Over the past few months, this blog has been honored to be chosen several times by IpsoSacto as a candidate to have one of its postings published in the upcoming Sunday edition of the Sacramento Bee.

IpsoSacto (isn't that the greatest name?) was started by blogger John Hughes. He monitored blogs from "Stockton to the Oregon border, Fairfield to Tahoe." I thought it had been started by the Sacramento Bee, but somewhere along the line the close relationship envisioned between the Bee and John was paired down to a column in Sunday's Bee that highlighted (in very brief format due to the small amount of space allocated) 3 or so posts from local blogs.

Last week we received word we were one of the candidates and today I decided to check to see if we had 'risen to the top of the heap' and received a mention in the Bee. I typed in the URL and got this notice:

Sometime between 11:30 p.m. Feb. 12 and 6:45 a.m. Feb. 13, someone gained unauthorized access to this server and deleted all of the content in the web directory.
The ipsoSacto project and the Blog Watch effort are now officially dead.
If you have some technical expertise in computer security and would like to help me locate the security hole that allowed this fatal breach, contact me at jomariworks at gmail dot com

Good grief. Who would do such a thing? A snubbed website owner who learned he or she had not been chosen for an appearance in the Sunday Bee? Some lunactic looking for kicks?

I think it's sad. Not sad because no more mentions for the Sacramento Executive in the Bee, but sad because:

Someone wiped out this guy's great idea and on-going business. (Ok, so he probably should have had better security, but so should we all), and

Sacramento Bee reader's won't get to figure out that the local blogs are talking about subjects that the local newspapers and other media outlets wouldn't cover in a million years.

Lately when I want to get the most up-to-date info on a news item, I go straight to Google's blog search. Otherwise, I have to wait for ages for the regular news services to post, but not bloggers. It's the closest thing you get to instant news and while it's not always accurate, neither are the mainstream media outlets. The other day when I heard something outrageous on CNN and wanted to ensure that it had really been said, the CNN transcript never showed up on line, nothing ever made it into the mainstream press, but there it was front and center on the blogs.

As we watch the mainstream media wimp out, thank goodness for the blogs.

John, my condolences. I think I will buy an IpsoSacto coffee mug on CafePress to make me remember everyday the importance of the voice of the people.

And if any of our readers has any technical expertise that could help John, send him an email at jomariworks@gmail.com

Gillian Parrillo
The Sacramento Executive