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 […]
Category: From the Newsroom
Posted inFrom the Newsroom, News
Forum focuses on ‘Crisis at the Chronicle’
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 […]
Posted inFrom the Newsroom, News
San Francisco Chronicle could close. What will fill the void?
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 […]
Posted inFrom the Newsroom, News
Fitzhugh-Craig Joins The Public Press as News Editor
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 […]
Posted inFrom the Newsroom, News
Spot.us and The Public Press on NPR
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 […]
Posted inFrom the Newsroom, News
Seeking solutions to ailing media business
The San Francisco Bay Guardian printed an interesting piece this week on the need to encourage more independent local voices. The article, which cites The Public Press as a hopeful example of media innovation, points to the source of the crisis in journalism: economic sustainability. While there’s no shortage of good coverage ideas, there are […]
Posted inFrom the Newsroom, News
Finding, and funding, a way forward for local media
Written version of comments delivered at the Dec. 4 Public Press/Newsdesk.org fundraiser-friendraiser party in San Francisco I want to thank you all for coming. I think your presence here is a testament to the passionate belief of journalists and supporters of good journalism that a vibrant and independent press is essential to keeping our democratic […]
Posted inElections, Fact Check, From the Newsroom, News
The Truthiness Report: Fact-checking SF election ads
In the weeks leading up to Election Day 2008, The Public Press joined with Newsdesk.org in a unique noncommercial news collaboration to fact-check the dizzying array of voter propositions on the San Francisco ballot.
The project, which was co-published on Newsdesk.org and Public-Press.org, with segments broadcast on Crosscurrents Radio on KALW-FM, took to task the spinmeisters who flooded San Francisco neighborhoods with fliers containing truths, half-truths, and “truthiness.”
Posted inFrom the Newsroom, News
Thanks for a successful Public Press/Newsdesk fundraiser!
The fundraiser for The Public Press and Newsdesk.org was truly a teamwork effort, and that came across loud and clear for the new people who crossed the transom into the unknown world of journalism entrepreneurialism Thursday night. I heard a few stories of people who had spent their whole journalism careers plugging away at their […]
Posted inFrom the Newsroom, News
This week’s buzz on nonprofit local news
I got about a dozen e-mails within hours of the publication of a great story on the front page of The New York Times on Tuesday, "Web Sites That Dig for News Rise as Watchdogs." Reporter Richard Pérez Peña highlighted our friends at Voice of San Diego, and examined other projects in Minneapolis, Seattle, St. […]