Goleta Valley Sun Newspaper Column

In March 1969, I approached the Editor of the Goleta Valley Sun newspaper with a proposal for the man-in-the-street interview column called "What Do You Think?" It was a take-off on a similar feature I had seen in the San Francisco Chronicle. (Goleta is a suburb of Santa Barbara, California.)

He agreed to try it out on a weekly basis.

19 March 1969 - PDF (153KB)

26 March 1969 - PDF (158KB)

2 April 1969 - PDF (153KB)

9 April 1969 - PDF (150KB)

30 April 1969 - PDF (135KB)

7 May 1969 - PDF (148KB)

How I did it

My routine was that I would come up with a good question and go around the Santa Barbara and Goleta area, asking people their opinion. I recorded their response, name and address with a portable cassette tape recorder. Then I would take a picture of the person with an inexpensive-model Polaroid camera.

I would then transcribe the tape and bring in the document, along with the pictures of the people. I was acting as the reporter, photographer and transcriber.

The newspaper was able to publish a nice column every week for very little money.

Motivations

While I was doing this, I was still working at the Santa Barbara Research Center. My motivations for doing this column was that I wanted a creative outlet besides doing engineering work, I wanted some recognition, and I looked for some social contact.

Disappointed

I would bring in my column, give it to one of their reporters and that was it. I had hoped for some sort of conversation. I never saw the editor after my first encounter. To top it off, after doing this a short while, the reporter tried to chisel me on my payment, offering me less that it cost me for film.

Finally, after less than three months, I quit. I just wasn't getting anything from doing the work, except to see my name in print. Apparently, the editor was angry that I quit. If he would have called me to ask the reason I quit, I probably would have come back, but I never heard from him.

They tried to continue the column, but it was not as good as mine and was soon dropped.

It was fun while I did it, but they just didn't appreciate my efforts. So, I moved on to other creative outlets.