The San Jose Mercury News’ owner will seek bankruptcy protection in a major restructuring of the company’s ownership and debt, news agencies reported Friday night. The Chapter 11 filing will slice holding company Affiliated Media’s debt from $930 million to $165 million. The negotiated transaction will cost executives Dean Singleton and Jody Lodovic ownership control.

Equity in the struggling newspaper group will be issued to 116 creditors, a group led by Bank of America Corp. Hearst Corp., which owns the San Francisco Chronicle, will see its $400 million investment in MediaNews wiped out in the proceedings, according to the Wall Street Journal, which reported that Hearst declined comment.

The New York Times report following the release of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s budget plan yesterday summarized the harsh facts succinctly: “Mr. Schwarzenegger … has proposed eliminating the state’s $1 billion welfare program for families with children, ending a $126 million health insurance program for children, reducing the state’s Medicaid eligibility to the minimum to save over $500 million, and ending the state’s network of subsidized home health care providers for the poor.”

Last week, by chance I saw some of the highlights of US Attorney General Eric Holder’s testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee on the decision to move Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and several other of the 9/11 terrorist suspects’ trials to a court in New York. During his testimony, Mr. Holder was asked a pointed question by Sen. Lindsey Graham that, to my surprise, went missing from the Bay Area’s major newspapers’ following day coverage.

Following a cell phone video that shows SJSU student Phuong Ho being hit with batons and tased by the SJPD officers, the department claimed he was resisting arrest. Enhanced audio of the video taken by one of Ho’s housemates on his cellphone seems to tell a different story.

Groups representing San Jose’s diverse ethnic communities have called for the resignation of Police Chief Rob Davis, claiming that the police use excessive force in dealing with minorities. “There needs to be a change in the culture of the current police force, and we don’t think that Police Chief Davis can make that change,” wrote Richard Konda, executive director of the Asian Law Alliance.

UPDATE: SJPOA President Bobby Lopez says activists calling for Davis to resign are “well-intentioned but misinformed.”

A number of posts over the past week on ProtectSanJose.com,  a blog run by the Police Officers Association (SJPOA), have effectively called into question a series of San Jose Mercury News articles about use of force by SJPD.

The Merc series started with the Oct. 24 posting of a cell-phone video that seems to show SJPD officers beating and Tasing a Vietnamese SJSU exchange student while he is pinned to the floor. The series culminated with a Sunday package a few days later, headlined “Mercury News investigation: San Jose police often use force in resisting-arrest cases.”

Year after year, the citizens of San Jose are told that their city government faces a “structural” deficit and that additional cuts in city services will have to be made to balance the budget. Whose budget is it really?

“Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who’s the smartest of them all?” That was the question posed by the Daily Beast this week, and San Jose and the rest of the Bay Area came in at an impressive 2nd place!

San Jose Inside is now equipped with a “tagging” feature that will make it easier to keep track of people and subjects. We have also upgraded the server software to allow for “threaded” or “nested” comments, making it possible to reply directly to a comment. As a result, it will no longer necessary to begin a post with “#7 Kathleen” or “#4 JMO” (a clever work-around invented by the SJI community).

BBC News North American Editor Justin Webb is returning to England after a seven year assignment in the United States.  Webb shared his feelings about America in an article posted on the BBC News website.  His thoughts paint a picture of America from the outside looking in, and convey a sense of respect and admiration for our country that is seldom heard.

After radically downsizing the editorial department of the Mercury News and its once high-flying digital media empire, MediaNews Group CEO Dean Singleton now wants to charge for online access to its content. A May 8 memo from Singleton and MediaNews exec Jody Lodovic outlined the company’s interactive strategy, noting “not only does [free online news distribution] erode our print circulation, it devalues the core of our business — the great local journalism we (and only we) produce on a daily basis.”

Just about everyone who watches television knows that Feb. 17 was supposed to be the historic day of the digital TV (DTV) transition—that is, the last day for full-power TV stations in the United States to broadcast in analog. After that date, they were to broadcast in digital only, meaning if you wanted to continue receiving over-the-air broadcasts on your analog TV, you needed to purchase a digital-to-analog converter box.

Well, as of last week, the federal government put the final touches on delaying the date until June, because despite the transition being hyped for God knows how long, 6.5 million people apparently still weren’t ready yet.

The annual TED conference is often the most interesting of the big national nerdfests, thanks to its bridging of the worlds of high-tech and the arts (the acronym stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design). Generally, the confab’s biggest buzz comes from some new wonder-device (Jeff Han’s touch-screen demonstration from TED 2006 is still a big hit on YouTube). This year, the Big Story is not one gizmo, but two ideas.

In an Aug. 13, 2008, cover story, I channeled the Urban Blight Exploration Junkie and raved over the Pink Elephant Center, that landmark rundown strip mall at the corner of King Road and Virginia in San Jose City Council District 5. I had quacked about the place once before in a previous column, but for that travel feature, titled “Postcards from the Edge of San Jose,” in which I mapped out ignored masterpieces in each district, striking visuals were necessary to properly document the shabby outré ugliness of that East Side monument.

My vote for the Best Apocalyptic, Post-Suburban-Wasteland Photo Book of 2008 goes hands down to a glossy hardback aptly titled Frezno from Process Books. Photographer Tony Stamolis grew up in that Central Valley city, and spent six years chronicling the dreadful, doped-out, deranged and disregarded underbelly of the city whose airport code is FAT.

Watch Dog Silicon Valley reported yesterday that Tesla Motors faces new competition in the world of cool electric roadsters, and speculates that the company is unlikely to come to turn San Jose into the green Detroit that some have imagined.