Now in its third year, Journalism Innovations is the West Coast’s premiere showcase for groundbreaking journalism ideas, media innovation and community networking. Produced by the Society of Professional Journalists-Northern California, Independent Arts and Media, The University of San Francisco, and the G.W. Williams Center for Independent Journalism, Journalism Innovations is playing a vital part in shaping the next phase of the industry.

This event, combined this year with the SPJ Region 11 Spring Conference, will bring in hundreds of working journalists, educators, advocates, citizen media-makers, inventors, recruiters, students and job seekers.  Join the leaders shaping the future of news. Register today, or sponsor to gain high-profile exposure for your organization! Visit the conference website or join our Facebook group for the latest details.

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Documentary misrepresented advocates as supporters of a public option
4/23/10

Silencing supporters of single-payer, or Medicare for All, is a media staple, but PBS's Frontline found a new way to do that on the April 13 special Obama's Deal--by selectively editing an interview with a single-payer advocate and footage of single-payer protesters to make them appear to be activists for a public option instead. Read more »

Memorial services for Tricia Taborn, the great San Francisco spirit who died April 7, have been set for Saturday, May 1, from 1 to 5 p.m.at Northbrae Community Church, 941 The Alameda, just south of Solano Avenue in North Berkeley.

Her husband Gerald Baron recommends that, in honor of Tricia's love for flamboyant hats in dramatic colors, her friends come wearing  a dramatic hat in the Tricia Taborn tradition. More details will follow on this blog.Read more »

I was saddened to hear that my former associate of many years, Tricia Taborn, died today (April 7) of cancer at Kaiser Hospital in Oakland.

She was four days shy of her 62nd birthday.

She entered the hospital on Saturday (April 3).  Her mother Neomi flew out from Dallas,  Texas,  to be with her the last few days. Her sister Ginny, her  two brothers Kenneth and Michael  and her husband Gerald Baron  were with her when she died. Read more »

William Morgan Bennett, 1918-2010

On the front page of the Guardian of Oct. 19, 1988, we ran a big picture of Bill Bennett with a caption that read: "Bill Bennett, the only public official in California to take on PG&E."

The reason we featured Bennett was because the California Public Utilities Commission was poised to make yet another multi-billion giveaway to the Pacific Gas & Electric Company.

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Erik Brooks, a stalwart in the clean energy and public power campaigns, flashes the the following list of sites that you can link to, join and share to help fight PG&E's Prop 16 attack on public power and community choice aggregation (CCA.)  He writes, "Please join and share/post them so that we can light up California with a million points of opposition to the attack." Read more »

Every single elected official, candidate for office, and political group in the state that isn't entirely bought off by PG&E needs to loudly oppose Prop. 16 - now Read more »

Let's have a show of hands.

To those of you in small business: have you noticed the banks getting tough with you on credit?  To customers of banks: have you noticed all the funny business with higher fees and shorter grace periods with credit cards? Does it annoy you that the big banks and Wall street get bailed out with little oversight or accountability,  and the rest of us on Main Street and the neighborhoods of San Francisco and beyond suffer with no relief in sight?Read more »

If Newsom decides to solve the city's $520 million deficit with cuts alone, he will be taking more than $1 billion out of the local gross domestic product

EDITORIAL If Mayor Gavin Newsom is serious about stimulating the San Francisco economy, he ought to start with a basic number that the city's own economist, Ted Egan, passed along to us this week. The number is 2.11 — and Egan says that's the multiplier effect of cuts in local public spending. Read more »