We had to make a tough decision yesterday. We let two of our very talented reporters leave our team. It was an economic decision. Carol Rock has been a veteran reporter in Santa Clarita, having worked at the Signal, the Daily News and KHTS for many years. She knows our Valley and serves on many of our Valley’s finest non-profit boards. Mark Archuletta is a talented writer who is also passionate about his work. Sometimes owning a business can be challenging because we need to make some tough decisions. In this case, the economy has hit so many of the local businesses who we are dependent on for our advertising revenues. We needed to make cuts and no matter who we selected the act was going to be painful. 

A number of blogs are saying our Congressman, Buck McKeon forced us to release Carol and Mark. This is not true. Initially we decided not to address this rumor, but in this day of social media, we want to correct the rumor before it spreads. While we endorse Congressman McKeon from an editorial position we pride ourselves in always delivering a non-biased news product. It is critical we keep our objectivity to remain the most viable news source in Santa Clarita. We have had our differences with Congressman McKeon, as well as other local leaders from both political parties. We have always been fair and balanced with our news. That will not change. In the next few weeks, we are scheduled to have a one hour live interview with Congressional challenger Lee Rogers and a separate interview with Congressman McKeon. It will be an opportunity for you to judge if our Santa Clarita news continues to be stellar. In the meantime, we want to confirm Congressman McKeon had absolutely no influence on our decision to make staff cutbacks.

We will miss Carol and Mark. We know their talents will lead them to new opportunities. We know we will have to work even harder with a thinner staff to deliver the quality product our Valley expects from us.

Carl Goldman & Jeri Seratti-Goldman