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LAKEPORT, Calif. — On a bright Sunday in the last days of January, the students of Lake County shared their voices through the beauty and power of poetry.
The Soper-Reese Theatre resonated with dynamic recitations by the finalists of Lake County’s annual Poetry Out Loud competition, a national arts program that encourages the study of poetry and culminates in a live, juried recitation event.
The competition was created by the National Endowment for the Arts and The Poetry Foundation and has been proudly hosted for over a decade by the Lake County Arts Council in partnership supported by a grant from the California Arts Council.
This year, four students represented the best of the best from their high schools: Madelin Muniz-Espinoza, Clear Lake High School; David Wilkes, Kelseyville High School; Jocelyn Knapp, Lower Lake High School; and Lily Morita, Middletown High School.
Each of these amazing students had already competed and won first place in the competition at their individual school levels and came to the county level finals with two full length poems memorized for performance.
They had spent weeks studying, memorizing and rehearsing each piece with adult performance coaches Tim Barnes (Clear Lake High School), John Tomlinson (Kelseyville and Lower Lake High Schools) and Michele Krueger (Middletown High School).
The students read in rounds, each presenting one poem per round.
The audience, judges and the Master of Ceremonies Laura McAndrews Sammel, treasurer and a member of the Board of Directors of the Lake County Arts Council, were often moved to tears by the depth of passion and understanding in the students’ poetic delivery.
Jordan O’Halloran was the coordinator of this year’s Poetry Out Loud competition and also had the daunting task of tallying the scores of the tight competition.
She gathered a group of local poets and educators to serve as judges: Lake County Poet Laureate Emeritus Richard Schmidt, artist, writer and teacher Diana Liebe Schmidt, poet and retired educator Pamela Bordisso, political poet and theatrical artist Beulah Vega and poet Brenda Yeager.
In between the students’ recitations, as O’Halloran was tallying the scores, the poet judges read a stunning and diverse array of their original work.
Then, the performances culminated with an exquisite reading by Georgina Marie Guardado, the current Lake County Poet Laureate, who spoke of how moved she was by the caliber of student performances. She honored the students and audience with a reading of her own original work and a poem by the current National Poet Laureate, Ada Limon.
After a tight competition of deeply inspiring recitations, Lily Morita of Middletown High School took first place with her soulful and insightful performances of “Listening In Deep Space,” by Diane Thiel and “Backdrop Addresses Cowboy,” by Margaret Atwood. She will move on to the next level of Poetry Out Loud’s California State final competition in Sacramento.
David Wilkes of Kelseyville High School took second place and will be the backup competitor at Sacramento if Morita should find herself unable to attend.
Madelin Muniz-Espinoza of Clear Lake High School won third place and Jocelyn Knapp of Lower Lake High School was the runner up.
Congratulations and best of luck in Sacramento (and beyond!) to Lily Morita and to all of the student competitors who have moved us with their stunning performances to understand how truly poetry can help us find beauty “when we find each other.”
Is local news readily available in your town? Do reporters still cover your school board and other municipal meetings?
If you answered yes, you are likely wealthier than the average American, and you live in or near a metro area.
The State of Local News Project at Northwestern University documents the changing local news landscape across the country. Our latest report shows that where you live and how much money you make affect whether you live in a news desert or a news oasis. This divide is related to other factors affecting the health of our democracy, as analysis of our data by the nonprofit Rebuild Local News showed.
For more than a decade, I have worked in organizations that study and support local journalism, and I’m intimately familiar with both the challenges and the solutions for the local journalism landscape.
Inequity in local news
One of the most vexing problems, as our report shows, is the persistence of inequity between communities that are local journalism haves and have-nots.
The have-nots are news deserts with few, if any, journalists to do the daily newsgathering and reporting that people require to participate meaningfully in their local communities and democratic institutions.
The main challenge for news outlets in have-not communities is the migration of advertising money from the printed page – where it made up roughly 80% of news organizations’ income – to the screen, where it now makes up less than 20%. This decline in ad revenue, a trend for the last decade-plus, has forced many outlets to rely on audience funding, philanthropy, cost-cutting or some combination of the three.
In communities with little disposable income to put toward news subscriptions or donations and no local philanthropies, cost-cutting becomes the only option. This creates a self-reinforcing spiral of lower quality and declining readership and, ultimately, closure.
In 2023, the country lost more than 130 print newspapers, which continue to be the newsrooms most likely to produce original local content that other outlets circulate.
Since 2005, the U.S. has lost almost 2,900 papers.
New digital outlets are not being created fast enough to fill that huge void. The number of digital outlets has held steady at roughly 550 in recent years, with about 20 new outlets opening each year – and roughly the same number closing.
All told, 1,558 of the nation’s 3,143 counties have only one news outlet, while 203 are news deserts with zero, meaning there are likely thousands of communities that simply do not have access to local news.
For example, both Texas and Tennessee had four counties lose their only remaining newspaper last year. All eight papers were independently owned.
What it takes to thrive
Wealthier communities do better sustaining local news organizations.
Our data shows that counties with an average household income over US$80,000 can support a robust local journalism ecosystem – meaning 10 or more outlets. Those with an average household income of $54,000 or less are more likely to be news deserts. By the same token, the percentage of the population below the poverty line in news deserts averages more than 16%, versus 12% in counties with robust markets. This finding aligns with other research, including a previous study I did of local news in New Jersey.
In addition to household income, population density correlates to the number of outlets serving a local community. In our data, counties with 10 or more outlets are overwhelmingly urban or dense suburbia, while news deserts are usually rural – though news deserts also occur in low-income pockets of metro areas. Densely populated communities tend to include higher-income households and have network effects that come from the ability of businesses to reach a larger number of people in a relatively small footprint.
This phenomenon leads to the third factor related to number of outlets in a county: gross domestic product per capita. In any town, city or country, the GDP represents the amount of money netted from sales of services and merchandise, divided by population. For the news oases in our study, the average GDP per capita is $75,140. For the news deserts, it is just $8,964. This difference reflects the retail and services base, and the number of businesses that could buy advertising in their local news outlet, or create jobs that would allow residents to donate to one.
An example that highlights the importance of this factor is the newspaper Moab Sun News, which is thriving in the rural rocky highlands of Utah, thanks in part to a robust tourism industry and retail base. Though it serves a relatively small permanent population of 5,321, the Moab Sun News has built a sustainable business model through strong advertising revenue, a user-friendly website that welcomes subscriptions and donations, and creative collaborations with other community organizations in town.
The final factor that contributes to a community being a journalism have or have-not is access to high-quality broadband. Emerging metrics show that this near-necessity of contemporary life is not yet reliably available to rural Americans.
What’s working
Despite these seemingly intractable problems, solutions to local journalism inequality are becoming clearer.
One is collaboration. For example, in Colorado, the national nonprofit news outlet The Daily Yonder has hired a reporter based in a rural community to write stories about life there and share them out with both local and national organizations.
Another is philanthropy. The new Press Forward initiative has begun local chapters across the country, with at least one planning to serve rural communities. Organizations like the National Trust for Local News have been buying outlets that would likely otherwise be sold to hedge funds, and turning them into nonprofits that will continue to serve their communities.
Public policy should also play a role. At the state level, policies to support local news have seen success in New Jersey, California and elsewhere, and more bills are working their way through state legislatures. People seem to be realizing that having quality local news is just as vital as having public education and access to health care. With any luck, every community will have the opportunity to be a journalism “have.”
Sarah Stonbely, Director, State of Local News Project, Northwestern University
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
CLEARLAKE, Calif. — Clearlake Animal Control has dozens of dogs needing new homes this week.
The Clearlake Animal Control website lists 57 adoptable dogs.
This week’s dogs include “Emily,” a 1-year-old female Doberman pinscher with a red and copper coat. She has been spayed.
There also is “Turbo,” a male Belgian malinois mix with a black and brown coat. He has been neutered.
The shelter is located at 6820 Old Highway 53. It’s open from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday.
For more information, call the shelter at 707-762-6227, email
This week’s adoptable dogs are featured below.
Email Elizabeth Larson at
Last year, the Newsom Administration said its actions resulted in three times more groundwater recharge capacity than would have otherwise occurred.
Since 2019, the governor has allocated $1.6 billion for flood preparedness and response, part of the historic $7.3 billion investment package and to strengthen California’s water resilience.
Here’s what the state is doing this year to capture water:
45 BILLION GALLONS: That's how much water California has either permitted or is working to permit for groundwater recharge, enough for 1.3 million Californians’ yearly usage – all during this wet season alone.
CAPTURING 95% OF STORMWATER RUNOFF: The state-funded Santa Anita Dam captured 95% of the stormwater runoff to groundwater recharge facilities in the San Gabriel River Watershed.
NEARLY $1 BILLION TO CAPTURE MORE WATER: California has distributed nearly $1 billion to support 13 recharge, recycled water, and other stormwater capture projects that will add more than 28 billion gallons to the state’s water supplies every year.
BETTER STORMWATER CAPTURE: California has invested more than $160 million to capture, store, and reuse stormwater runoff – helping local governments like Los Angeles County bolster their stormwater infrastructure.
Here’s what we did last year to boost California’s ability to capture water:
EXPANDING SUPPLY & STORAGE BY 358 BILLION GALLONS: California bolstered supply and storage through groundwater recharge and other projects, enough for 2.2 million households’ yearly usage.
EXECUTIVE ORDERS & LEGISLATION TO CAPTURE & STORE MORE WATER: During last year’s storms, Governor Newsom signed executive orders and legislation to accelerate stormwater capture to boost groundwater recharge and other conservation measures.
MORE GROUNDWATER RECHARGE & STORMWATER CAPTURE: The state is expanding groundwater recharge by 180 billion gallons in potential capacity — streamlining permits and $1 billion for groundwater recharge projects.
But more water storage is needed — if the Delta Conveyance Project was in effect, this year alone it could have captured 148 billion gallons of water; the Sites Reservoir could hold enough water to serve 7.5 million people for an entire year.
These winter’s storms are another example of California’s changing climate and shifts from one extreme to another.
California has gone from a historic three-year drought to historic snowpack last year, to a series of very intense, warmer, wetter storms that are bringing more rain than snow.
As of Friday morning, the statewide snowpack is 86% of average for this date, and 70% of its April 1 average, which is considered the peak snowpack for the season.
As outlined in Gov. Newsom’s Water Supply Strategy, these kinds of extremes are why we need to continue to invest and be ready with water management strategies like stormwater capture, groundwater recharge, and recycled water to ensure that our water supply remains safe and reliable in a changing climate.
LAKEPORT, Calif. — A popular downtown Lakeport thrift shop is about to close, but there are hopes that it will return in a new location.
The Lakeport Senior Center’s Meals on Wheels Thrift Store, located at 120 N. Main St., will close on April 30, said Lisa Morrow, executive director of the Lake Family Resource Center, which has managed the senior center since July of 2020.
Morrow said the store stopped accepting donations on Feb. 15 in anticipation of winding down. There are plans for several upcoming sales ahead of the closure, ranging from 25% to 75% off.
The popular store, which opened on Halloween of 2011, has supplemented the Meals on Wheels operations for the last 12 years.
However, sales have dropped, said Morrow, who added that retail sales are down everywhere.
“The sales are just not the same as they used to be,” she said.
The store has an “amazing” group of volunteers, as well as getting help from Ability Road to sort donations, she said.
The senior center has had to hire people to keep the store open, and the rising cost of minimum wage has also had an impact, Morrow explained.
While the drop in sales is part of the reason to close the store, Morrow said the bigger issue is that they can’t keep up with the building’s maintenance, coupled with the rising cost of electricity.
She said the building is hot in summer, has a basement that floods and it leaks in the winter time. The most recent cost estimate to fix the latest leak was $8,800.
“That building is just too much,” she said, adding, “It’s just not a good setup is all.”
The Lakeport Senior Center owns the building outright. Morrow said they plan to put the building on the market this spring rather than continue to put money into it.
Once the dust settles, assuming they can sell the building, Morrow said they plan to reopen a store in a more appropriate location, although they don’t yet know where.
Meantime, Meals on Wheels will continue, Morrow said.
The thrift store has supplemented the program’s main funding, which comes primarily through the Area Agency on Aging.
Morrow said she’s been surprised to find out that community members care so much about the store.
As the changes take place, Morrow said the senior center will look at other revenue streams while it seeks a smaller and more feasible location for the store.
The store’s manager, Sandy Baroni, put a sign on the door that explained the closure and ended with a word of thanks.
“Thank you for your patronage during the past twelve years,” the note read. “It has been my pleasure working here and supporting the Meals on Wheels program for all of that time, not to mention meeting so many wonderful community members.”
Email Elizabeth Larson at
CLEARLAKE, Calif. — The Clearlake Police Department is asking for the community’s help in locating a missing 15-year-old boy.
Justin Cole was last seen on Monday in Clearlake.
He is described as a white male juvenile, with short blond hair and brown eyes.
Justin is 6 feet tall and weighs 220 pounds.
He was last seen wearing a black Reebok sweatshirt, tan pants and gray New Balance shoes.
If you have any information about Justin's whereabouts please contact the Clearlake Police Department at 707-994-8251, Extension 1.