We'd like to take the opportunity to thank you, our readers, for your continued support, and let you know how it's been going and where we plan to take this project.

During the fall of 2006 we had been conceptualizing how we'd approach news production in what we considered to be a limited media landscape at the time.

Between us we had significant journalism, technology and management experience in addition to formal educations. We figured if we were going to try to create a news outlet we'd want it to be faster, more responsive and more in-depth than the examples we'd known.

We decided the way to do it was by interacting with the community and giving deep detail about the stories we covered.

We talked it over, registered a Web site, spent countless hours designing the site and announced its launch at a Project Censored event in Clearlake – particularly appropriate, given that John’s father, Carl Jensen, founded Project Censored.

Once it was launched, we never looked back.

Word of mouth and email were our advertising medium. Even so, the first year's growth was explosive and we had to upgrade our server several times before we finally had an infrastructure capable of supporting the load.

Our vision was clearly satisfying an appetite in the county.

When the Walker Ridge fire broke out in 2008 we covered it so thoroughly that the Board of Supervisors at that time presented us with a proclamation of appreciation for community service. We knew we were on the right track.

Since we’ve been publishing, we’ve broken some big stories and had as many as 14,000 people visit the site on a single day.

Toward the end of the second year other business owners repeatedly asked us if we would take their ads. It was then we began the process of turning what our district supervisor termed an “expensive hobby” into a business. Business owners had been asking us if we were ready to take ads and we set up the site to do that.

During our exploration of the Internet media landscape we became acquainted with other independent publishers and met with some of them in Sacramento to provide testimony for the state Senate regarding media technology issues.

Those connections led earlier this year to an Internet publishing colleague recommending us for a University of Southern California Annenberg School of Journalism fellowship, for which we produced a multi-part series on road hazards in the county in late October.

Lake County News continues to grow. We just passed four million pageviews for 2011, and we've had nearly 12 million pageviews since our launch, with readers checking in from around the world.

So where are we going?

Our plans are to expand the site with new features and sections as well as create more local partnerships. We have several new projects on the drawing table and we'll be letting you know as we roll them out.

Lake County News is a success, one that belongs to the community, and for that we offer you our heartfelt thanks.

We’re grateful to our supportive and generous readers, subscribers and advertisers; the tremendously talented correspondents and photographers who help us cover the county; and our independent Internet publishing colleagues across the United States, whose advice and friendship we value beyond measure.

We don’t want to forget to thank our close friends and families, who have understood our commitment to Lake County News and have accepted the accompanying sacrifices. In particular, we thank our parents, who raised us to believe that with honest, hard work, you can turns dreams into reality.

Happy fifth anniversary!

John Jensen and Elizabeth Larson are the founders and owners of Lake County News.

Follow Lake County News on Twitter at http://twitter.com/LakeCoNews, on Tumblr at www.lakeconews.tumblr.com, on Google+, on Facebook at www.facebook.com/pages/Lake-County-News/143156775604?ref=mf and on YouTube at www.youtube.com/user/LakeCoNews .

Lake County News is committed to bringing you accurate, up-to-date information about this beautiful place where we live.

Sometimes the information we present is controversial and as a result there are people who don't appreciate your free access to that information.

Over the last two years escalating attacks on www.lakeconews.com have sought to derail our ability to bring you that information. You've probably noticed that occasionally the Web site is slow to load or won't load at all.

Those people have gone to significant lengths to restrict your access to in-depth local news by attempting to destroy Lake County News.

Site attacks are a global phenomenon. Sites that have been targets include government, education and other news sites around the world for a variety of reasons.

Lake County News has experienced more than 70 such attacks since August of 2010, and the frequency is increasing.

We are working to mitigate the affects of the attacks and you will be seeing some changes to Lake County News, but the simple fact is that if somebody is willing to break the law they can derail a site temporarily.

Lake County News will not bow to the desires of criminals. If their identities become known, we will not hesitate to publicly expose them for conspiring to curtail free speech and impede your right to know what is going on in your county.

Please accept our apologies for slow load times and occasional site outages. These issues have nothing to do with the server load or number of people on the site and everything to do with a very strong desire on the part of a small group of local domestic terrorists to control your perception.

Despite the illegal actions taken against us and our news site, we’re not backing down.

Lake County News will continue to provide you with the best, most accurate and current information information that can be found about Lake County.

John Jensen and Elizabeth Larson are the founders and owners of Lake County News.

Follow Lake County News on Twitter at http://twitter.com/LakeCoNews, on Tumblr at www.lakeconews.tumblr.com, on Google+, on Facebook at www.facebook.com/pages/Lake-County-News/143156775604?ref=mf and on YouTube at www.youtube.com/user/LakeCoNews .

This month I preached on the gospel passage about the Last Judgment, in which the sheep are separated from the goats.

You know the story: the sheep (compassionate people) get to spend eternity with the angels, and the goats (hard-hearted people) are cast out to live with creatures just like them – demons.

And, coincidentally, there’s a lot of goat-like rhetoric these days coming from some of those who purport to be among the sheep.

In recent discussions, for example, I’ve heard capital punishment celebrated. I’ve heard pride expressed over the execution of hundreds of Americans, including mentally retarded and juvenile offenders.

Ironically, of the nine countries that have held executions so far this year, only one – the United States – is a so-called “Christian nation.” The others? Our good friends Saudi Arabia, China, Iran, North Korea, the Palestinian Authority, Somalia, the United Arab Emirates and Bangladesh.

Well, it goes without saying that the people who end up executed are, for the most part, underprivileged “least of these” types whose life circumstances – poverty, mental illness, unemployment, abuse, neglect, poor nutrition, illiteracy, discrimination, etc. – have a whole lot to do with why they got in trouble in the first place.

Individuals with power, privilege and wealth are not the ones occupying cells on death row.

I’ve heard a wealthy Christian claim happily that we don’t have a health care problem in our country. The proof: Sheiks from Saudi Arabia come all the way to America to visit our world-class doctors.

Wow; so foreign millionaires can get health care here in the “Land of the Free,” while our own citizens cannot? And this is something to celebrate? Does this sound like America?

Is it really in God that we trust anymore, or have we evicted him and allowed money to occupy that formerly sacred place?

I know: Let’s change the flag salute from a hand over the heart to a hand over the wallet!

I’ve heard Christians condemning the Occupy Wall Street movement as it converges on cities and spreads across the nation. Yet the thing that they should condemn is the disease of fear that has infected and occupied the hearts and minds of too many in this country.

Fear can cause even the best sheep to turn into a selfish, hard-hearted goat, and the thinner America’s collective wallet becomes the worse it gets.

Isn’t it ironic that God has already judged this disease and found it to be hazardous to our health? How many prophets had to speak this same message to deaf ears?

Tens of thousands of Americans in the streets apparently agree with the prophets and the Good Shepherd: Compassion has got to be returned to its rightful occupation in our society.

Yes, the sheep are, as they have done throughout history since the time of Moses, rising up against the demons of greed and oppression.

Yes it's messy and time-consuming. Yes, it results in the powerful sending out their finest chariots to stop the rebellion.

But really, if the Red Sea couldn't even hamper an exodus, what’s a little tear gas?

Gale Tompkins-Bischel attends United Christian Parish in Lakeport, Calif., and is in the Masters of Divinity Program at Pacific School of Religion.

The biotech industry is already fighting back with its own campaign to confuse voters about the need to pass a labeling law.

If consumers don’t have access to complete and truthful information, we don’t really have a competitive free market.

If you’ve ever found out a product wasn’t as good as you were told it would be before you bought it, you know what I’m talking about.

We don’t need either a nanny state or corporate apologists telling us that we aren’t smart enough to have the right to know what we’re buying.

Fact: Genetic engineering is NOT the same as selective breeding or natural cross-pollination. It is a new and dangerous technology that is already causing health and environmental problems because it is completely different from natural selection or ordinary plant breeding.

Fact: The technology to track the health effects of foods and other products already exists and can be used to track anything from a salmonella outbreak to a cancer cluster to a bioterror attack. All major medical facilities will be using this capability within the next couple of years.

Just think about it: If GE products were labeled, a database of food reactions and other ill effects could be built and used by researchers and insurers.

Keep in mind that unlabeled GE food is banned in countries where the government has to pay for people’s health care. Corporations like Kraft and General Foods quit selling GE foods in Europe, not because GE foods are illegal there, but because they would be required to label them.

Since these countries have a single health care system they would eventually be able to detect adverse health effects associated with consumption of GMOs.

If companies weren’t worried about exactly that kind of data, they would be selling products containing GE corn and soy in Europe with the required labeling.

Here’s the money quote: “If you put a label on genetically engineered food you might as well put a skull and crossbones on it,” said Norman Braksick, president of Asgrow Seed Co., a subsidiary of Monsanto, who was quoted in the Kansas City Star on March 7, 1994.

Americans were assured that Bt toxin from corn and soy would be thoroughly destroyed by digestion and would not end up in the human bloodstream.

A Canadian study from Sherbrooke University Hospital in Quebec found that the toxic Bt protein Cry1Ab was not destroyed, and wound up in the blood serum of 93 percent of the pregnant women tested, 80 percent of the umbilical blood samples, and in the blood of 67 percent of nonpregnant women.

Lack of labeling means that if Bt toxins are ever found to be unsafe for pregnant women, American parents may never really know whether their child’s health problems may have resulted from toxins produced by genetically engineered foods.

Twenty years ago when Michael Taylor left King & Spalding, Monsanto’s law firm, for his infamous stint in the Food and Drug Administration, the field of genetics was still very new.

Taylor devised the concept of “substantial equivalence” which means that despite its patented altered DNA, a GE food is no different than the unaltered food.

The big problem with the substantial equivalence claim is that it established as official policy that no proof of the harmlessness of GMOs would be required before these foods were sold to us.

Many FDA scientists warned that there were indeed differences and potential problems with allergens and toxicities, and decried the politically-motivated decision to release GE crops into the food supply with no comprehensive testing.

At that time, many biotech scientists still thought that one gene caused each genetic trait, which seemed to support the idea that a single gene could be shot into a strand of DNA with predictable and controllable results.

This single gene hypothesis was disproved by the human genome project. Yet biotech corporations have a profitable business model based on shooting genes packaged with viral RNA and antibiotic-resistant genetic material into the genes of our major food crops. This viral material and antibiotic resistance is then reproduced in every single cell of the modified plant.

We can no longer simply take their word that these products are safe for us and our children, so safe that we don’t even need to know what we’re buying and eating.

Let’s not let these companies and their apologists confuse the issue here – this is about our right to know what is in the food we eat.

Roberta Actor-Thomas is a computer consultant and a member of the Committee for a GE Free Lake County in Lake County, Calif.

Many factors contribute to good health, and traffic safety is one of them. Lives are too often cut short by motor vehicle accidents, and many survivors of accidents suffer long-term consequences of their injuries.

Statistics help us understand how we are doing as a community. The numbers for Lake County tell us that we have our work cut out for us.

The Lake County Community Health Needs Assessment 2010 (http://health.co.lake.ca.us/Assets/Health/Public+Health+Division/Health+Needs+Assessment+Dec+2010.pdf) noted that the three-year average for years 2006-2008 showed 16 deaths from motor vehicle crashes, and an age-adjusted death rate of 22 per 100,000 population, more than twice the age-adjusted rate at the state (10 per 100,000) and just under twice the national rate of 14 per100,000. Although the rates are considered “statistically unstable” due to the small numbers, they are enough to raise concern.

Similarly, the 2011 County Health Rankings http://www.countyhealthrankings.org/california/lake) reported that the Lake County’s motor vehicle crash death rate (for the years of 2001-2007) was 28 per 100,000 population, more than twice both the national benchmark and the California rate, both of which were 12 per 100,000.

The best rate of 6 per 100,000 was in Marin County and the worst rates ranged up to 54 per 100,000 in small counties where the numbers were not statistically reliable.

So we know that we should be concerned, but what are the reasons for our troublesome rates? The numbers tell only part of the story.

Lake County has some fairly unique characteristics when it comes to traffic safety. Can we really compare ourselves to Marin County when it comes to driving conditions?

Options for travel around Clear Lake and into adjacent counties are limited to a very few highways, of which only approximately seven miles are defined as freeway.

Local traffic blends with vacationing tourists and travelers who are just passing through on their way to other destinations.

Other local roads range in quality, but include many that are unpaved and some that do not include a full lane for each direction of traffic. Sidewalks are sporadic and bike lanes tend to be narrow or absent.

As a rural area, road lighting is rare (the lack of “light pollution” is much appreciated by star gazers), and drivers must be ever vigilant in watching for deer, raccoons and other wildlife that unexpectedly cross in front of traffic.

Winter weather brings snow to some areas and black ice to many others.

And even though our emergency medical services provide excellent response for our rural setting, ambulances face the same driving challenges as the rest of us and major injuries often result in a helicopter ride to major trauma centers located 60 or more miles away.

If this paints a picture, it is a far cry from Marin County.

 How can be we better understand how to address Lake County traffic safety needs? The key is to find better information about the details of our own accident patterns.

One of the great strengths of people in Lake County is their resourcefulness and ability to help themselves. Unexpected partnerships foster creative methods and solutions. A perfect example is the traffic accident mapping feature launched by Lake County News.

What better way to educate ourselves about traffic safety than to have current information about the location and nature of accidents that take place in Lake County?

We have an opportunity to gather data about the characteristics of accidents that allow us to focus on solutions that make the most sense for our conditions.

Although we may not be able to obtain all the information we’d like to see, we’ll be able to learn more than we could ever extrapolate from raw numbers relating to traffic mortality.

Unlike traffic fatality data available through the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (http://www-fars.nhtsa.dot.gov/Trends/TrendsGeneral.aspx), locally gathered data will include non-fatal accidents and other information of interest.

Here are some thoughts on what we might find helpful:

• Where are the accident “hot spots?” Can they be improved with better road maintenance, design, visibility, or other engineering approaches?

• How old are the vehicles involved in accidents? In today’s economic environment, are older cars lacking current safety features being driven? Is deferred maintenance of tires, brakes, and other needed repairs factoring into the occurrence or outcomes of accidents?

• Are very small vehicles, such as electric cars or motorcycles involved?

• Are there patterns that relate to the age and experience of drivers?

• Is distracted driving a continuing problem?

• How often do drivers involved in accidents lack valid drivers’ licenses?

• Do most accidents involve Lake County residents, or are they more likely to involve visitors, tourists, or people just passing through?

• We know that alcohol intoxication leads to accidents, but do other drugs, including both illicit and prescription drugs, play a significant role?

• How often do animals or other roadway hazards (ice, rocks, mudslides, etc.) contribute to local accidents?

• How often is transport of motor vehicle accident victims to a local hospital or out-of-county trauma center required?

While this list may be a bit ambitious, any information we can gather to better define the nature of traffic accidents in Lake County will allow prevention efforts to target the causes. In fact, simple awareness of accident “hot spots” will likely promote more cautious driving in those areas.

As Lake County’s public health officer, I am appreciative of the initiative shown by Elizabeth Larson and Lake County News in bringing a new traffic accident mapping project forward. The map can be seen at http://bit.ly/VxtrK0 .

In the process, we are strengthening collaborations among the media, California Highway Patrol, the Lake County/City Area Planning Council, and Lake County Public Health.

Good, locally relevant information allows us all to mobilize action steps to protect and improve the health of our community.

Dr. Karen Tait is the public health officer for Lake County, Calif. She served as an advisor on Lake County News' recent five-part series, “Hazards Ahead,” focusing on the county's high vehicle collision rate and its effects on the health of county residents.