Spotlight on the "Spotlight"

Howdy friends and neighbors,

This week you may have received the latest copy of the "Spotlight on Montebello, the Official Bimonthly Publication of the Montebello Chamber of Commerce."


Some of you may recall that last year (2010) there were several heated discussions about the Spotlight going on in the Montebello forum of a site called Topix.com.

It seems that a few local folks took exception to the Spotlight calling itself a "newspaper."

Now the Spotlight does have a few news stories about local events but most of the publication is devoted to advertisements for Chamber of Commerce members.  What the local folks were complaining about was that standard newspapers are mighty careful to make sure their readers know the difference between what is "news" and what is an "advertisement" but this wasn't always clear with the Spotlight.

A "news" story is supposed to be a straight-up, facts-only telling of an event that happened or is about to happen in the community.   Nobody pays a newspaper to  put a "news" story in the publication.  Respectable newspapers try real hard to be impartial and tell all sides of a story when reporting the news or else they risk damaging their reputations.

An "advertisement" is just that, an ad.  Sometimes an advertisement looks like a news story but if a business pays to have it placed in the publication, it's still just an ad.  It's only natural that an advertisement would be carefully worded to favor the business or person who paid for it or else what would be the point of placing the ad?

So what was happening with the Spotlight?  Well, it appears that one member of the Chamber of Commerce got caught placing ads in the Chamber's publication that looked like news stories!  Yup, you guessed it, the perpetrator was Cook Hill Properties, the would-be developer of the Montebello hills!

For a long time, Cook Hill had been paying for FULL PAGE "news" stories in the Spotlight promoting all the benefits of the Montebello Hills Specific Plan.  These fake news stories didn't say anything about the possible negative effects the project would have, ignored community opposition to the project, and failed to mention the fact that Cook Hill had paid the Chamber of Commerce to have these stories placed in the Spotlight!

Cook Hill even refers to it's own advertisements as "news stories" on it's website:  Montebello Hills News

Well, the Montebello Chamber of Commerce got the message and did the right thing!  The Spotlight no longer refers to itself as a "newspaper."


Keep this in mind when you open the latest copy of the Spotlight on Montebello and get to Cook Hill's full page ad on page 13.

Note too the "-Paid Advertisement-" that now appears at the bottom of the page.


Daisy Mae

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