Officer Clay Burch is one part of the three-pronged approach that makes up Measure Y, in which community police are complemented by street outreach teams. PSOs and outreach teams link young people to the actual programs that help create foundations for a better life. And for Burch, improving Oakland’s toughest neighborhoods happens one building, and one person, at a time.
Category: Media
Posted inBay Area, Media, Public Safety, Social Justice
In ‘Deep East’ Oakland, youths pegged as criminals say police harassment spurs more violence
For many, the police are here to serve and protect. The men and women in blue are those we call when we’re in trouble. And no part of Oakland is more in need of policing than the streets between the East 70s avenues and the East 100s avenues — stretching from the base of the hills to the bottom of the flatlands — or what residents call the “Deep East.” It is where over one-third of the city’s 124 homicides occurred last year. But many of the youths living on these dangerous streets don’t welcome the police as protectors — they consider them the enemy.
Posted inMedia, News
Hellman’s new nonprofit newsroom sparks hope
Warren Hellman, a San Francisco financier, had planned to announce his intention to launch a well funded nonprofit Bay Area news organization — until someone else broke the news.
Posted inMedia, News
Hellman and partners to launch Bay Area newsroom
San Francisco Bay Guardian
San Francisco financier Warren Hellman – in partnership with KQED, the UC Berkeley School of Journalism and perhaps even the New York Times – is about to launch a nonprofit, locally focused, online news organization with a medium-sized newsroom of full-time journalists, Hellman has confirmed to the Guardian.
Posted inCity Budget Watchdog, City Hall, Media
Public Press/KALW budget roundtable examines city’s fiscal crisis
The Public Press and KALW (91.7 FM) teamed up for a budget roundtable that aired Aug. 17 on the “Crosscurrents” news program. A panel of local experts offered a lively and informative on-the-air discussion about San Francisco’s budget crisis and its impacts on residents and communities.
Posted inMedia
Guest opinion: Will we miss the Chronicle?
We seldom think of oxygen unless it’s absent. You’d think about it a lot if it suddenly exited this room; you’d start gasping and writhing, your eardrums would burst, you and your neighbors would do a lot of bleeding on each other, then you’d die. But if we gradually replaced oxygen with nitrous oxide mixed with just a soupcon of cyanide gas, you might not notice that anything was missing at all; you might feel very content as your brain and body gradually turned off and you lapsed into a sleep without end. I’ve frequently criticized the Chronicle for just that — for its lack of the kind of mental oxygen that makes for a healthy democratic polity.
Posted inMedia
Hearst Corp. threatens to close Chronicle
The Hearst Corp. announced Tuesday that it would be forced to sell or close the San Francisco Chronicle if it could not make needed “critical” cost-cutting measures, including job cuts, in coming weeks.
The company said the paper lost $50 million in 2008. A memo to employees from the publisher, Frank Vega, said the paper could no longer bear the “staggering losses,” which he said were worsening in the current recession.
“Survival is the outcome we all want to achieve,” said a statement from Hearst quoting two top executives, Frank A. Bennack, Jr., vice chairman and chief executive officer, Hearst Corporation, and Steven R. Swartz, president of Hearst Newspapers.
Posted inElections, Media, News
Invasion of the Policy Pushers
By Matthew Hirsch, Newsdesk.org/The Public Press
First in a series fact-checking 2008 election advertisements in San Francisco | Sidebar: Swaying Voters at $2 a Word: Inside the Ballot Booklet | Interview on KALW-FM’s “Crosscurrents,” 9/9/08:
For the November 4 election, San Francisco’s voter-information booklet will be packed with dozens of paid arguments around hot-button topics such as housing and public power. Many of these ballot ads are signed by community and small-business leaders and appear to reflect widespread participation in the public debate. Yet the people who sign the paid arguments don’t always pay for or submit the ads themselves. San Francisco legislators changed the election rules in 1997 so voters could find out who was footing the bills. But most voters don’t know that paid arguments are often bundled by professional campaign consultants whose aim is to manufacture a showing of broad support for certain ballot issues, and who sometimes have their own, undisclosed interests.