From fishing outlaws to redlight district: See the top SLO County throwback stories of 2024
Seventeen years ago at the end of 2007, The Tribune was exploring ways to create internet-only extras.
They were going to be items that did not fit a newspaper format, with a little extra sauce.
Blogging was the hot topic of the day and several departments jumped in with titles that shared the writer’s quirky interests like internet trends, opinion, arts and entertainment.
Photos From the Vault was a late addition to the roster.
We had a former film processing darkroom full of negatives dating back to 1963 and I thought it would be a fun exercise in nostalgia to republish some of them.
Many of the photographers had award-winning careers that launched in San Luis Obispo and the quality of images were compelling.
The first post on our original Blogger platform was a 1963 nighttime picture of downtown San Luis Obispo at Christmas. Photos from the same year in Cambria and Paso Robles followed.
Judging from the frequency that I see many of the old photos copied and pasted, unattributed, on social media that aspect was a wild success.
I just wish people would publish the link to the source material instead of a vague reposting the image with a “look at this” caption.
Soon the project grew.
The hope was that the blog would create a sense of shared history and community.
Happily there was a resurgent energy at many local history associations as baby boomers began to retire and devote time to preserving local history. It was a lucky wave to catch.
But very quickly I discovered that the internet can also be an unhappy place.
My failure to cross-reference microfilmed stories with the random negatives pulled out of boxes, led to arguments.
People have strong feelings about memories and want to hear and share stories.
Anonymous keyboard trolls tried to hijack threads and make the narrative about them.
One thing that surprised me was the number of half-remembered or misattributed stories posted in the comments.
Some were earnest efforts while others were anonymous attempts to bait arguments.
Rage engagement wasn’t the goal.
Clearly I’m not good at click farming for profit.
I was active in the comments section letting people know that disagreement was OK but that they would be banned for threats.
If the blog was to survive it needed to improve.
More information was included from our clipping library that Ken Kenyon and Sharon Morem had painstakingly maintained. Sometimes a brief summary was written.
I began to collect local history books and learn my way around local archives.
Librarians, historical societies and local historical writers like Dan Krieger have been invaluable in helping me navigate the terrain.
Dan’s “Times Past” columns were a template for how historical writing could pick up an interesting anecdote from the past, relate it to the present and offer an action point for the future.
Rather than frequent brief picture postings, “Photos From the Vault” evolved into photos with longer form writing.
It has grown from a simple nostalgia to a larger reflection on the history of the area.
A few years into the project, then Executive Editor Sandra Duerr brought the column full circle back into print and helped shape the focus with editing.
Over the years I have had luxury of great editing by Joe Tarica, Sarah Linn and Kaytlyn Leslie and their skill at crafting internet searchable text.
Much gratitude to them for helping polish a jagged edge on a sentence, prune an unruly branch topic or catching a typo in the copy.
Now both print and online audiences enjoy not only the interesting photos, but the colorful writing from other eras that date back to the beginning of newspapers in this county with the founding of the Pioneer in 1868 and The Tribune in 1869.
I’ve tried to keep true to the roots of the column, basing it on the original reporting that began 157 years ago in January, with the founding of the Pioneer in a little cow county, with a population of about 4,000. It was just two decades after war with Mexico and the Gold Rush that made California an instant state.
Some themes then continue today.
Newspaper editors in the 1860s frequently made a pitch for subscribers.
Moochers who didn’t want to pay for an annual subscription, the original paywall, would often try to hang around the printing office and read whatever was lying around.
Rome G. Vickers would write sputtering editorials in the Pioneer, scolding the cheapskates.
So let me take this moment to offer gratitude to those who enable the work of local journalism to continue by subscribing online or in print. News organizations, especially those with print roots, are notoriously poor at self promotion so I’ll make a brief pitch.
The Tribune strives to cover local issues.
The reality is when a national media organization occasionally covers a local story, it is often because it appeared first in a local publication and then showed up on their internet research as being a hot topic.
Having viable local sources of information brings value to a community.
Studies show that areas with information deserts suffer hidden costs with higher levels of government waste and less transparency.
The Tribune won 12 first place awards in a state-wide competition this year with a wide variety of coverage from breaking news, to features on iconic businesses, to long term investigations on environmental and social issues, opinion and video.
Good journalism reflects the community it serves and can be at turns entertaining, engaging and informing. Sometimes it might make people mad when challenging bureaucratic systems that have fallen out of relevance.
After almost four decades in journalism, I’m never quite sure what history columns will be the most read, but I often try to make a connection to present day stories.
Subjects of the column have been as varied and unpredictable the local readership.
Here are your five most read columns from 2024:
Fishing outlaws flocked to SLO County reservoir intent on coveted prize: ‘A heck of a fish’
Remnants of California’s Mission era were hidden inside SLO County barn. How’d they get there?
SLO once had a red-light district so notorious, the city renamed the street
The California Men’s Colony looked very different when it opened. Take a look inside
How Hwy. 1 was carved into one of the most treacherous parts of the Big Sur coast
From all of us at The Tribune, a happy 2025 to all!
