish-list items, tweaks, and bug fixes that have been accumulating over the last two months. Recently, we've been using email as a tool to pass on news and workshop event details to you. Now, with this new release, we've started verifying  email addresses on our site. So, for all new signups (or if you're already signed up and you change your email address) you'll get an email that contains a link to visit that lets us know your email address is in good working order. This will help us better communicate with you. We run a lot of free, fun workshops here in our downtown office, and having a working email is really important for u

The Art (and Science) of Interviewing Martin Kuz, Senior Editor for Sactown magazine, March 19, 2009 Pre-Interview Deciding what your story is about will help you determine what questions to ask. What are the primary points or themes you want to touch on in your story?  Who is your audience? Understanding who reads the publication you’re writing for – and what writing style that publication prefers — will also help you craft your questions. Research your subject. Read what’s been written about the person. Depending on the story’s complexity, talk to other sources before you interview the main subject. Prepare a list of questions and bring it to the interview. Ideally, you’ll have yo

It was suggested by one of the users of and contributors to the site that the Sacramento Press create a section where people can access the materials from the workshops that we hold. Many people who have been unable to attend the workshops have also requested copies of the handouts from the various workshops. In order to better arm our readers with the tools that will help them write, there will be a section where all of the materials from the past workshops can be found. If you type in "SP workshops" in the search field, all of the articles and handouts dealing with our workshops will come up. Also, in the future we will upload a video feed of the workshops, if people are interested, so

The Sacramento Press is, first and foremost, a community-contributor website. Some call it "citizen journalism." Whatever you call us, we are here to give an online voice to members of the community, to cover stories that may be otherwise ignored by the mainstream press, and to provide a forum for discussion of local issues. We are also working to promote the values of traditional journalism — thorough reporting, balanced perspectives, clear writing — through workshops and internships, while making the new tools of the web available to all. We offer copy-editing available to anyone who wants to post on the site and will continue to find ways to empower ordinary (and not-so-ordinary) citiz

For those of you who missed our first Interviewing Techniques workshop, given by Sactown Magazine's Senior Editor, Martin Kuz, we'll be having another one on Wednesday, April 15 from 6:30 to 8 p.m. Molly Dugan, an Assistant Professor of Journalism and Communication Studies at Sacramento State, will discuss how to tailor your interviews toward articles that you would be writing for Sacramento Press. Attendees will learn the art of interviewing and the types of articles that work best for our site. We'll serve food at 6:30 p.m. and the workshop will start at 6:45 p.m. Our office is located at 431 I Street, Suite 107 in the Amtrak station. We are in the same building complex as the Starbuc

Ballpoint pens wiggled, keyboards clicked and seven community members fought writer's block during the Intro to Journalism and Article Composition workshop at the Sacramento Press office Thursday evening. Holly Heyser, faculty adviser for The State Hornet and professional journalist in residence for the Communication Studies Department at Sacramento State University, was on hand to help writers develop their stories and flesh them out onto paper. Attendees brought ideas such as how to get a motorcycle license, what it's like to be a delegate for the Democratic National Convention, the Assembly bill that would legalize marijuana and the positive aspects of RT, among others. Heyser gave b

Free Webcam Chat at Ustream This is a live feed from our office window, which is the epicenter of the hazardous materials threat ongoing at the Sacramento Valley Station Light Rail stop. The feed captures a small fraction of the law enforcement officers involved, but shows the ones at the center of the problem UPDATE: Live feed was discontinued at approximately 12:45p.m. as all the law enforcement had left the scene.

Sacramento is now also known for the "Tent City" for the homeless. That’s okay. If Sacramento, the capitol of the seventh or eighth largest economy in the world has to be the poster child city for the homelessness problem in America, then so be it! Probably every man, woman and child in our area is aware of the growing homeless community. It does not matter where you are in the Sacramento area, homelessness happens. In fact, some of the people interviewed for the stories about our tent city, said "we never dreamed that we would be homeless and in this condition". I have never dreamed of being homeless, have you? Maybe we are next. I come from a very large family and I believe if my world

There will be a great party this Second Saturday at the Bike Kitchen in midtown.   Two live bands, the Poplollys and Nick York and Chris Fairman, will be providing music and there will be beer served as well. The celebration starts at 6:00 p.m. and the music will start at 8:00 p.m. There is no cost but they are accepting donations to cover the drinks expenses. The Sacramento Press team will be there in full force. We'll be having a cross promotion with Mochii yogurt to help them in their effort to raise money to support the Sacramento Ballet. Come out and say hello, we will be giving away yogurt, reusable grocery bags and lots of cool stuff from The Sacramento Press. Sacramento Kitchen

Just under 20 people gathered in a semi circle at the Sacramento Press's office to listen to a Journalism Ethics workshop on Wednesday night. Molly Dugan, assistant professor of journalism and communication studies at Sac State, led the workshop. Participants enjoyed pizza and salad from Hot Italian and mingled with other professionals from various media organizations. Dugan covered the basics of libel, public figures, honesty, accuracy and disclosure when writing articles. She encouraged writers to utilize public records and disclose their connection with the story - whether it be revealing that they have made a donation to the political candidate they are writing about in an article, o

SACRAMENTO, Cal. - FEBRUARY 9, 2009 - A local group of bicycle advocates launch the 1st Annual Bikeramento Week from Feb. 9-14, culminating on Valentine’s Day with a race day watch party at 18th and L on the patio of the Buckhorn Grill during the Amgen Tour of California, the largest bicycle race in the United States. Each day this week, the team offers a different bicycle-friendly event to highlight Sacramento’s potential as a bikeable community to both visitors and locals alike. By attending events, participants can win a pair of tickets to the Bikeramento Patio during the Amgen prologue on Saturday. The group wishes to raise awareness of bicycles as a transportation norm. “This is a g

About 30 people gathered in the Sacramento Press office Feb. 2 and learned how to convert everyday events in their lives into compelling news stories. The workshop was given by Holly Heyser, professional journalist in residence at Sacramento State and adviser to The State Hornet newspaper. The focus of the workshop was on helpful guidelines for how to turn ideas into news articles and how to find topics that are newsworthy. Heyser also went over the foundations of journalism and writing in general. The night started out with food for participants and introductions to some of the Sacramento Press staff. As everyone finished socializing, they sat down to start the workshop. Heyser asked

Since the beginning I have been in a guarded state of well being since the creation of this format. An information via that brings usable and more important constructive data to me for my daily life.  No school shooters mug plastered all over the front page raising my concerns that copy cat horrors might emulate from the daily fishwrap. Very little politico dogma and best of all hope for the future.  For me this works and I am slowly getting addicted to what is happening here. Guarded as it is as I know todays reality and journalistic code is you must somehow shock your reader to attention.  The gossip,scandal, blood and guts are designed to hypnotize its readers this bike advocate thinks.

Another Sacramento Press update just went live. Among the two dozen changes we made to the site tonight are a few that concern storylines. We've noticed that it may take an article or two to get a sense for the common thread in your subject. Perhaps you intended to write about one thing but ended up writing about another. If this has happened to you, you'll be glad to know that you can now rename your storylines. Other changes we pushed out include some icon fixes, tweaks to our RSS feeds, making profile edits more forgiving, and many more tweaks, bug fixes, and improvements.

http://www.sacbee.com/740/story/1399234.html    Its getting harder and harder to be heard since yellow journalism reared its ugly head. YOU MUST HAVE CONTROVERSEY to sell fishwrap.  Sorry for the loudness but its important to the above story. Might as well rename the article "how to create a mob."   You see day in and day out I'm amazed on how much kindness and room I get on my daily bike commute. Despite the cruddy roads we are given.  Does that become a story?  Nah no controversy in it!  Doesnt rile up the masses! Open letter to the writer of this piece  Try finding a moment and writing about how great we are despite all our differences. How my daily commute is the thing I look forwar