Public Press News Editor Rich Pestorich Moves On to SFChronicle.com

Photo: News Editor Rich Pestorich, Executive Director Michael Stoll, Publisher Lila LaHood, and reporters Ambika Kandasamy and Barbara Grady. I’m writing with some bittersweet news. The sweet: Rich Pestorich, who’s been with us as news editor since the fall of 2010 (issue No. 2) has scored himself a prominent full-time job: online producer for SFChronicle.com! The bitter: Rich will be stepping down as news editor — though he will remain a core Public Press editorial adviser.

1044592_655173341177809_1907341679_n.jpg

Alumni, Veterans Struggle to Preserve City College of San Francisco (Video)

Students, faculty and alumni at City College of San Francisco are grappling with the school’s loss of accreditation and its struggle to retrieve its status before it expires in the summer of 2014. Watch the video of a panel discussion that included a faculty union representative, alumni, journalists and veterans, voicing their perspectives on the effects of the school’s closure, and how it might be rescued. The panel’s host was the new Veterans Community Media Center  in San Francisco.

ianumeda-_mg_5022-1024x682.jpg

California’s Market for Hard-to-Verify Carbon Offsets Could Let Industry Pollute as Usual

Timber, dairy and chemical companies are lining up to sell  carbon credits, which regulators call “offsets,” to the largest California polluters so they can compensate for their greenhouse gas emissions. Many environmentalists say that because it is notoriously difficult to prove that such projects actually reduce the state’s overall carbon footprint, California should proceed slowly in approving a vast expansion of the cap-and-trade market. This story is part of a special report on climate change in the summer print edition of the San Francisco Public Press.

The Fourth Estate and You

Note from the editors, in the summer 2013 print edition of the San Francisco Public Press
Welcome to the future. Thanks to the collapse of print advertising and über-consolidation of formerly competing commercial news companies, independent journalism is becoming a threatened, if not endangered species. In the news vacuum this trend has created, journalism entrepreneurship is accelerating. But it’s unclear which ventures will achieve influence and sustainability. That’s where you come in.

Don’t Let the Fog Fool You

San Francisco is getting sunnier. Not in the way you might learn about from TV news or features in the daily papers; superficial stories about the warm weather at street festivals are cheap and easy to produce. The sunshine we need is of a kind that’s harder to capture. Journalists at the San Francisco Public Press are hard at work for you, illuminating complex and consequential policy questions in the city and across the Bay Area. In every quarterly print edition and in updates online we produce an in-depth team reporting project exposing obscure public documents that we wrest from recalcitrant city and regional agencies.

lydia.jpg

S.F.’s Minimum Wage, Highest in the Nation, Eludes Thousands as Enforcement Efforts Face Obstacles

10-year-old reform unfinished as businesses routinely flout $10.55 mandate, labor activists say
This story is part of a special report in the Spring print edition of the San Francisco Public Press.
While San Francisco’s minimum wage is the highest in the nation, thousands of workers still earn below the current mandate of $10.55 an hour, say economists, anti-poverty activists and public officials. It has been 10 years since voters passed the groundbreaking labor reform, and the city has built a first-of-its-kind inspection team that has recovered back wages for more than 3,000 workers. But these efforts appear to have addressed only a fraction of the problem. ALSO: Listen to discussion of S.F.’s minimum wage enforcement on KALW Radio’s “Your Call” Friday Media Roundtable.

panel.jpg

San Francisco pitched as beacon of ‘collaborative consumption’

San Francisco’s current crop of leaders ran for office on a platform of deploying city resources to encourage private-sector job growth — which in this famously liberal city is seen as about as conservative as an elected official can get. But last week a task force convened by Mayor Ed Lee and four members of the Board of Supervisors opened an opportunity to expand the meaning of the pro-business moniker to a new crop of startup, do-gooder social enterprises that enable small-scale, peer-to-peer economic activity and resource sharing.

screenshot_2012-03-18_at_5.56.31_pm.jpg

Infamous Berkeley human trafficking case’s long shadow: KALW News interviews reporter Viji Sundaram

The story of Lakireddy Balireddy made international headlines in the early 2000s, but what happened in the decade since then was even more important, said reporter Viji Sundaram of New America Media and part of a team project on human trafficking in the Spring 2012 print edition of the San Francisco Public Press.
Last week Sundaram sat down with KALW News host Holly Kernan to discuss her reporting on the history of efforts to battle human trafficking in the Bay Area and California.

logo_header_logo_left.png

Understanding the Bay Area’s human trafficking problem: KPFA News interviews reporter Jason Winshell

The Public Press’ latest print edition cover story, on California’s uncoordinated attack on the problem of human trafficking, has been picked up in a variety of media since the publication of the special team reporting project in the Spring 2012 edition: “Force, Fraud Coercion: Human Trafficking in the Bay Area.” The project was produced in collaboration with New America Media and El Tecolote, San Francisco’s bilingual newspaper. Last week Public Press reporter Jason Winshell was interviewed on KPFA Radio by producer Anthony Fest. Winshell’s lead story showed that four years after a high-profile state task force issued a study, many of its recommendations for better laws, funding and coordination among agencies have yet to materialize.