Thirty years, yep we're pretty sure

The Ventura County Reporter is celebrating thirty years of operation in this weeks issue. My hat's off to them! I hope they continue for another thirty and beyond.

An anniversary issue is an interesting proposition and, logistically, there are two ways you can approach it. It’s technically our anniversary, so we could fill every page with stories about the VC Reporter and everything that has happened to it over the last 30 years. Or we could look out into the community and explore what has happened here in Ventura County over the last 30 years. We chose the latter (which doesn’t mean we didn’t have fun looking back at old issues and covers of the Reporter — see Saundra Sorenson’s story on page 9), for a number of reasons, which means I can feel justified in talking a little bit about the paper in this space.

The story by Saundra Sorenson is where things take a strange twist...

When the editorial staff at the Ventura County Reporter began preparing for its 30th anniversary issue, they were surprised to find that their paper’s history, in-house, went back only five years. The oldest issue archived didn’t even pre-date the current presidential administration.

After scouring the paper’s archives — housed in a small, unnaturally warm room behind the production department — the go-to guy seemed to be film critic, calendar editor and 30-year Reporter veteran John Larsen.

And, at one time, Larsen was able to supply the first ever Reporter. Five years ago, he brought his impressive collection to the paper’s office, where old headlines would be quoted, covers scanned and reprinted. But a quick flip through the 25th anniversary Reporter shows no evidence of these vintage papers, and they appear to have been lost in some bizarre, intra-office black hole around the time the last anniversary edition was published. Whether it was negligence on the management’s part, or a sentimental employee pocketing what amounts to nearly 1,300 papers, the disappearance of Larsen’s personal archives remains a mystery.

John Larsen (thirty years at the same job, wow) takes his own tour down memory lane including this anecdote...

After a short hiatus, Elton John returned to recording in 1978 with the single, “Ego.” To trumpet the release, the label shot a short movie (music videos were still several years away) and premiered it at the National Theater in Westwood. Robert Emert, a friend since high school, and I headed down Highway 1 for what seemed like an innocuous event, a five-minute film with free popcorn. On the way there, we rear-ended a car, crushing the front end of Robert’s little Honda. Since it was mostly cosmetic damage, we decided to carry on. What was supposed to be a little goof turned into a major goof, at least for us. Imagine our surprise when we pulled up to the National Theater to hundreds of screaming fans, who stood behind velvet ropes to catch a glimpse of rock and roll royalty. We were escorted out of our crushed little car by the valet, walked down the red carpet (who the hell are they?), and entered the theater. Inside was a Who’s Who of rock and roll, a packed house choking down packets of Pop Rocks followed by Champagne chasers.

They've also finally dealt with the issue of keeping their articles online which is more cause for celebration (if a story link dies in less than a week it's pretty useless in a link dominated medium). I tumbled to the changes that seem to have occurred last December (all issues from December onward seem to be there) while I was updating my local news sources page last week (adding the Santa Paula Times [Topix is really fond of them] and the overlooked Camarillo Acorn).

With these changes, I'm hopeful they won't be stuck trying to figure out where the next thirty years of stories and features went.