San Francisco Public Press (https://www.sfpublicpress.org/2009/02/)
The Public Press is positioned to address these disturbing trends in the industry as part of a media initiative that will produce the first truly noncommercial general-interest daily web/print newspaper.
As a social venture, it will sustain itself by mixing philanthropy (from foundations, generous individuals and reader pledges) with subscription revenue and newsstand sales. » Read more
In the wake of Hearst Corp.’s announcement Tuesday that it will impose extreme budget cuts at the San Francisco Chronicle and possibly sell or shutter the paper, KQED’s Kelly Wilkinson interviewed Public Press Project Director Michael Stoll about developing models for sustainable news organizations. The interview first aired on Feb. 25, 2009. You can listen to it here: http://www.kqed.org/epArchive/R902251730
KQED’s Forum devoted an hour to discussing the possibility that San Francisco could lose its only major daily newspaper. Host Michael Krasny led a conversation with Carl Hall, local representative of the California Media Workers Guild; Louis Freedberg, director of the California Media Collaborative; and Tom Rosenstiel, director of the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism. The show first aired on Feb. 26, 2009. You can listen to it here: http://www.kqed.org/epArchive/R902260900
Scott Beale/Laughing Squid
The Hearst Corp. announced Tuesday that it would be forced to sell or close the San Francisco Chronicle if it could not make needed “critical” cost-cutting measures, including job cuts, in coming weeks.
The company said the paper lost $50 million in 2008. » Read more
The announcement by the Hearst Corp. that it is considering closing the San Francisco Chronicle is a defining moment for startup local journalism projects like The Public Press. Cuts in the newspaper business across the country have astounded journalists and readers as we’ve contemplated the effects of a vanishing press. The possibility that the San Francisco Bay Area’s most reliable source of news may disappear is sure to catalyze new and existing efforts to come up with alternatives, including new business models and ownership structures. The Public Press is still in a "shoestring" phase, media-industry blogger Ken Doctor accurately noted in a post today: "SF Chronicle could close.
Thank you to everyone who has already contributed time, energy and inspiration to The Public Press, and to those who have made recent and renewed offers to volunteer as we prepare to launch our local newsroom. With News Editor Michelle Fitzhugh-Craig directing editorial staff, we’re ready to make volunteer job assignments. Please take a few minutes to fill out this volunteer job survey. You will have an opportunity to choose from a list of specific job titles. What kind of help do we need?
Re-posted from The Next Newsroom Project:
This week I’m at the Technology Tools Training for Journalists Workshop the Knight Digital Media Center. Lucky for me, I live just down the street in Oakland. But there’s a great group of journalists traveling from across the country to take part in the event. I’ve been applying for these workshops for a couple of years now, and this is the first time I’ve gotten into one. So I’m very excited.
Michelle Fitzhugh-Craig, the former city editor of the Oakland Tribune, is joining The Public Press as news editor. As the project’s first editorial appointment, Fitzhugh-Craig will coordinate a growing pool of volunteer and freelance journalists who have converged to bring important and under-covered news stories to broad audiences in the San Francisco Bay Area. Fitzhugh-Craig has experience working at four daily newspapers in Arizona and California over 12 years, as a reporter and editor. Before going to the Tribune she was assistant city editor at the San Mateo County Times, and before that a reporter the Tri-Valley Herald. Originally she hails from Arizona, where she was a reporter for The Arizona Republic and started shades Magazine, an online publication celebrating and promoting women of color.
A community-funded report originally published on Spot.us
A Depression-era Hooverville.
San Francisco’s per capita homeless rate has long been the highest in the country. But in the past year, it has shot up 40 percent, by some measures. The increase came as foreclosures put pressure on the rental market, the budget crisis slowed aid, and the job market tightened up. » Read more
Martina Castro, a reporter for the National Public Radio show "Day to Day," produced a recent story exploring the notion that the audience can help fund independent reporting. The piece, "Is Community-Funded Journalism the Answer?" focuses on David Cohn’s Spot.Us project, as he asserts that small donations spread over a large group can be immune to manipulation from special interests. It’s an irony not lost on Martina, in my conversations with her for the piece, that NPR is facing such hard times that "Day to Day" is being canceled this spring, along with "News & Notes." Castro has since found part-time employment at Crosscurrents, the pioneering new local news show on KALW-FM covering — you might have guessed it — how the recession is affecting Bay Area residents. Crowd-funding is an interesting and as yet mostly untested thesis, but one that deserves exploring, alongside other ideas about alternative funding sources for journalism. The latest wave of imagining came from David Swensen and Michael Schmidt, two institutional investors who work for Yale University, who proposed, on the Op-Ed page of The New York Times, turning The Times into a nonprofit organization with an endowment.