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We’re getting into the community more than ever before the rest of this year – and it all starts this Friday with the Concert in the Park in downtown Pleasanton.
The Pleasanton Weekly is sponsoring this installment of the Pleasanton Downtown Association’s summer Friday evening concert series, with our show featuring Diablo Fugitives playing rock ‘n’ roll covers from 7-8:30 p.m. in Lions Wayside Park.
Stop by our table and meet our team before or during the concert, and help us celebrate our 2025 General Excellence Award from the California News Publishers Association.
We’ll have a prize wheel for you to spin, Pleasanton Weekly mugs for those who donate to us, plenty of this very newspaper and a listening ear for a news tip, praise and criticism from our loyal readers.
The event is such a great opportunity for us to embrace and engage the community and enjoy an exhale before our busy period really kicks in after Labor Day. Not that my calendar exactly shows this as the slow time…
As many of you know, our East Bay division editor Cierra Bailey – who had been with us for nearly 6-1/2 years and helped us launch LivermoreVine.com in 2021 – departed last month to focus on her family and personal life. I’ve been recruiting for her successor for weeks, but I’m happy to say we’re getting close to an announcement.
Balancing two jobs at once during this vacancy has been demanding. I relish the opportunity to get my hands dirty with our day-to-day journalism again, but I’m ready to pass the baton to our new editor next month.
Outside of putting out the newspaper weekly and three Express email newsletters daily and participating in multiple critical organizational projects while hiring, my big task has been pulling together our 2026 Tri-Valley candidate forum series.
And I’m proud to say (although I’m trying not to panic at the workload ahead) that we are on track to have up to 11 election events between Sept. 14 and Oct. 12, including adding Sunol Glen Unified School District and Livermore Area Recreation and Park District for the first time each. Those two races are among the most intriguing in our region, and we look forward to helping voters get to hear directly from those candidates before they cast their ballots.
We are going to reveal our schedule in a week or two, once we nail down final details. We are advancing on a forum for every city, town and school district election in the Tri-Valley – but our dates for Livermore City Council and San Ramon Valley Unified School District may drop off because there is only one contested race instead of three on the ballot.
Our election events are a critical part of our editorial strategy during campaign season, along with candidate profiles, coverage of election news and reviewing campaign finance reports. I hope to see you at our forums, or you can watch the videos after the fact.
We’re also gearing up to participate in the Three Valleys Community Foundation’s second annual 925 GIVES fundraising campaign, which will give nonprofits in Alameda and Contra Costa counties – like our Embarcadero Media Foundation – the chance for a nice infusion of donations at the end of the third quarter.
The 24-hour online drive Sept. 25 helps Tri-Valley residents more easily make an impact closer to home.
Registered nonprofits are listed on www.925gives.org and people can navigate to the organizations of their choice and donate.
Last year’s inaugural drive raised more than $117,000 for 87 local nonprofits, including ours. For 2026, we have a generous donor offering to match up to $10,000 for our foundation’s 925 GIVES campaign.
Consider contributing if you can. To help local journalism sustain and thrive in the Tri-Valley, any and all support matters – and that goes beyond just financial.
Donations, subscriptions and advertising sales are so important for us, of course, but so too are critical consumer actions like being regular readers of our print newspaper and our website, signing up for our Express or Preps Playbook newsletters, sharing our stories on social media, visiting our community events, bringing the Weekly on vacation for a Take Us Along, emailing a Letter to the Editor, sending us a news tip … the list goes on.
That’s the message I deliver at public appearances, like my recent guest speaker presentation to the Livermore Cultural Arts Council. I have dates coming up with the San Ramon Chamber of Commerce and the Rotary Clubs of San Ramon Valley, Dublin and Pleasanton.
If you’re part of a group interested in having me (or our publisher or our new editor) present to your team, your members or your classroom of aspiring journalists, don’t hesitate to reach out. I’ll prioritize working you onto my calendar.
Editor’s note: Jeremy Walsh is the associate publisher and editorial director for the Embarcadero Media Foundation’s East Bay Division. His “What A Week” column is a recurring feature in the Pleasanton Weekly, Livermore Vine and DanvilleSanRamon.com.
