OC Politics Blog | Tag Archives: Friends for Fullerton’s Future

After a year, is the Orange County Register any better?

Posted on August 25, 2013 by Editor Posted in Aaron Kushner, OC Register, Orange County 2 Comments

Photo credit: www.bakersfieldnow.com

It’s reasonable to have waited a year for the Register’s new ownership to rebuild their organization before offering an opinion on how they’re doing. And it’s important — really important — that this print dinosaur succeed in this mid-sized market as without them, the OC really would be void of a mainstream media outlet. The LA Times stopped taking Orange County seriously years ago, and for now they’re only concerned over who’s going to buy them (which won’t, unfortunately, be the Koch Brothers).

At least the Register seems more like a real newspaper now. They’ve got all the regular attributes — their display advertising is way up (they’ve been hiring plenty of sales types, and are still advertising heavily for them), and, anecdotally, the total number of pages is way up (70% they claimed here). The number of actual sections is up, and they’re proud of restoring the Business section to a normal size and regular distribution. Continue reading→

RIP FFFF – say hello to the New Fullerton blog

Posted on March 3, 2013 by Editor Posted in Bloggers, Bruce Whitaker, Chris Norby, Fullerton, Fullerton Recall, Tony Bushala, Travis Kiger 16 Comments

When I heard that my old friend Tony Bushala was shutting down his incredible Friends for Fullerton’s Future blog I certainly understood his decision. He never meant to keep fighting forever. He spent a great deal of his own money trying to help the people of Fullerton and while he succeeded in recalling several terrible Fullerton Council Members, and he was able to help his friend and ally Bruce Whitacker to get elected as well, the downside was that his other great ally, Travis Kiger, lost to liberal Jan Flory on Nov. 6.

Kiger’s loss must have been very hard to take. I know that I was disappointed to see such a sharp young man lose. But that’s politics for you. You win some, you lose some. And we also lost Chris Norby’s Assembly seat to Sharon Quirk-Silva, a Democrat whose successful campaign probably helped Flory to win as well.

I looked at the current blogs and media in Fullerton and saw a void in the absence of the FFFF blog. So I decided to start my own blog, which I am calling New Fullerton. Continue reading→

Updated: Friends for Fullerton’s Future Signs Off

Posted on February 27, 2013 by Roy Reynolds Posted in Fullerton, Fullerton Recall, Steven Greenhut, Tony Bushala, Travis Kiger 5 Comments

Holy cow…they’re done.

The most impactful Blog in Orange County is going on a long, if not permanent hiatus per this mid-afternoon post from Tony Bushala. Tony and colleagues like Travis Kiger, and a host of other anonymous posters and commentors spent the last few years turning Fullerton on its ear with their activism and coverage of city politics that ran circles around the mainstream media and set a standard that the rest of us admired and, frankly, envied.

The FFFF played a national role in revealing the murder-by-cop death of Kelly Thomas, a homeless man with mental issues. Three BAD cops are no longer on the Fullerton Police force (and likely destined for jail) due to FFFF’s diligence and the copious reporting they committed to the blogosphere. They caused the retirement of Fullerton’s feckless police chief and revealed plenty about this gang of nasty, violent cops that often ruled the city with fists and billy clubs. Tony and Travis were frequent guests on KFI’s John and Ken Show — that’s rare, and even rarer that they convinced this drive-time program with over one million daily listeners to come down to Fullerton for multiple events spawned by the Thomas killing.

Tony announces his recall plans to last year’s Fullerton City Council
Photo credit: OC Weekly

Continue reading→