Sentinel’s top gun heads into wild blue yonder

Yesterday, I put my lips around the fire hose of awesome and opened the valve all the way. I flew in a U.S. Navy Blue Angels F/A 18 Hornet. Lt. Mark Tedrow taxied this airplane — really just a pair of small wings atop two jet engines producing 17,000 pounds of force each — to the end of the runway. “Okay, Jay. Are you ready? I’m going to light the afterburner and we’ll be on our way.” The jet started forward like any other commercial jet I had been ...

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Shrewdness or luck: Obamacare may result in better market-driven system

I am not much of a conspiracy theorist, but the United States Supreme Court on Thursday carefully placed the seal of approval on what may be the most shrewd political maneuvering in modern history. There were so many machinations and what-ifs along the way that if this was all deliberately orchestrated, it was sheer brilliance. And in the end, it may not be a bad thing. Stick with me through this. The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare, is now the law and on ...

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Clearing up the confusion regarding publication of legal notices

As regular readers of The Daily Sentinel are probably aware, Mesa County Public Trustee Paul Brown moved legal notices about foreclosures from The Daily Sentinel to the Palisade Tribune/Fruita Times. Foreclosure notices provided a healthy chunk of revenue for The Daily Sentinel, the loss of which has led to layoffs here and other painful cost cutting — measures we managed to avoid through the depths of the recession. But our pain is not the purpose of this column; the purpose is to ...

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A message to our readers

When I walked into the Sentinel building Monday morning the lobby was packed with agitated customers, and we still did not have an operating printing press. For two days we printed The Daily Sentinel at the Montrose Daily Press. Last week’s Sunday edition didn’t land on most doorsteps until 5 p.m. That weekend was a sleepless, chaotic glimpse of hell. I was focused for the preceding 31 hours on getting (1) a newspaper on the street and (2) a master electrician to address the ...

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A change in commenting policy

We made a decision here at The Daily Sentinel a few weeks ago to change our policy for commenting online. We decided that the policy needed to square with our policy for letters to the editor. That is, if you would like to offer a comment on a news story or opinion piece on our website, you need to identify yourself. Don’t get me wrong; we invite vigorous debate on the website about the news stories we have covered. But we found that, due to some quirk of human nature, allowing ...

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Newspapers remain the best way to disclose information to public

Being a county commissioner is a hard and somewhat thankless job, particularly in a time of severe economic downturn. It takes intestinal fortitude to make decisions that affect real people, stand behind those decisions and withstand the blowback that invariably comes from one interested party or another. In this case, Mesa County Commissioners Janet Rowland and Craig Meis took a position at odds with the interests of my company, The Daily Sentinel. They want to remove county fiscal ...

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Access to website part of Sentinel subscription

If you find yourself logging on to our website, GJSentinel.com, you might notice a few changes after Sunday. If you are a daily subscriber to this newspaper, you needn’t worry. Those changes will only benefit you. You will still have total and unfettered access to the website as well as a new electronic edition of The Daily Sentinel as part of your subscription. If, however, you are not a seven-day subscriber to The Daily Sentinel, you’ll find that you’ll be asked to ...

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Get in the game for world-class education

The brilliant documentarian Ken Burns tells a story about at time when he was asked to deliver a high school commencement address. A friend told him, “Just don’t say, ‘Your future lies ahead of you.’ ” So, Mr. Burns, a historian by default, delivered an address on the theme:  “Your future lies in your past.” Ken Burns’ twist on his friend’s clumsy advice made the point that our futures are almost always dictated by how we have led ...

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One year in, news briefs still better than legal briefs

One year ago on this date, I mothballed the suits, boxed up the law books and retired the briefcase.  I was off to be a newspaperman. We closed on our acquisition of The Daily Sentinel on August 1, 2009. A day earlier, I walked away from my law firm.  It was the best career decision I ever made. Though I have enormous respect for our third branch of government — and for attorneys generally — being a newspaper publisher in Grand Junction, Colo., is a good gig. And as ...

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Medical marijuana laws are a maze for industry and law enforcement

Large-scale medical marijuana arrived in Colorado about the same time I did — July 2009. I grew up in conservative northeast Kansas. Later, as an attorney in Kansas City, I watched as loads of federal, state and local dollars were spent on criminal prosecutions of marijuana-related crimes. So it shocked me to learn that pot could be purchased and used here legally, though supposedly only within the confines of a voter-imposed regulatory framework. Full disclosure: I spent my ...

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Credibility is the currency that keeps newspapers meaningful

In the centuries before the Internet, a newspaper’s power derived from the fact that it owned the only printing press in town. “Never pick a fight with someone who buys ink by the barrel,” went the old saying. The Internet and the phenomenon of the desktop publisher fundamentally and forever changed that power dynamic. Anyone with a computer and connection could, conceivably, reach millions of readers without the expense associated with a printing press, newsprint or the ...

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Numbers add up to make Grand Junction a great place to call home

My wife, Amber, and I walked into the Mesa County Department of Motor Vehicles office over the lunch hour the other day to finally get our Colorado license tags. We pulled Number 34 and took a seat. The clerk called out, “Nineteen. Next up. Nineteen.” We slumped in our seats, preparing for a long and painful DMV experience. Abu Ghraib might have been more inviting. “Number 20.” Number 20 consumed an obscenely long time. Number 20 apparently wanted to perform a ...

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Jay Seaton Column Aug. 01, 2009

Jay Seaton is executive vice president of Grand Junction Media Inc., which purchased The Daily Sentinel. He will join the newspaper’s management team this month. It was love at first sight. As the plane eased over the Bookcliffs and Grand Junction first revealed itself to me a few months ago, I sensed I was in for one of those special experiences. Christmas Eve at age 7. I bit my tongue, waiting for a reaction from my wife. We were soon driving in our rental from the airport down ...

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