Dean Singleton announced yesterday that he is stepping down as CEO of MediaNews Group—the Denver based company that owns the San Jose Mercury News along with most of the newspapers in the Bay Area. Amid speculation that the move was forced on him by a New York hedge fund that controls the company, Singleton insisted that he wants to focus on strategic planning and leave day-to-day management behind.

Everything comes down to the quality of our public education system and the manner to which a society treats its children. We reap what we sow. Too often in public schools for some children we are sowing the seeds of despair not hope. The racial achievement gap is a case in point.

As we ponder the life’s work of Dr. Martin Luther King and his commitment to the raising up of all God’s children we must come together with a strong bipartisan consensus on developing a plan so as not to leave any child behind anymore. Every dollar spent in the implementation of this plan, and we do know what works and what to do, will reap $4 in savings to the econom

It started with a fruit stand more than seven decades ago, and emerged as one of the landmark local grocery stores in San Jose, with branches in Silver Creek and Santa Clara. On February 8, Cosentino’s will be shutting its doors one last time. The reason, according to Dominic Cosentino, is not just the economy but the shifting purchasing habits of Americans over the last few decades: “Everything is favoring the big-box stores today.”

Team San Jose, the peculiar alliance of hoteliers, unions and city bureaucrats that runs the city’s entertainment and convention venues, is facing the biggest crisis in its short, contentious history.

Last Wednesday, finance chief Scott P. Johnson issued a report showing that the quasi-public entity overshot its budget by $750,000, and tangled its bookkeeping so badly that director Dan Fenton can’t even say exactly where the missing money went. Then on Monday, City Councilmember Sam Liccardo turned up the heat, asking city manager Deb Figone to dig into the hotel-tax-funded entity, which is run by Fenton and an executive committee including South Bay Labor Council boss Cindy Chavez.

At its weekly meeting Tuesday evening, the San Jose City Council voted to put a proposed marijuana business tax on the ballot this November. The tax, which could reach up to 10 percent, would encompass business that sell medical marijuana both legally and illegally in the city.

It looks like the lines between the city’s visitors bureau and the labor-business coalition that runs city-owned facilities is being further blurred, if they exist at all. Until very recently, the Convention and Visitors Bureau, a quasi-public, hotel tax–funded organization, and one of the three entities that make up Team San Jose, operated the SanJose.org website.

The site made mention of Team San Jose as an “innovative public-private” partnership between the CVB, South Bay Labor Council and a group of local hoteliers, who joined forces to streamline the process by which out-of-towners can spend their cash.

The grand reopening of WET on June 26 turned into a wash after owner Mike Hamod had to shut the party down little more than 24 hours before the fete for the club’s remodeling was to begin. According to Hamod, fixtures being sent from Florida and Chicago did not arrive until Friday afternoon and were unable to get proper city inspection.

Thanks to the miracle of social networking, the 3,000-plus people expected to swarm the corner of South First Street and East San Salvador were alerted that the party was off before a bottle-service-starved riot broke out

Perhaps you’ve seen the advertisements that have appeared in the newspapers inviting San Jose residents to attend the “Community Open House” at the “new” Mineta San Jose Airport.  If you have seen the ads, perhaps you noticed that several words and letters were highlighted in the text of the headline to spell out the words, “NEW ICON.”  Is the new airport really an icon?

County Supervisor George Shirakawa Jr. doesn’t seem like the sort of guy to turn down a good steak, especially when it’s for a good cause. Shirakawa has invited the public to join him at Maceio Brazilian Steak House in downtown San Jose this evening, as part of the Dining Out for Life event to benefit local HIV/AIDS services.

“Those who don’t understand history are condemned to repeat it.”  When it comes to the San Jose Airport expansion and renovation project, it’s looking more and more like city officials failed to learn from the costly experience of the Taj Mahal city hall.

Last Friday a thousand notables from high tech companies, public utilities, hospitals, local governments and NGO’s filled 96 tables at the McEnery Convention Center to hear about the State of the Valley according to the 2010 Silicon Valley Index, released by Joint Venture: Silicon Valley Network and the Silicon Valley Community Foundation.  “The Index has a lot of bad news this year,” said Russell Hancock, Joint Venture’s president.

The East Bay Express is reporting that a Major League Baseball task force will present its findings on the A’s proposed move to San Jose to Commissioner Bud Selig on Monday. The Express reported this afternoon that Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums made the statement during a speech to the Oakland Chambers of Commerce at the Oakland Airport Hilton on Thursday.

Dellums also reportedly said he sent a message to Selig stating that a ballpark in San Jose or Fremont would result in more long-distance trips to games, creating more greenhouse gas emissions.

This week’s Metro Silicon Valley cover story, excerpted here, discusses a stimulus plan authored by Councilmember Sam Liccardo and three colleagues, and the reaction of downtown businesses to the city’s efforts to reawaken a downtown economy that went off-track.

I continue to be amazed, and at times, amused by the quality and tone of some of the arguments being made by some politicians and fans wanting to bring the A’s to San Jose.  One of the central arguments being put forward is that the Giants don’t have a “right” to deny the people of San Jose a baseball team.  In fact, they do.  Major League Baseball extended the territorial rights to Santa Clara County to the San Francisco Giants.  That’s a fact, and nothing’s going to change that, unless, and until, the baseball owners change their minds and vote to reverse their decision.  Not likely.

San Francisco pedestrians always know when they are walking by an Academy of Art University branch. Oone finds young, eclectically dressed hipsters, all loaded down with easels and tool boxes, many smoking American Spirits: art students. This modish scene may soon be re-created on the streets of downtown San Jose as the San Francisco-based AAU, the largest art design school in the country, is looking for a home in Silicon Valley.

San Francisco has its Ferry Building. San Jose will soon have its “Public Market.” Detailed plans of the project were unveiled last night in the adjacent Theatre. Among the attendees were potential tenants, local business owners, and neighbors who want to see how their neighborhood might change.