From the Newsroom

Uneven fight against human trafficking — San Francisco Public Press Issue #6

02.15.2012
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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: WEDNESDAY FEB. 15, 2012
CONTACT:
Michael Stoll, executive director
Lila LaHood, publisher
(415) 495-7377, news (AT) sfpublicpress (DOT) org
UNEVEN FIGHT AGAINST HUMAN TRAFFICKING — SAN FRANCISCO PUBLIC PRESS ISSUE #6
SAN FRANCISCO — The Bay Area’s battle against the scourge of human trafficking has been hampered by state inaction because of budget cuts and internal competition among an array of local law enforcement agencies and nonprofits that work on the issue. As a result, some counties arrest hundreds of traffickers and some hardly any; and victim services providers often have strained relations with the police. Those are among the findings of a team reporting project in the Spring 2012 print edition of the San Francisco Public Press, hitting newsstands on Feb. 15.

From the Newsroom

Event — ‘The Future of Universal Health Care: Is San Francisco Leading the Way?’

02.15.2012
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WHEN: Wednesday, Feb. 29, 2012, 5:00-6:30 p.m.
WHERE: 330 Ellis St. (at Taylor), San Francisco
RSVP on FACEBOOK! Download the 8.5″ x 11″ flier

Four years ago, the city launched Healthy San Francisco, a pioneering plan to bring universal health care to residents through a network of community clinics and hospitals. Though the program has earned rave reviews for the quality of care and expanding access to thousands of the uninsured, the city is not immune to the national pressures of skyrocketing health care costs.

From the Newsroom

Examining local universal care: How San Francisco took an independent — and expensive — approach to covering the uninsured

01.15.2012
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This is a repost of a blog item  for Reporting on Health, the website of the USC Annenberg School for Communications & Journalism California Endowment Health Journalism Fellowships, which supported the Public Press’ Healthy San Francisco reporting project this winter. In 2007, San Francisco embarked on a rare and bold experiment, resolving to provide universal health care to its residents. The premise was simple — take an existing local safety-net system of clinics and hospitals and transform it by tracking all patients in one database and giving each patient a medical “home.” The approach, aspects of which are being rolled out in communities across the country, promises to reduce cost, increase quality of care and expand the number of uninsured people covered. Four years later, many of the goals of the program, Healthy San Francisco, have been met. Over time, more than 100,000 previously uninsured people have been covered.

Economy & Business
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100% ad-free news for the 99%

12.30.2011
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In the Public Press, elites don’t dictate coverage
If you missed it, the Winter 2011 edition of the Public Press (Issue 5) went on sale in November, and it came on the heels of a national conversation about how to fund and fortify community journalism. This is the editorial on page 2.
Issue 5 of the San Francisco Public Press, an ad-free nonprofit local newspaper, takes cues from noncommercial magazines, some of which have become influential of late. One model was Adbusters, the “culturejammer” magazine that inspired the global Occupy movement. Our approach at the Public Press has always been to look for stories that see the city and the Bay Area from the viewpoint of average people instead of just the elites, whose concerns are well represented. While we don’t practice advocacy journalism, we do strive to cover, in depth, stories and communities that commercially funded media don’t often pay attention to.

From the Newsroom

Donate to Illuminate Local Public Media

12.26.2011
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We’ve had a great response to our fundraising drive so far, but we still need your help to reach our $6,000 goal. Our board of directors will match donations up to $3,000 til the end of the year. One more week! Please support independent public media in San Francisco by becoming a member today. Our first intern, Ambika Kandasamy, shares her perspective on working in a nonprofit newsroom

How did you get involved with the Public Press?

News
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High tuition, low compassion? Berkeley researchers point to upside of economic diversity

12.21.2011
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Michael Stoll, SF Public Press — Dec 21 2011 – 11:17am
As perennial tuition increases threaten to shut out students of low-income backgrounds from the University of California, could the school be on the road to making its student body less caring? That’s just one implication from new psychology research on compassion and economic class from the U.C. Berkeley Greater Good Science Center, which was reported by sometimes Public Press contributor Jeremy Adam Smith on the center’s website Tuesday. As the price of admission to the state’s premier public university system goes up — as much as 16 percent a year through 2015, according to a proposal from the state Board of Regents this fall — critics argue that the university will lose economic diversity. In October, KALW News interviewed Jonathan Stein, a graduate student in public policy and law at U.C. Berkeley and student liaison to the regents. Stein told KALW’s Holly Kernan that the price of an education will place it beyond even some middle-class families:

… from the current $13,000 which is a dramatic increase from just a couple of years ago, to just four years down the line from now: $22,000 a student.

From the Newsroom

Who really pays for San Francisco to cover the uninsured?

10.20.2011
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UPDATE: Thank you to all the supporters who donated to see these stories published! The report was published in the Winter 2011 edition of the Public Press. Read more: https://sfpublicpress.org/news/healthy-sf
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Could San Francisco have figured out a model for providing universal health care on a tight budget? The California Endowment Health Journalism Fellowships at USC Annenberg is helping to sponsor a reporting project by the San Francisco Public Press to take a closer look at whether local health care reform ideas are working in one major metropolis. The city recently launched a grand experiment, stringing together a bare-bones community clinic network and a county hospital into an ersatz universal health care program.

From the Newsroom

Once Magazine, an iPad photojournalism app, launches in San Francisco

08.24.2011
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There are promising media startups all over the Bay Area, and one experiment in high-quality photography is based in San Francisco and launches today. It’s an iPad app called Once Magazine, and it’s founded by our very own Jackson Solway, who designed the first print edition of the Public Press last year and also directed photography for local publisher McSweeney’s on its 2009 San Francisco Panorama newspaper project. Solway has been slaving away with a handful of ultrabright colleagues in the company’s sparse Dogpatch headquarters focused on creating what they say is a first — an app for the iPad that takes photojournalism to a new level by giving it the attention and design sensibility it deserves. There are many undereployed but brilliantly talented photographers out there with too few paying outlets. Once Magazine is unique in that it relies mostly on app sales through iTunes, so you know it will be very attentive to the response it gets from its audience.

From the Newsroom

SF Public Press partners with KQED Public Broadcasting on Networked Journalism project

08.15.2011
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KQED Public Media is partnering with the San Francisco Public Press and three other Bay Area nonprofit news organizations to share news stories on the radio and online. The project, called “Networked Journalism,” is an initiative incubated by J Lab: The Institute for Interactive Journalism, which is funded by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. We are thrilled that KQED, the largest public broadcaster in the region, is reaching out to startup news organizations such as the Public Press that are expanding the definition of public media. We have gotten coverage of this partnership and congratulations from all across the country, including Nieman Journalism Lab at Harvard and the magazine of the public broadcasting industry, Current. We think this will help position the Public Press as a leader in public media locally as we seek funding, public attention and future collaborations.

From the Newsroom

SF Public Press Fall 2011 edition focuses on city budget — launch event Aug. 13

08.10.2011
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CONTACT:
Michael Stoll, Executive Director
Lila LaHood, Director of Operations and Development
(415) 495-7377 — news [AT] sfpublicpress.org
 
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
 

The San Francisco Public Press publishes its fall 2011 print edition — the fourth since launching last summer — on Wednesday, Aug. 10, with a special section on the prospect of better city budgeting, and engaging stories from 16 local public media and civic organizations.  
The headliner for Issue 4 is a collaborative project with Shareable.net, a website focusing on the sharing movement, exploring how San Francisco’s perennial budget-cutting process might be improved. Reporters looked at the growing trend of “participatory budgeting,” the use of the Internet to promote transparency and the unfulfilled promise of government audits to identify and eliminate millions of dollars in waste.  
The package also includes examples of how budget cuts almost derailed some vital city services, such as naturalization services for senior citizens, and how nonprofit organizations are forced to lobby politicians to “add back” funds after the budget passes.