By Bruce B. Brugmann
David Lazarus wrote his farewell consumer column for the July 27th Chronicle under the headline, “Where is the media watchdog?”
Indeed. Lazarus answers his question by quoting Ralph Nader as saying that there will never be another Nader because “the media have lost interest in consumer advocacy as both a story and a calling.”
Lazarus says that the “Chron’s editors have stood behind this column” and says that “a tip of the hat is due here to Editor Phil Bronstein, Deputy Managing Editor Steve Proctor and, most of all, Business Editor Ken Howe. They took enough heat on my behalf to boil soup.”
And yet, despite the fact that Lazarus is a damn good reporter and a strong consumer advocate and claims support from his paper, he was still unable to cover the biggest consumer story in San Francisco history.
Which is, as attentive Guardian readers know, the PG&E/City Hall/Raker Act scandal and how PG&E has cheated the city’s businesses and residents for decades out of the city’s own cheap, clean, and green Hetch Hetchy electrical power. (See past Bruce blogs and Guardian stories and editorials going back to 1969).