CalPotNews gears up for the tough road ahead

Dear readers:

For more than three years, I’ve followed and reposted headlines about California cannabis right here on CalPotNews.com. Changing times and circumstances have forced me to shift gears, so CalPotNews: The Website will be rebranded and relaunched before the end of 2012. My goal is to move away from repurposing news content from mainstream media (not that there’s anything wrong with that) and toward generating more original content for California’s medical cannabis patients and providers.

To gear up for that effort, CalPotNews.com recently changed web servers, and the story archives, blog posts and photos all got dumped in the move. That should erase, quite literally, any concerns that third-party newspapers and/or TV websites may have had about their content being reposted here. (Not there were many of them; I only got one complaint in three years!) Either I did a good job backlinking the stories, giving credit where credit was due, or no media types stumbled upon the website. I hate thinking it was the latter.

No matter. In a future post, I hope to reward some of those newspapers for their patience and highlight some of the good work that took place on their watch. Cannabis journalism is still in its infancy, but there have been some promising signs of progress at many California news outlets. Here are some of my faves:

• Arcata Eye
• Bakersfield Californian
• California Watch
• Chico News and Review
• East Bay Express
• Eureka Times-Standard
• Indybay.org
• L.A. Weekly
• Los Angeles Daily News
• Los Angeles Times
• Oakland Tribune
• Redding Record-Searchlight
• Sacramento Bee
• Sacramento News and Review
• Santa Cruz Sentinel
• Santa Rosa Press Democrat
• Ukiah Daily Journal

Two pages that did make the trip to the new server are my budding directories of city cannabis ordinances and county cannabis ordinances. More than 15 years after California voters approved the Compassionate Use Act, confusion about state and local laws is rampant among cannabis users and non-users alike. Although the directories are incomplete and the move broke some links, they still serve a purpose in explaining the interplay — and frequent conflicts — between California’s medical cannabis laws and local zoning ordinances. The ordinance listings will morph into a more useful resource by mid-2013.

In the meantime, please pardon the digital dust as CalPotNews shifts gears. The past year, in particular, has been one of stunning change for medical cannabis patients and collective-dispensaries in California. If CalPotNews helped you stay informed during that time, I can say “mission accomplished” with a straight face. Thanks for reading, and please remember to check back to see what’s coming next.