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Half of Bay Area newspaper jobs gone in last decade

MEDIA CENSUS: Newspapers hardest hit, losing nearly 4,000 workers
This article appeared as part of the Public Press’ Spring print edition media package of stories. 
State and federal labor statistics show that employment among Bay Area media workers fell 43 percent since 2001, a result of massive restructuring at local news outlets whose financial losses measured in the billions of dollars. Newspapers were hit the hardest, shedding upwards of 4,000 employees. As dozens of papers merged in an effort to cut costs, reporters who used to compete for scoops found their jobs redundant. While employment appears to have risen in the television and radio sector over all, journalists among them did not fare so well, state employment data suggest.

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One million missing stories

POST PINK SLIPS: Displaced journalists see opportunities to cover community on their own
This article appeared as part of the Public Press’ Spring print edition media package of stories. 
Since 2000, metro newspapers across the country have laid off an estimated 14,000 (out of 56,400) editors and reporters — a number that does not include journalists working for wire services, weekly newspapers or other media, all of which have suffered their own losses — according to blogger Ken Doctor, who writes the influential Newsonomics blog for the Nieman Journalism Lab at Harvard. There are simply fewer trained eyes on city halls, police departments, schools and corporate boardrooms. As Doctor writes on his blog, “That news-gathering … is what’s key to community information and understanding, fairly prerequisite in our struggling little democracy.”

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Can Treasure Island realize its ecotopian dream?

The Treasure Island redevelopment, which aims to be the most ecologically sustainable community in the world, delivers a positive self-image of San Francisco as a forward-looking, avant-garde, socially and environmentally responsible metropolis. Nothing excites the utopian impulse more than a blank slate — and Treasure Island’s 486 acres have been semi-abandoned since the Navy shut down its base in 1997.

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