“It’s been an epic run and I’m so grateful to have had the space and encouragement to find my footing in this wild industry. Forever grateful for this opportunity, my coworkers and my community,” writes Bella Ross in a March 1 dispatch via her X account.

Volvo politics

Yet another editorial staffer has departed under Alden Global Capital, new owner of the faltering San Diego Union-Tribune. The departure edges the paper further to the right, a move celebrated in some quarters. And she’s been picked up by the Voice of San Diego, one more illustration of the quick shift to local non-profit online outlets by ex-employees of the city’s once-powerful daily newspaper.

“It’s been an epic run and I’m so grateful to have had the space and encouragement to find my footing in this wild industry. Forever grateful for this opportunity, my coworkers and my community,” writes Bella Ross in a March 1 dispatch via her X account. “My next stop is @voiceofsandiego!! I’ve admired their work since college and am so excited to join the team and keep making journalism in San Diego. Planning to hone in on my social media journalism/video skills — good things to come.”

Among her other U-T duties as editorial board member and audience engagement specialist, Ross was in charge of sdutopinion, the U-T’s official TikTok channel. One of her last posts there took aim at the editorially panned Sunbreak Ranch, a homeless compound proposed for military land that attracted the support of Republican ex-mayor Kevin Faulconer and conservative allies. “Yes, this is a real proposal, and it’s as infeasible and inhumane as it sounds,” says the U-T TikTok description. The remark drew a prophetic reply from someone with the handle Volvoguytom: “U-T’s new owner didn’t lay off the social media staff?”

Meanwhile, U-T’s current printing operation up the freeway at the Riverside Press-Enterprise, also the property of Alden Global Capital, has caught the attention of GXExpress, an online journal covering the printing trade. “The cosmo blue Headliner Offset [Press], which would have been ‘state-of-the-art’ 40 years ago, when it would have represented an investment of about $5 million, is to get a DCOS drive control system supplied by Impressions Worldwide,” says the story. Swedish-based DCOS specializes in press upgrades.

Dave Gilmore, sales vice president of Impressions Worldwide, a DCOS importer, is quoted as saying that Riverside is the last of the Goss double-wide presses standing in southern California. “Think about that for a minute.” Reports of the Riverside press’s aging condition likely will further fuel rumors that the U-T will soon downsize or drop its print run entirely. Already, page counts have been slashed and design simplified in an apparent effort to save money. Gilmore tells GXExpress that staffers running the antiquated Riverside presses “will have their hands full” when the LA Times, former sister to the U-T, also moves its press runs to the Riverside plant later this year following expiration of its downtown LA printing plant lease.

Climate changers cash

It hasn’t taken long for utility giant Sempra Energy, which is fighting off an initiative signature drive that could take away the lucrative power franchise from its subsidiary San Diego Gas & Electric, to begin coming up with big money for the newly-formed gubernatorial campaign committee of San Diego state Senate Democrat Toni Atkins. State disclosure filings show that Sempra gave $31,400 to the Atkins for Governor bid on March 5. A few days before, a filing with San Diego’s city clerk revealed that SDG&E itself spent $45,000 on March 1 for “March staff time” used to oppose the initiative effort through an SDG&E-funded political committee called Responsible Energy San Diego.

The power company knows Toni Atkins may soon have the power.

Termed-out Assembly Democrat Brian Maienschein, who placed a relatively close second last week to chief deputy city attorney Heather Ferbert in their race for San Diego City Attorney and will face off with her again in November, continues to collect cash for another future contest. His Maienschein For Attorney General 2030 got $1500 from the Consumer Attorney’s PAC on February 29 and the same from booze giant Anheuser Busch Companies the day before. The committee reported spending $1686 in January for fundraising at legendary Frank Fat’s in Sacramento.

Bribes and punishment

Elisabeth Kimmel, a wealthy onetime Carl DeMaio backer from La Jolla who formerly ran her family’s San Diego broadcasting empire before it was sold to media giant Tegna for $325 million in December 2017, has asked a federal judge in Boston to throw out her guilty plea in the so-called Varsity Blues college admissions scandal. “Mrs. Kimmel’s conviction and sentence violate the Constitution because her guilty plea was based on misinformation and therefore was not voluntary or intelligent,” says a motion filed last month by attorney Andrew Nathanson, per a March 5 Boston Herald account. “The motion states that [Kimmel] was in frail health ‘and feared that the additional stress of a lengthy trial would risk her life’ when she pleaded guilty,” adds the Herald. Prosecutors filed a sharply worded rebuttal of Kimmel’s claim, calling it “utterly without merit” and “built on an Alice-in-Wonderland version of events.” They added. “The indisputable reality is this: the defendant — a Harvard-educated former lawyer represented by experienced counsel — was charged with traditional property fraud in an indictment alleging that admission slots are property. She knowingly and voluntarily pleaded guilty to that crime.”

Did Elisabeth Kimmel plead guilty to save her own life?

Kimmel copped a plea to charges she forked over $475,000 from her family’s nonprofit foundation using middleman Rick Singer, who got her daughter into Georgetown University and son into USC with illegal payments and fake athletic credentials.

Kimmel was part-owner of Midwest Television, owner of KFMB TV and radio stations when its then-talk show host and fallen mayor Roger Hedgecock used KFMB’s address to raise money for fellow Republican DeMaio’s ultimately failed bid for Congress. “Mark my words — you will be hearing a lot more about Carl DeMaio in the coming months and years. Think Ted Cruz and Rand Paul,” wrote Hedgecock in a fundraising missive bearing the address “The Roger Hedgecock Show | c/o KFMB Radio | 7677 Engineer Road.”

— Matt Potter

(@sdmattpotter)

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