I'm Michael Cabanatuan. Many of my Albany friends and acquaintances know that I wrote for the San Francisco Chronicle for 27 years — including the entirety of my time in Albany — before retiring about a year ago.

That may be why some of you are seeing me around town more. And why I’ve joined the Albany News Project, a community campaign to develop a local news site, Albany Scanner.

But my journalism career didn’t start at the Chronicle. Before joining the "Voice of the West" (the paper’s one-time motto), I worked for the Modesto Bee, the West County Times and the Paradise Post, my first paper.

Like many young journalists, I worked my way up to bigger newspapers, eager not only to make a little more money but to make more of a difference and to have more influence and, you know, change the world.

But the truth is, the biggest impact I had may have been at the smallest newspaper.

In Paradise, I quickly realized, most of the town’s residents wouldn’t know about important issues or pending decisions unless my colleagues and I wrote about them. My stories could determine whether two or three people or more than 100 showed up for a Town Council meeting.

My stories also had direct impact. They helped get a community auditorium and senior center built in Paradise. And I let people know about the financial and environmental costs of being the largest city in California without a sewer system. And many, many more issues.

I’ve lived in Albany now for about 25 years. My wife Adrianne and I raised our son Ben here. He attended Cornell, Albany Middle and Albany High schools, played Albany Little League and for the Cyclones baseball team, and threw discus and shot put at the high school. As parents, we were active in the PTA, Boy Scouts and served as parent leaders and fans and fundraisers for various sports teams.

While Albany, unlike Paradise, may have a sewer system, it has its own news and controversies that need and deserve coverage. That became clear last week when the word came (through large news outlets) of the pending sale of Golden Gate Fields.

When I first moved to Albany, there was a modicum of regular news coverage in The Journal, a weekly paper that covered El Cerrito, Albany and Kensington. It usually amounted to just a couple of stories a week. In time, coverage diminished then all but disappeared. Albany Patch provided robust news coverage for a couple of years then shifted to a different model without local reporting.

So now we’re left without coverage of important news like Albany’s upcoming elections, new and disappearing businesses on Solano and San Pablo avenues, even the state of the city’s wildlife — coyotes and turkeys. And much, much more — including the futures of the Albany Twin and Albany Bowl and what will happen if Golden Gate Fields is transitioned to a park.

There is plenty of news to cover in our one-square-mile community. What’s missing is a local news source with dedicated, professional reporting based on facts instead of opinion and hearsay. An informed community is a stronger community.

That’s where the Albany News Project — and you — come in. We have a goal of raising enough money by April 30 for Albany Scanner to start publishing fact-based news as soon as possible.

Please help us Bring News Back to Albany by becoming a making a gift today.

Sincerely,

Michael Cabanatuan
Albany News Project

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