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Jackling House is finally demolished

NeXT

Veteran Member
Joined
Oct 22, 2008
Messages
8,196
Location
Kamloops, BC, Canada
It's over.

jobs-090429-4.jpg


Apple CEO Steve Jobs' 10-year battle with preservationists over the Jackling House ended this week, with the wrecking ball finally falling on the decades-old mansion in Woodside.

Woodside officials issued final demolition permits last week, Town Manager Susan George said Tuesday, and the tear-down of the 14-bedroom, 17,250-square-foot Spanish Colonial Revival home built in 1925 is under way.

"The site has been prepared for demolition, and I think they actually physically started the demolition process (Monday)," George said.

Jobs, who bought the house in the early 1980s, lived there for about a decade and then rented it out. The mansion has been vacant for more than 10 years and the Apple CEO wants to replace it with a smaller, modern home. He first asked Woodside officials for permission to knock it down in 2001.

Since then, a group calling itself Uphold Our Heritage has fought for the Jackling House's preservation, pointing to the mansion's historical significance and claiming Jobs intentionally let it fall into disrepair. The group won a lawsuit in 2006 that claimed the town had relied on inadequate environmental documents in approving permits for demolition.

Jobs, however, returned in 2008 with a beefed-up application. The Woodside Town Council approved the request again, and in March 2010, San Mateo County Superior Court Judge Marie Weiner upheld the council's decision.

In an interview with The Associated Press,
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Uphold Our Heritage's attorney, Doug Carstens, called the home's razing a "shame." Carstens did not return calls for further comment to The Daily News.

Over the past couple of years, there have been proposals to move the house elsewhere. The town council approved a deal in 2009 under which Palo Alto angel investor Gordon Smythe would have dismantled, stored and at some point rebuilt the house on another property, but it fell apart amid the ongoing litigation.

Last year, Woodside couple Jason and Magalli Yoho said they were interested in moving the house to their property. The Yohos and Jobs "never were able to find mutually acceptable terms for an agreement," said Town Manager George.

George said the demolition of the Jackling House will "close 11 years of history" for the town.

"No matter what you think about the house, it's nice to get something wrapped up," she said.

**SOURCE**

Too bad. Regardless, ten years of neglect on the palce really ran it down.
 
The big question is whether Steve Jobs will get to see the new house once it is built. Perhaps with a lot of workers the old house can be brought down and a new be built within 6 weeks.
 
Has anyone other than the National Inquirer been able to confirm that he is terminally ill?
I beleive them as much as I beleive the Weekly World News.
 
The Enquirer has an advantage over more reputable sources in that it has no qualms about paying sources for a story. Your local newspaper generally won't do that. So that means they can get scoops that a traditional news outlet won't get. FWIW, I worked at a daily newspaper in 1996-97. No source ever asked me for payment, and I'm not quite sure what my editor would have thrown at me if I had brought up the mention of payment. Also keep in mind that your local newspaper doesn't pay its writers all that much, so why should it pay sources....?

Edwards story or no Edwards story, The Enquirer is still in the business of gossip more than in the business of news. Always has been--gossip sells better. They can Photoshop an image to make Steve Jobs look terminally ill just like Vogue can use Photoshop to make its cover model a little thinner or a little younger. For that matter, their source can too. Even if the Enquirer thinks their source is telling the truth and pays money for it, the source could still lie. In fact, one of the arguments against paying sources is that a paid source has a little more incentive to, shall we say, make the story worth paying for.

The Enquirer's recent record makes me more like 50% willing to believe it, rather than .5% willing. Note that other news agencies have picked up on this story, but they're all very careful to cite the Enquirer as their source. And an account I read from Time yesterday pointed out that the doctor that The Enquirer talked to isn't a cancer specialist. They got their own opinion from another doctor, who, based on the photograph, gave a similarly grim view. But frankly, I would have been just as interested in the opinion of one of Time's own staff photographers or graphic designers about whether there are any telltale signs of editing in the photograph.

Let me take back that 50% thing. A little more digging into their recent track record makes me less confident. I'm more than .5% confident they're right, but I'm not willing to say I'm 50% confident in them. Frankly, now that I've seen the Enquirer's cover, I don't think they're even 50% confident that they're right. If I were editing a publication, and I believed myself that Steve Jobs was going to be dead in 6 weeks, the headline and picture wouldn't be in a little business card-sized box in the corner. It would be the main element on the cover.
 
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Perhaps some nurse got ahold of medical notes and make a wikileak out of it? :twisted: Because as you know, as soon as something is on Wikileaks, every newspaper gladly will print it and consider as the ultimate truth. Even the most respectable news media will blindly publish anything from that place.
 
I'll just wait until a reputable news source releases information on this who does NOT get their research from the NE.
 
It appears the National Enquirer and The Inquirer are two different publications. The latter even quotes the former, but points out they have no links.
 
Once I got a look at the tabloid's cover, I became less and less convinced that they actually believe the story themselves. Reason being that this scoop, if true, would be one of the biggest stories they cover all year. Maybe not #1, but certainly in the top 5. They aren't going to be covering revolutions in the Middle East.

So what do you do with your biggest story? You give it top billing on the cover, that's what.

They didn't give it top billing. Top billing goes to "Hollywood Out of Control." That's what my editor used to call an "evergreen" story. Something that you can write up and hold until you need it, because it really doesn't matter what week you run it. Basically, it's throwaway.

You don't give the imminent death of Steve Jobs second or third billing to a story like that unless you're not really sure. They hedged their bets, sticking the story in the corner of the cover. If they turn out to be right, they can come back in a few weeks and scream "You saw it here first!" But in the (my opinion) more likely event that they're wrong, people will forget about it or dismiss it. "Oh yeah, it was the Enquirer, what do you expect from them?"

"The Enquirer" is shorthand for the National Enquirer, the infamous supermarket tabloid. I assume when you refer to The Inquirer, you're referring to the British online IT publication founded by Mike Magee?

The Inquirer brings up something else. British tabloids are a little different from US tabloids. They're very sensational, and they don't mind being wrong sometimes, especially if they can get the story first, but they tend to be more respectable. They're not held to the same regard as, say, the Times of London or the New York Times, but they're held in higher regard than US supermarket tabloids, which most people assume is largely made up, stuff taken out of context, or both.

The Inquirer and its predecessor/competitor The Register are often called "IT tabloids" but they fall into the same vein as British tabloids, not US tabloids. A lot of what they print falls into the category of rumor more than news, and they're more prone to get the details wrong than, say, PC Magazine. But it's surprising how much they get right.
 
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