Category: Media
Posted inMedia, Media Meltdown

10 years on, a daily Chronicle 60% lighter; Mercury News shed 66%

by Erica Reder and Justin Morrison

Shrinking newspapers: Both papers lost sections, pages and advertisers

This article appeared as part of the Public Press’ Spring print edition media package of stories. 

 In early May, when the official industry rankings came out, the San Francisco Chronicle and San Jose Mercury News touted slight gains in Sunday circulation after years of declines, suggesting that the local newspaper industry just might be coming back. But the number of papers thrown on Bay Area doorsteps tells only part of the story. Even the most optimistic interpretation of readership statistics can’t hide the publications’ anemic page counts. Both papers have shrunk dramatically in the past 10 years. 

Posted inMedia, Media Meltdown, News, Technology

5,000 new media startups — can one save local news?

by David Weir

RISE OF THE NEWS MACHINES: The future has arrived and it’s called the Age of Data

This article appeared as part of the Public Press’ Spring print edition media package of stories.

San Francisco sits at the epicenter of a brand new tech boom revolving around several thousand variously funded startup companies. The organizer of the premier mixer for entrepreneurs in the city, Christian Perry of SF Beta, estimates that there are between 4,000 and 6,000 such outfits in the city. (His current mailing approaches 5,000.) Many other ventures can be found in the Valley or in tech-focused business strips all over the East Bay and Marin.At the same time that all this feverish activity is taking place — and some would say because of it — there have been massive dislocations among the people who traditionally dug up the news. So how might these new ventures impact the future of journalism?

 

Posted inLabor, Media, Media Meltdown, Technology

One million missing stories

by Jeremy Adam Smith

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.”

Posted inEducation, Media, Media Meltdown

As ad revenues and staffs shrink, TV news turns to technology

by Mineko Brand

BROADCASTING: Multi-person news teams turn into solo ‘VJs’

This article appeared as part of the Public Press’ Spring print edition media package of stories. 

Local TV stations, the No.1 news source for people in the Bay Area, are scrambling to adapt their news formats and slash budgets to fend off the triple threat of diminishing ad revenue, growing Internet adoption and cable news. To do so, they are using technology to turn multi-person news teams into solo “VJs.” News directors say it is the best use of dwindling resources and gains in technology. But critics say the cost to local viewers is less information about substantial topics and more crime and weather coverage.

 

Posted inCity Hall, Media, News

University of San Francisco aims to move transmitter quickly following KUSF sale

by Mineko Brand

Even as supporters of the University of San Francisco’s radio station race to file a petition with federal regulators to block the sale of its frequency, the school and a nonprofit group called Classical Public Radio Network are moving quickly to relocate the station’s transmitter off campus.

Dismissing critics of the recent dismantling of the student- and community-run radio station, USF and the radio network filed their own petition Monday to move the transmitter to Sausalito, requesting speedy approval.

Posted inHealth, Media, Social Justice

With few restrictions and bundles of cash, cannabis ads help sagging media profits

by Anna Rendall

Commercial broadcast stations still reluctant to take pot club advertisements

Medical marijuana advertising is taking off, propping up the fortunes of ailing media companies that have seen income from other business sectors plummet in the recession.

Advertisements offering free edibles for new patients and products such as “super silver haze” are helping to keep the San Francisco Bay Guardian, SF Weekly and East Bay Express in business. Similar ads have even started cropping up — tentatively — in more staid publications, such as the San Francisco Chronicle.

Ads for pot are growing so fast in part because they face fewer regulations and restrictions than marketing materials for cigarettes and alcohol. The only real regulation is one requiring the ads to warn customers that they need a doctor’s recommendation.

Posted inEconomy & Business, Food Systems, Government & Politics, Labor, Media, Social Justice

New ‘Distress Index’ shows San Francisco’s economic pain is getting worse

by Nina Martin

New tool finds that recession started earlier in Bay Area

Some economists and business groups say the Great Recession is over, but how do communities really know whether they’re moving out of the recession or falling behind?

A ground-breaking new tool that measures the real-world impact of the recession is providing answers. It shows that in San Francisco, at least, the worst downturn in 70 years isn’t just continuing — it may be getting worse.

The new San Francisco Distress Index, which assembles 11 types of monthly economic indicators such as foreclosure rates and food pantry visits, has risen 11 percent since June 2009 — the month when, according to the National Bureau of Economic Research, the U.S. recession supposedly bottomed out.

Posted inCommunity, Media, Technology

Internet Access as the Next Civil Rights Battle?

by Christi Morales

Advocates argue for ‘open Internet,’ some fear minority redlining

The ongoing, often arcane, battle over whether telecommunications companies may slow certain online services and charge fees to speed up others has morphed into a civil rights controversy.

Many of the country’s leading civil rights organizations are siding with the phone and cable companies in their bid to prevent federal regulations over their broadband, or high-speed, Internet services. At stake: whether to preserve “network neutrality” — the longstanding principle that all consumers can access whatever websites or applications they want on the Internet, at the same speed and without limitations imposed by Internet service providers.

Posted inCity Hall, Economy & Business, Government & Politics, Housing, Media, News

Regents push risk

by Peter Byrne

Investigation shows some officials profited while UC investments performed poorly

Last fall, amid an unprecedented state budget crisis, the University of California Board of Regents took extraordinary measures to cut costs and generate revenue. Lecturers were furloughed, classes eliminated. The regents — the governing body for the vast public university system — also reduced admission slots for in-state students while increasing the cost for out-of-state students. And to the consternation of tens of thousands of students, the regents raised undergraduate tuition by a whopping 32 percent, with more hikes to come.

Posted inBay Area, Environment, Government & Politics, Housing, Land use, Media, Parks & Open Space

Story in progress: Veteran smart growth group wary of rushing to judgment

by Maureen Nandini Mitra

The other day we had a chance to chat over the phone with Jeremy Madsen, executive director of Greenbelt Alliance. This much-respected nonprofit has been advocating smart growth and open spaces in the San Francisco Bay Area since 1958. In 2008 the outfit published Smart Infill, a 80-page report that recommends infill development — building on vacant lots and redeveloping blighted urban areas — as a way of accommodating the Bay Area’s growing population without paving the region’s farms and natural areas.

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