At the end of the day, I am little more than a Bay Area native and Times subscriber who has always taken issue with the paper’s reporting on my home town, and fears that New York-centrism might seep into this exciting new experiment. What bothers me most of all is that the reporting feels as if it is affected by a certain “double vision” (to steal from DuBois). While produced by Bay Area residents for Bay Area residents, the pieces in the new section read as if they want to explain their relevance to East Coast readers, or editors, as the case may be. But perhaps that’s just my own over-sensitivity.

I am defensive by nature, and probably will seem so in this response, since it does sting to be told, by a thoughtful observer, that you’ve fallen into the trap you most feared. But let me make an alternate case, and see how Mr. Lukas, Mr. Lieberman and your other readers react.

I’ll begin with the easy one: the Stanford-Cal feature by Jason Turbow. The writer is a local resident, and the editor (me) has been following Big Game and the overall Stanford-Cal rivalry since the fall of 1968, when I was a freshman at Stanford. My options were ignoring Big Game — which didn’t seem the right way to go — or figuring out a way to cover it that gave deference to the way it dominates conversation here, without giving it undue weight. Mr. Lukas thinks it was The Times naively “discovering” the Stanford-Cal rivalry and telling readers things they know well. But my guess is he missed the reception that John Hennessy, Stanford’s president, gave for his own staff and their Cal counterparts before the game. Both he and Cal’s chancellor referred to Mr. Turbow’s piece in their public remarks — they felt it was am enjoyable new take on a perennial subject. (I would also guess that Mr. Lukas missed the historical reference hinted at in the last two lines.) So I’m left to wonder — would it have been better to totally ignore the game? I don’t think so.

Also, Tracey Taylor’s real estate column should not be judged by the brief lede-in, but by the new statistics she offered beneath.

But there is a broader case to be made for our coverage.

For one thing, our “Vistas” feature, designed to locate, in words and a photograph, the intersection of the internal and external geographies that matter to local residents, seems to have sparked local interest, judging from the e-mail traffic I get from articulate, interesting people suggesting we write about their preferred vistas.

On a more serious note, Scott James, our Barbary Coast columnist, has been breaking news since his first work was published Oct. 16, revealing for the first time in any local publication that a citywide revolt against increased real estate assessments was under way. He also had the first interviews with the victims of the shootings at the last Hallowe’en parade in the Castro. And his Nov. 13 column on the clash of church and state in Vallejo has led to a storm of protest there, and continuing coverage on all the local television outlets. His piece and related web post on local jurisdictions like San Mateo County cracking down on bicycle scofflaws got a huge reaction.

Likewise, Frances Dinkelspiel’s piece on the dilemma facing self-employed truckers working at the port of Oakland, who have to get new trucks with cleaner engines to continue working there, was followed four days later by a very similar front-page piece in the Oakland Tribune. And her piece on the arson case involving the loss of $250 million in Napa wines was widely read.

Finally, Gerry Shih and Rick Paddock went back to Richmond High School after the gang rape and found an angle that even the fine piece the week before by the Chronicle’s Kevin Fagan touched only briefly — the existence of a subculture at the school that condones the rape and blames the victim for getting her attackers in trouble. Gerry had another piece today, too late for Mr. Lukas’s consideration, that profiled the club owner and political power broker Terrance Alan, a piece that built on the fine work the SF Weekly did on San Francisco’s Entertainment Commission and its growing political power.

All of the writers I cite above are not Times staffers. They are either natives of the Bay area or longtime residents (Mr. Shih spent part of his childhood here and graduated from Stanford last June.) I have not spent most of my adult life here, but am a Stanford graduate and have lived on the peninsula for the last 2 1/2 years. So I am the only one of us who could be considered a colonial administrator — and I’d bet there are tens of thousands of other area residents who have lived here two years or less, but don’t consider themselves outsiders.

All that said, I am keenly aware that the fact our copy is running in a paper based in New York is going to make smart readers sensitive to the appearance of colonialism. And our two-day-a-week publication schedule give us a higher barrier on keeping up with and ahead of the news. (The Bay Bridge eye-bar failure, for instance, happened on a Friday night and our deadlines mean it would have been nearly impossible to rip up our Sunday section and provide proper coverage of the event and its aftermath. But perhaps we should have tried.)

So thanks for paying close attention, Mr. Lukas, and if you continue to offer critiques, I will continue to pay attention. Still, I hope you take a broader look at our offerings in the future. We are still getting our footing, but I think we’ve shown some nimble footwork nonetheless. I will look forward both to your novel on the Ottomans and any future assessments of our work. Mr. Lieberman, trust, me, I read every e-mail you send us.

Regards,

Felicity Barringer
Editor, Bay Area Report
The New York Times

PS: I kind of like the “9 Counties, 8 Bridges, 7 Million People” subhed, but am more than willing to take suggestions for a better one. Who knew?

For one, they could try a bit more original story ideas and oh yeah, there’s one helluva media blogger they could use from time to time.