Happy Birthday SJC Patch, Happy Birthday All of Us

San Juan Capistrano Patch is 2 years old today!

It’s kind of hard to believe we’re only in our toddler years. We’ve already become so much part of the fabric of this community, it feels like we’ve been here for ages.

Oh sure, when we started up in December 2010, we had a lot of people confuse us with that similarly-sounding biweekly newspaper. There were some early suggestions that we change our name, being the newcomers and all.

But Patch is part of a network of now more than 900 community websites across the nation. It would be a little difficult to change the name!

Now, it’s only rarely that I hear someone even using the phrase, “the online newspaper.” We’re a part of AOL, not killing trees since the early ’90s!  

I was honored to take the helm as your editor in November 2011. What a crazy ride it’s been. We’ve covered the big (how a local man almost became a murder suspect’s second victim) and the small (cocoa and caroling at a local school).

We lived through the elections, and you all graciously welcomed our first attempts at candidates’ debate. We think it went BETTER than the presidential debates (although that might not be saying much), and we’ll definitely do it again.

The Capistrano Unified School District keeps us pretty busy, too. We’ve covered the successes – a new pool and football stadium at the high school – and the struggles of a dwindling budget and its impacts on the classroom.

We’ve watched businesses come (the Residence Inn, Hamilton Oaks Vineyard and Winery) and go (Thai Noodle Company) and covered the truly inspirational … and bizarre.

But Patch is not merely a news organization delivering the news to you. You’re not consumers. You’re participants. You partner with me to put events on our calendar and make announcements.

Did you know you can add photos and video to any story? Just click the “upload photos and video” button under each photo. So if we’re both someplace, but you get a better shot than I, by all means, upload it here!

We also allow you to say whatever you want to say through our blog feature. I may clean up the punctuation, but it’s all you. We even got new councilman . One. So far.

So enjoy a virtual slice of chocolate cake with ganache and raspberries (if we’re going to dream, let’s make it caloric) and mascarpone-infused whipped cream with me. It’s all of our birthdays, today.