SLO County continues its rapid descent down the election rabbit hole. Shortly after revealing her nearly decade-old story of verbal assault by two county supervisors — and currently and contemporaneously failing to corroborate her account — District 5 Supervisor Debbie Arnold decided to inject herself in the news cycle once…

Elections keep getting crazier and crazier in SLO County. This week, we learned that Paso Robles resident Darcia Stebbens is requesting the recount of District 4 votes allegedly “on behalf of Lynn Compton not necessarily at the request of.” …

“Congratulations! You’re in the book!” That was a message I got from a friend of mine who purchased former Grover Beach councilwoman Debbie Peterson’s newly released book, The Happiest Corruption: Sleaze, Lies, & Suicide in a California Beach Town last week. Since Cal Coast News was promoting the book as…

It’s a valid question. Almost a year ago, I was informed about a retraction demand sent to Cal Coast News from two women who co-organized a vigil for a Kristin Smart vigil. The website accused them of attempting to eject the online tabloid’s photographer from the event. …

When Cal Coast News uses fake accounts to attack your family on reddit, you know you’re doing something right. Last week, I penned a column about the website’s poor handling of a story involving over 40 women alleging two SLO County business owners of sexual assault. As a result, they…

UPDATE (April 7, 2022): Ben Di Gugliemo has removed his post from Quora. “I was raped.” This was a remark Cal Coast News co-founder Karen Velie screamed to my former employer in 2014 over the phone, which I overheard. I remember how strange it was for her to say that since she made…

When I took journalism courses in college, I had a teacher named Mary Dodder McCorkle. A spectacular teacher and a wonderful woman. She was kind but also strict and necessarily so. She would bring out a red pen and grade students’ news articles. If someone’s name was misspelled in an…

This takes me down memory lane. For nearly a decade, I was falsely accused of being a “government troll” that was hired by late District 3 Supervisor Adam Hill to demean his critics merely because the peddlers of said conspiracy theory believed my columns were similar linguistically to Hill’s talking…

Author’s Note: I was asked by a local publication to pen a political column. I sent in the following column draft, but never heard back. Instead of letting this column fall to the wayside, I decided to publish it. Recent controversy surrounding the redistricting effort in SLO County has revealed…