Peralta Community College District's Only Student-Run Publication
Peralta Community College District's only student-run publication.

The Citizen

Peralta Community College District's only student-run publication.

The Citizen

Peralta Community College District's only student-run publication.

The Citizen

(Graphic: Desmond Meagley/The Citizen)
Sunshine Week 2024: Spotlighting public records
A multi-year investigation into public records related to campus security, public funds, and more
Li Khan, Editor in Chief • March 17, 2024
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In this monthly column, I chat with folks from the Peralta community and ask ten questions aiming to make everyone more relatable to each other. (Graphic by Randi Cross/The Citizen)
Tea with Tamara: Drew Burgess, art faculty at College of Alameda
Tamara Copes, Columnist • February 21, 2024
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Archives

    Spotlight on: ‘Spotlight’

    Catholic Church scandal yarn is re-woven through eyes of the reporters who broke the story

    Spotlight may be the front-runner for this year’s Best Picture. It is spot-on, no gimmicks storytelling at its finest. 
    The story is David vs. Goliath but David has the most powerful stone of all…the truth. The Boston Globe takes on the Catholic Church in exposing perhaps the biggest cover up of the 21st century. Even after watching it, it is still so hard to believe that the biggest institution based on faith was a breeding ground for predators and what the church did to keep it under wraps.
    Tom McCarthy (the under-rated director of “The Station Agent” and “The Visitor”) writes and directs this brilliant story. We, as the audience, are the Spotlight team. We follow the journey played by a cast who all brought their A game.
    SpotlightMichael Keaton (back at it after his loss for best actor for “Birdman” last year) is at the peak of his game, hitting it out of the park with his sophomore film in his highly anticipated comeback. Keaton plays Walter “Robby” Robinson the head editor of the Spotlight team which consists of Michael Resends (Mark Ruffalo), Sacha Pfeiffer (Rachel McAdams) and Matt Carol (Brian d’Arcy James). Robinson is taking heat from every direction being a Boston native with deep roots in a heavily Irish Catholic community, having his team take on the Catholic Church. If it weren’t for the support and push to get this story uncovered from the new Editor and Chief Marty Baron (an outstanding Liev Schreiber) this story may still be buried. Baron is an outsider from Florida who sees the story and immediately sets Spotlight on the case.
    The movie really ignites when the team starts dig into the stories of the molested youth, now adults, and discovers the damage this cover up has caused to their lives and the lives of the community. There are some absolutely gut wrenching scenes when Rachel McAdams really turns on her sympathetic charm and gets the abused to open up. Ruffalo is an absolute marvel and really keeps the tension high as he digs deeper and deeper into this cover-up. Through him the audience feels the shock with every major discovery and becomes so emotionally attached to getting the truth out into the world.
    This film is one of the most brilliantly worked detective stories since “All the President’s Men.” The stories high tension of discovery keeps the audience transfixed and we are emotionally engaged with the background of every victim. 
    This might be one the last great stories to come out of the dying age of print investigative reporting. This is a brilliant film and deserves to be seen. It is an eye opening and punch to the gut piece of work on uncovering the corrupt and disgusting acts one of the greatest powers in the world. This is an important film and I am sure it will be recognized for its honesty and integrity to the truth.

    About the Contributor
    In the fall of 2019, The Laney Tower rebranded as The Citizen and launched a new website. These stories were ported over from the old Laney Tower website, but byline metadata was lost in the port. However, many of these stories credit the authors in the text of the story. Some articles may also suffer from formatting issues. Future archival efforts may fix these issues.  
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