From the Newsroom

Help us fundraise: Fact-checking political ads for upcoming election

07.29.2008
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Newsdesk.org, The Public Press and the Knight Foundation-supported SPOT.US "crowdfunding" project are teaming up to raise $2,500 to support investigative coverage and fact-checking of San Francisco-focused election advertisements. Your micro-donation will make a difference! [Newsdesk.org editor Josh Wilson interviewed by David Cohn of Spot.Us]    Pledge Your Support for SF Election Ad Fact-Checking:    http://wiki.spot.us/electionIf you are a San Francisco voter, your pledge of $25 will help us meet our funding goal, and hire a professional reporter to provide weekly investigative coverage and fact-checking of election ads, running from Labor Day through Election Day. These reports will run for free on Newsdesk.org and Public-Press.org, and will be made available for free to any media partners who wish to use them. The needIt’s election season, and your brain is the target of one of the highest-stakes, most expensive influence campaigns in the world.

From the Newsroom

San Francisco Magazine discusses the Public Press

07.29.2008
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Check out the capsule interview San Francisco Magazine did with me in the current issue of the magazine, in "The Next Big Charity: News." The subhead is: "With newspapers on life support, a new/old solution may provide a cure." The Public Press is featured in a breakout box alongside David Talbot’s San Francisco Free Press and Louis Freedberg’s CalExpress. It’s on Page 52 of the August 2008 edition. In the box lableled "San Francisco Public Press," it starts by quoting me: "We’re trying to essentially reinvent the newspaper industry," says Micahel Stoll, a San Jose State journalism professor who’s looking for grants to start, surprisingly, an actual print newspaper, only one that eschews ads and is funded by a public broadcasting-style subscription base. "I have yet to find anyone who can tell me why the KQED and PBS models won’t work in print," Stoll says. And without the layout constraints of those pesky ads, he adds, the Public Press can be sleeker, thinner, and more eco-friendly.

News

Sale of San Diego paper could end family ownership

07.29.2008
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Profit uncertainty is about to spell doom for family ownership of one of the nation’s largest newspapers. According the its Web site, the owners of the San Diego Union-Tribune, Copley Press, are looking for a prospective buyer for the publication and other local holdings in southern California. The company has been shedding its news assets in recent years, according to the Union-Tribune. In 2005, it sold nine newspapers in Illinois and Ohio to GateHouse Media, and sold the Daily Breeze of Torrance, Calif., to the Hearst Corporation in 2006. The Union-Tribune is the last of Copley’s media holdings.

News

Lack of new ideas could be trouble for newspaper business

07.25.2008
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Newspapers are "too elitist."Newspapers should be "INTELLIGENT … not intellectual." So are the words of Lee Abrams, a former XM Radio satellite executive and now chief innovation officer at the Tribune Company, according to Eric Alterman’s blog. The problems stretch far beyond the print media needing to be less highbrow, he opines. Alterman finds the lack of decent ideas problematic because some of America’s best people are working toward a solution, but the only ones with any initiative are "off their respective rockers." And it worries him."The more one listens to the men and women at the top of the industry," he writes, "the more it becomes obvious that the survival of the newspaper — the primary information-gathering and knowledge-disseminating instrument of American democracy — is going to have to come from somewhere else."Alterman suggests a side source of funding coming from universities and colleges, suggesting the institutions charge an additional fee to bring in a subscription to the newspaper of their choice. It gives newspapers an additional cash flow, and puts the publication and its advertisers closer to a key demographic.The problem, he points out, is younger generation’s unwillingness to even pick up free newspapers."They often leave them lying around, even at journalism schools, where they are distributed gratis," he writes.At least it’s an idea he writes, and it’s better than the alternative of leaving the business in the hands of "clueless media moguls and their chief innovation officers.’"

News

For newspaper companies, going private could be option

07.23.2008
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Cutbacks at major newspapers have done little to reassure Wall Street investors, one observer of the media business has said.Alan Mutter, author of the blog Reflections of a Newsosaur, wrote last Wednesday that precipitous drops in the value of stock at news companies such as Gannett, McClatchy, and the New York Times Co. have made taking the companies private a viable and worthwhile option.“Because newspapers have not found a way to reverse the accelerating deceleration of their sales, they have been cutting the heart out of the core product in an unavailing, self-defeating effort to reach high enough profitability to please Wall Street,” he writes. “But that has not been working, as the relentless pummeling of newspaper stocks attests.”Some of these companies, particularly McClatchy and the New York Times Co., could potentially face rogue investors.“Given the depressed value of their shares and the relative ease of financing a potential transaction,” Mutter wrote, “companies like MNI and NYT could be on the radar of hostile takeover specialists.”It isn’t entirely unthinkable, either. The former owners of Dow Jones showed that long time family ownership could be worn down with enough pressure and money, Mutter wrote.The loss of profits has been noticeable. Editor and Publisher recently reported that the New York Times Co.’s profits were off from last year, and its net income dropped to $21.1 million.

News

Cutbacks cause controversy at Contra Costa Times

07.22.2008
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The union representing employees with Dean Singleton’s Bay Area News Group are alleging staff cuts were retaliatory, the Associated Press reported Tuesday.The Northern California Media Workers Guild filed a grievance with the National Labor Relations Board, concerned that the 13 percent staff reductions at the Contra Costa Times targeted union organizers.The layoffs came two weeks after staff voted in favor of union representation at the Contra Costa Times, and includes several strong proponents of unionizing the Times’ 225 eligible employees.Sara Steffens, who was voted chair of the paper’s bargaining unit, called her lay off retaliatory."They wanted to keep me from continuing to engage co-workers as we push for our first contract and they hoped this would send a message to scare people away from further union activity," she told the AP.The company’s legal counsel called the charge “ridiculous.” "The reporters laid off were in beats the papers did not believe they could continue to cover during the severe economic downturn they’ve had," said Marshall Anstandig.Management "took a hard look at areas where there was overlap or redundancies," wrote Kevin Keane, editor of the Contra Costa Times, in a note to his staff.You can find the story here.