Publisher

Halfwaytoconcord.com™, born, March–2004, is a community news site serving Contra Costa County with an editorial focus on community news and discussion of public policy, business, B2B and economic development efforts, and coverage of NGO and Nonprofit community service organizations. Halfway To Concord welcomes contributions from the community around these topics. In addition to a lively, moderated comments section, Halfway To Concord offers free, self-serve event listings, a jobs page, Business Directory, Spanish translation, and a robust feedback and support module, as well as a secure SSL connection to protect the privacy of all data. Halfway To Concord believes that the little life of Contra Costa County, including its small to medium sized businesses (SMBs), NGOs, nonprofits and service organization, public policy groups, and citizen opinion concerning the issues of the day, are not served well, if at all, when left to legacy media including daily print newspapers that increasingly squeeze out local news coverage. Halfway To Concord believes the mission of community driven news is to advocate. It rejects the premise of so-called “professional journalism” that it is unbiased. Nor does it accept the ruse of “Citizen Journalism,” which is just insider code for “professional journalists” who got downsized from their legacy media job and now post from Mom’s gagrage. Halfway To Concord believes that residents of Contra Costa County, as they live all-at-once as citizens, business people, workers, educators, community activists, and members of families, and social and faith communities, are themselves competent and responsible to express and share their own news, opinions, and events independent of the imprimatur of “professional” media filtration. Halfway To Concord provides a clean, well-lighted place where this healthy public community interaction can thrive. While Halfway To Concord does curate and moderate topics, posts, and discussions, it does so only to make contributions from the community more credible, authoritative, and visible to the site’s audience and on the Internet. The proprietary Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Halfway To Concord bakes into the site and its editing of content is designed to help build contributors’ own online audience and authority for their ideas, events, businesses, and organizations. Halfway To Concord does not cover garage fires, car crashes, 2-for-1 offers from nail salons, blacked-out helicopters, or sad kittens stuck in trees or their birthdays. Halfway To Concord is written for adults, but it stands by an acceptable level of community standards and edits, as best it can, unacceptable language, personal attacks, and actionable or libelous content. In addition to the posts that appear on the front page, Halfway To Concord offers special sections or pages that are centered around Communities, Nonprofits, Business, Real Estate, Politics, and sometimes on Science and Technology (to satisfy the dork and geek in us all). Several city pages are now available as well and more to come. We are happy to work with contributors and sponsors to develop additional sections. For the many inquiries concerning the name of this blog, see the post describing the origin of this blog’s name, Halfway To Concord. Two housekeeping items before we move on to the fine print: RULE 1 Please be aware, that in the interest of timeliness, this site may contain occasional typographical errors. This is the same disclaimer the Associated Press makes. RULE 2 Own your words. Posters and commenters must earn the right to publish on this site. Comments must advance the discussion (bump) and not be just some emotional rant on your part or a wandering tale from your childhood that has nothing to do with the topic. Racism (a), bigotry (b), general stupidity (c), and comments posted as ALL CAPS(d) will not be tolerated. Be nice. Be accurate. Write Well and prosper.