The history of Coast Weekly is filled with memorable highs--and lows.

It''s been the best at times, it''s been the worst at times. The history of almost every longterm project is dotted with notable successes and equally notable embarrassments. Sometimes these high and low points are obvious; other times, they are known only to the people on the inside.

Perhaps the gaffe that still haunts me the most, personally, is one that was entirely my fault. We were doing a story on the relatively new karaoke craze in Monterey in 1992. Our brand-new music writer, Randy Alaga, wrote the story and took a photograph of a young woman belting out a tune but he forgot to give me the woman''s name. As a temporary space-holder, I made up a nice, long name for the woman: "Sara Schnitzelweiner." It was only supposed to be temporary, but in the heat of deadline I forgot to query Alaga about her proper name, and on Thursday the paper came out with the space-holder name. I still feel guilty when I remember the incident.

Then there are the times when stuff happens that are nearly impossible to guard against. Like in the issue of June 20, 1991 when our (former) printer managed to confuse the photographs of blues guitarist Robben Ford (a man) with that of Abra Bennet (a woman), then head of the Monterey Bay Unified Air Pollution Control District.

And there have been lapses in judgment. In one of our early "Best Of Monterey County" issues, we asked readers for "The Best Reason to Go To Salinas." We thought it would be a good way of including readers in the Valley. Yeah, right. We got nothing but angry mail from Salinas ("Why did you single Salinas out?" "We live here." "There are plenty of good reasons to come here...") and snide remarks from the Peninsula ("To get to the freeway...") Talk about backfire.

Predicting the future is always a dicey proposition and there have been times when we were just plain wrong. In June 1994 we wrote about the recently opened Monterey Sports Center and openly questioned the financial viability of the large public structure. The final sentence in the cover story was indicative of the tenor of the whole story: "Meanwhile, taxpayers of the city of Monterey will have to hold their breath to see whether the Sports Center sinks or swims." Hopefully, no one is still holding their breath; if they are, please tell them to exhale: The Sports Center has been so successful that there''s talk of expansion.

We wish that our low points were behind us, but now and again...like in last week''s issue, we err. For our story about local businesses fighting for survival against the chain stores, we thought it would be interesting to list some of the survivors, and casaulties in the retail battle. But the lists got partially switched and we inadvertantly identified some independent stores as being goners. In fact, M&S Home Center&Building Supply, Hayward Lumber and P.G. Hardware are all alive and well.

Mistakes like these and typos constantly threaten our credibility. And typos are particularly obnoxious when they show up in captions, headlines and pullquotes (the large typeface quotes or summaries that float in the middle of many of our stories); it''s amazing how difficult it seems to catch these problems on Tuesday or Wednesday, and how obvious they are on Thursday morning after the paper''s printed. Probably the leading contender in our hall of shame is the pullquote that appeared in a story about thigh-reducing cream in March 1994. The omission of an "e" turned a tame quote into something vaguely suggestive and distasteful: "We''ve hauled everyone but the janitor up her..."

Happily, there have been more high points than low points.

Over the past decade, we''ve been fortunate enough to win our share of national awards for excellence (see sidebar). But, although we''re proud to be well thought of by media critics, we take the greatest pride in the achievements that measure our growth, as a paper and as individuals.

Disasters, natural or otherwise, always present challenges to newspapers. When the rain kept coming down in 1995, we felt the flooding in Monterey County was such an important topic we shouldn''t simply wait to do follow-up coverage; we switched gears to produce the Flood ''95 (March 16) issue. It was pulled together in two days, complete with detailed analysis and aerial photography of the flood damage.

The ''95 floods left the rest of the country with the impression that the entire county was devastated--an impression which threatened the local tourist industry. Coast Weekly created two advertisements to more correctly define the local situation and, along with Kinko''s, Office Products Inc., the Pebble Beach Company and the Monterey County Hospitality Association, sent those ads to more than 5,000 newspaper publishers nationwide, asking for sympathy and a free ad. The ads were subsequently placed in publications around the country--total circulation: more than 1 million.

We were on deadline when the earth started shaking on Oct. 17, 1989 and the power went out. There was no electricity to power our electric typewriters or our typesetting machine (this was before desktop publishing) and, therefore, no way to finish stories or make editing corrections in the next week''s issue. Out came the old manual typewriters to finish the writing, and the entire editorial and production staffs picked up X-Acto knives and spent their time cutting individual letters and phrases from old copy, and pasting it in over the top of the new stories--even though we weren''t sure there would be power to run the presses. It was a labor of love. And the paper came out on time.

Similarly, at a time when our editorial staff was in a state of transition, the riots over the first Rodney King trial broke out. Knowing that we would be shorthanded, we had already put together our Mother''s Day issue. But when the rioting broke out, we felt we couldn''t ignore it--despite our limited time and personnel. When we hit the street the next Thursday, May 7, 1992, we did so with what amounted to a double issue including front-line reporting from Los Angeles, analyses of local police review boards, our first "What''s With Women" readers'' survey and a look at spring fashions. We didn''t sleep much that week.

It took as much finesse as it did bull-headed determination for publisher Bradley Zeve to convince the Army to allow then-news editor Jim Cole to board a transport plane and fly to Saudi Arabia to cover the Gulf War. Zeve used a combination of logic, wheedle, threat and--ultimately--compromise to get Cole aboard, despite the fact that we were a "small weekly," and still relatively unknown. In fact, as it turned out, we were the only alternative weekly newspaper in the nation that covered the war from the Gulf and among the first to critique the mainstream press'' willingness to parrot the pablum being fed them by the Pentagon (Feb. 14, 1991). Not bad for a paper with less than two years under its belt.

There have been stories and editorials that we feel have changed public policy throughout the county.

After Charles McNeely resigned from the city of Seaside as city manager, city officials hired assistant city manager Sam Head to replace him. Although Head was contracted only on an interim basis, he seemed like a shoo-in to be hired as the permanent city manager: That''s when allegations of sexual harassment and reports of a padded resum‚ began to surface. News editor Jill Duman and staff writer Nicole Volpe switched into high gear, and in 10 days researched everything they could find about Head. The picture they painted on Jan. 27, 1994 wasn''t pretty: At least five women were accusing Head of improprieties, and the city itself had spent more than $25,000 investigating Head''s resum‚. Despite the cloud over Head, then-mayor Lance McClair stood by him.

The search for a new city manager was re-opened, Sam Head was never made permanent city manager, and in November of 1994, then-city councilmember Don Jordan ousted McClair in the mayoral race. (Perhaps current, controversial city manager Tim Brown and his supporter, current mayor Don Jordan--who is facing re-election this November--should be taking notes.)

In January of 1990, we investigated Monterey Peninsula College for hiring practices that many felt were discriminatory. Later that month we lambasted the college for its hiring practices and its attempts to silence dissenting voices on MPC''s Affirmative Action Advisory Committee. In the wake of our editorials, MPC restated its commitment to affirmative action, and the hiring and promotion of more women and minorities followed. Our coverage of the situation won a Public Service Award from the California Newspaper Publisher''s Association.

And in 1991, when then United States Budget Chairman Leon Panetta and the Fort Ort Task Force appointed seven men to chair the key committees looking into Fort Ord reuse, we questioned why there were no women appointees (Aug. 8, 1991). In a two-part interview with Coast Weekly in September of that year, Panetta only grudgingly acknowledged the lack of female representation. And, he acknowledged that creating a more representative cross section of the community had become a goal.

After we published a story on "Safer Sex" (Feb. 13, 1992), which included reasonably detailed descriptions on the proper use of latex, a coalition of conservative Christians threatened to boycott our advertisers if they didn''t pull their ads from Coast Weekly. This attack on our financial underpinnings caused no small amount of consternation. But the vast majority of our readers--and all of our advertisers supported us, and the planned boycott fizzled. This sort of support from the community has to be ranked as one of the highlights of our time on the streets. Curiously, though, the incident also brought up another issue.

When we finally sat down to meet with the leaders of the coalition, we offered them a chance to air their views in one of our Public Forum editorials and were able to defuse the situation fairly quickly. When we asked why they hadn''t come forward to talk with us earlier, they said they didn''t think we''d listen, that they would be met with some sort of corporate stonewall. And that had to rank as one of the lowlights.

We like to think that one of the most important things we can do is maintain a dialogue with the rest of the community; we are a part of the community, not apart from it. To have a segment of the community that felt they couldn''t approach us with their concerns certainly gave us pause for thought.

We hope that in the future, through our high and low points, we can maintain open lines of communication with all of our readers and the community. You may not always agree with us, but we hope you''ll always feel that we''re open to your comments and criticism.