A hundred years from now, a Cal Poly Humboldt grad student will sit down and write the history of the Lost Coast Outpost. At some point, after spending several weeks in communion with the archives, as she pulls off her vape pen and curses her choice of career, she will come to a realization.
She will realize that few decisions in LoCO history were so momentous as that time in June 2015, when the Outpost’s founding generation pulled an ambitious greenhorn straight off the scrappy streets of Burbank and set him up with an internet connection. The lightbulb will flash atop our grad student’s metaversical head. She has found her thesis topic.
Friends: The Outpost’s John Ross Ferrara, who has delighted you in these pages for the last seven years, is off to bigger and if not better then at least more lucrative things. For seven years he has reflected his light and wit back at Humboldt County, alternately amused and terrified by the things he surveyed here, and now he heads off to a cushy news gig in a very tall building in Portland, Oregon. Today is his last day.
There’s all the boring nuts and bolts stuff Ferrara has done, which we know about but you probably don’t. He single-handedly built the Outpost’s Instagram into a 32.8k-follower behemoth. He most often manned the desk on weekends, and he sieved Facebook and other garbage social media platforms for small nuggets of the human condition that would later blossom into full-flown stories.
But the real magic of Ferrara has always been the way in which he transformed this dross into gold. His features, especially, were knowing and real and moving and funny and humane, without ever succumbing to either cheap internet cynicism on the one hand or saccharine bullshit on the other.
You liked it too. Look at any of our end-of-the-year posts, and I bet you’ll find that at least five of the top 10 LoCO stories of the year were his. The Ferrara style will be forever be part of our DNA.
Let’s take a walk down memory lane! Scan your eyes down the headlines below. If we hire again sometime in the future — and it looks like we will! — these are the shoes you will have to fill. Good luck.
And good luck to Portland.
FERRARA’S BIGGEST OUTPOST HITS:
- Cat Miraculously Survives Fork Complex Fire, is Reunited With Owners
- Aggressive Dog Allegedly Owned by Chris Brown Found Loose in Humboldt County, Euthanized on Christmas Eve After Serious Biting Incident at Singer’s LA Home
- Hometown Heckler Who Called LeBron James a ‘Pussy-Ass Bitch’ Feels He Should be More Humble
- (UPDATING) WINDAGEDDON: Intense Winds are Causing Outages and Disorder Across the County
- Eureka Man Reportedly Attacked By 18-Foot Shark While Kayaking in Shelter Cove; Local Fishermen Rescue Him From Icy Water
- (VIDEO) Woman Tells Arcata Cashier She Looks Like an ‘Illegal Immigrant’ After She’s Asked to Cover Her Face While Inside the Store
- Guy Fieri Encounters Furries at County Fair
- Video of Redway Computer Repairman Spraying Customer in Face With Bear Mace Goes Viral
- Humboldt Gets a Shoutout in Poster for New SpongeBob SquarePants Movie Featuring Keanu Reeves
- (VIDEO) Comedian Joe Rogan Gives Humboldt a ‘Holla,’ Praises Sheriff Honsal for Refusing to Enforce Proposed Beaches Closures in Latest Podcast
BONUS DIRECTOR’S CUT DVD EXTRAS:
Ferrara tells us that the stories below are also among his favorites, in addition to the ones above. — Ed.
- Respect for the Game: A Coach’s Journey From the Arena Football Hall of Fame to Redwood Bowl
- Kortney Olson, International Entrepreneur and Humboldt Native, Bounces Back From Addiction on the Strength of Her Watermelon-Crushing Thighs
- METH, LIES AND VIDEOTAPE: How Hidden Cameras and Crooked Policing Botched One of the Biggest Busts in Del Norte History
- QUARANTINE CASTAWAY: Vacationing McKinleyville Woman Stuck in the Philippines for Months Due to COVID-19 Hopes to Fly Home Next Week
- Firefighters Wash Five-Block-Long Trail of Blood From Old Town Eureka’s Sidewalk
- TRAVEL-BANNED: One Iranian HSU Student’s Crazy Odyssey to Get Back to the States and Finish the School Year
- New Student Housing and Education Buildings, Two Parking Structures and Major Demolition Work Ahead: A Look at Cal Poly Humboldt’s Five-Year Infrastructure Plan
- Humboldt Debuts at Sundance Film Festival as a ‘Shithole Town in the Middle of Nowhere’
- (VIDEO) Artificial Intelligence Image Generator Funded By Elon Musk Transforms Eureka’s ‘Pink Lady’ Victorian Into a Work of Modern Architecture
- (VIDEO) They Buried That Dead Whale and Now Smelly Humpback Juice is Gurgling Up From Samoa Beach