Newsdesk.org, The Public Press and the Knight Foundation-supported SPOT.US "crowdfunding" project are teaming up to raise $2,500 to support investigative coverage and fact-checking of San Francisco-focused election advertisements. Your micro-donation will make a difference! [Newsdesk.org editor Josh Wilson interviewed by David Cohn of Spot.Us] Pledge Your Support for SF Election Ad Fact-Checking: http://wiki.spot.us/election If […]
Category: News
Posted inFrom the Newsroom, News
San Francisco Magazine discusses the Public Press
Check out the capsule interview San Francisco Magazine did with me in the current issue of the magazine, in "The Next Big Charity: News." The subhead is: "With newspapers on life support, a new/old solution may provide a cure." The Public Press is featured in a breakout box alongside David Talbot’s San Francisco Free Press […]
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Sale of San Diego paper could end family ownership
Profit uncertainty is about to spell doom for family ownership of one of the nation’s largest newspapers. According the its Web site, the owners of the San Diego Union-Tribune, Copley Press, are looking for a prospective buyer for the publication and other local holdings in southern California. The company has been shedding its news assets […]
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Lack of new ideas could be trouble for newspaper business
Newspapers are "too elitist." Newspapers should be "INTELLIGENT … not intellectual." So are the words of Lee Abrams, a former XM Radio satellite executive and now chief innovation officer at the Tribune Company, according to Eric Alterman’s blog. The problems stretch far beyond the print media needing to be less highbrow, he opines. Alterman finds […]
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For newspaper companies, going private could be option
Cutbacks at major newspapers have done little to reassure Wall Street investors, one observer of the media business has said. Alan Mutter, author of the blog Reflections of a Newsosaur, wrote last Wednesday that precipitous drops in the value of stock at news companies such as Gannett, McClatchy, and the New York Times Co. have […]
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Cutbacks cause controversy at Contra Costa Times
The union representing employees with Dean Singleton’s Bay Area News Group are alleging staff cuts were retaliatory, the Associated Press reported Tuesday. The Northern California Media Workers Guild filed a grievance with the National Labor Relations Board, concerned that the 13 percent staff reductions at the Contra Costa Times targeted union organizers. The layoffs came […]
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Spot Us Reporting – A Collaboration With the Public Press
A quick and belated blog post to announce that Spot Us, a nonprofit that will pioneer "community funded reporting," will be working with the Public Press to help finance local enterprise reporting here in San Francisco. Spot Us has received a grant from the Knight Foundation to take it from idea-to-production mode ASAP. (read more) […]
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Turning advertising against itself
In the broad range of organizations that question the expanding role of marketing in public life, a group called the Anti-Advertising Agency Foundation For Freedom stands among the most ardently opposed to the traditional but uneasy co-existence of advertising and the editorial craft. But the AAAFFF is the only one we know of that is […]
Posted inFrom the Newsroom, News
Desperate times call for innovation
It’s the same old song, second verse: The old ways of paying for quality journalism are slowly dying and will continue to decline until a new model that works has been created. Though what the best news model looks like is always up for discussion. American Journalism Review’s senior editor, Carl Sessions Stepp, wrote a […]
Posted inFrom the Newsroom, News
Whither the Sunday Chronicle?
In the midst of a year that has seen a truly existential crisis for print journalism, it’s instructive to ask ourselves just what kind of paper product newspapers are selling these days. The photo above is what landed on my front stoop last Sunday. Inside the advertising bag was a free sample of what’s reputed […]