OJ Simpson might soon be out of jail. Will he visit Brentwood? Will the cameras be in tow? Might he take up residency here?
Steve Bannon is now out of the White House. Breitbart News is headquartered in Brentwood, so we might be seeing Steve Bannon soon.
Maybe when OJ and Steve get back, Brentwood News could host a discussion with the two of them. We could talk about race relations in America. That’s probably not a good idea. I take it back. Then again, Mayor Eric Garcetti, who lived in Brentwood for a while (and whose parents still do) is making moves that some are interpreting as his first steps toward running for president. If he does, Brentwood will probably gain another fifteen seconds of fame. Maybe Garcetti can moderate the conversation between OJ and Bannon. If he can pull that off without a hitch, he might be presidential material.
As some of you know, I’ve been working on a website. It’s called The Latest (TheLatest.com). We show all sides of every story. If it’s a political story, we show you how Fox News, Huffington Post, New York Times, Associated Press, BBC, The Blaze and others are handling the same story – and let you figure out what to make of it.
This “we’re neutral” philosophy started with Brentwood News. When I started the paper almost 27 years ago, I decided we would never endorse a candidate, and we never have. The people of Brentwood are smart enough to figure out how they feel about candidates
If Brentwood News endorsed candidates, we’d anger half the people one time, the other half the next time, and eventually everybody would be angry. This is one of the reasons I believe that a recent Gallup Poll revealed that trust in the media is at an all-time low. If a news outlet has a favored candidate or clearly delineated political philosophy, it makes you question that outlet’s objectivity.
TheLatest.com is an attempt at bringing about civil dialogue in a time of rage, but the website is not just about politics. If you are interested in entertainment, sports, lifestyle or anything else, you can find it on the site.
We have a great internship program and several Brentwood high school and college students have worked on content, design, marketing, social media, and technology with the site.
We’ve stayed pretty quiet about the site until now because it took a long time to get to this place. The goal is to take some of the Brentwood News spirit and produce it digitally on a global scale.
I have visions of our Brentwood office one day having one of those electronic news crawlers like they have in Times Square zipping across the top of our building, reading, Hear The Latest? We’d house Brentwood News in the same building. And we’d leave room for Marck’s Newsstand on the ground floor.