on that, brian. and pat, i know that you are looking for 20, 30 times returns. >> what is that? >> i put in $1 million and i get $10 million out. >> we do not know what that is an public radio. [laughter] >> ok, thank you. i would like to ask our guests to keep the questions short and sweet. we have a lot of questions. >> patch is built on ad revenue, but not in the -- it is not just banner ads. it is about serving the community. there is a business community as well. small business owners who knew to be served, the sorts of at products that benefit them.

all of these are good, from non profit, to different models. you mean that variety. i got an e-mail from taxable. i appreciate that. >> you have a question for pat as well? >> i think the business model in the media always changes. the big one that everyone has seen in their lifetime is, when i was a kid, tv was free. across america, it was funded by advertisers. today, the vast majority of americans pay a fee to get television. if the contact mix is right, hard journalism, entertainment, people will pay. all along the spectrum from the complete the paid to be completely ad-funded, you see it all today. one of the crisis we have now is the old model of classified

advertising, paying for hard news journalism on paper has broken the, and is being replaced. that business model change had been a constant for 150 years. there are millions of models that work, and will be, and capital can chase them, as you get a 10x return, as you described. >> we want to get to everyone's questions. >> my name is alex. i have heard two major themes about new media. one, that it has a radical democratic potential, low barrier to entry, but i have also heard repeated again and again, in order for your model to be successful, in order for your web site to be successful, you have to hitch your wagon to a large, well-funded, established media corporation.

i wonder, in light of that, how new, really, is new media? as the dust settles, is new media not just become the old media as it has been? how far have we come from a daily billing 60 years ago criticizing, saying the press is free only for those who own one. >> is a great question. i am going to go back to that first question, the quality of digital journalism. we are more than 15 years into internet news. still, you hear people say it is coming along. someday it will be good. quality journalism existed on the internet from day one. it was there. the internet journalists were winning awards from day one. there is a lot of noise surrounding it, which makes it seem worse, say, than "the

chronicle." quality journalism is there. the new part of the media is not a new types of stories being told, but how they are being told, short for nurses long form, and how they are distributed on your one newspaper or magazine or one website, versus to run the mobile universe, or threat the internet universe, portals. do you want to give 30% of revenue to apple in order to distribute it? lots of publishers are making that decision. it is the distribution from free tv to pay tv and the change from the free online destination media to mobile everywhere media and the creation of brands there. along with the business model, that is what we are working on. >> the want to go to the next question. we have to get to everybody. >> my name is peter bergen.

i am an investigative reporter. i do not write content, i do not right product. i do news reporting. i do not write material to put ads around. there are some assumptions coming from this gathering that i find troubling. many years ago, upton sinclair wrote a classical study of journalism. he said that the advertising model does not work. clearly, it does work, but the main thing that is missing from what everyone has been talking about so far is the consumer. when i read long form of journalism, which i write, i print it out. when i mounted an investigation of the region's last year of california, i collected about $7,000 from individuals and parlayed it into six print

journeys, seven weeklies. got a lot of national coverage. it made some difference in people's lives, but i did not take a dime from any corporation. ok? so let's talk about how we go back to the model where people who need investigation, news -- because my duty is not to reflect corporations. let us not be proud that we are moving forward because we do not have journalist unions anymore. that's going back to selling the news that people need, and get rid of the middle man, which is turning out to be a lot of publishers. >> first, thank you for bringing that up. a great question. it gives me the opportunity to talk about two things i am passionate about, perspective and poor people. neither one of those things are efficient -- artificial when it

becomes to becoming an millionaire. there is a website that i really liked called poormagazine. that has existed for the past 10 years, focusing on the homeless communities in the bay area. everything that they get is donations and they get few donations. they focus on the things that are ignored by the media outlets, and they are doing it specifically for the people on the streets. those are the kinds of people, the people that they are focusing on. but to be honest, they do not pay bills, they do not have money for advertising. the perspective that comes from those communities are often not what foundation's one. foundations usually go from labor of the month to flavor of the month. we are backed by foundations, so hopefully i am not biting myself in the ass. if you are foundation-funded,

you have to focus on what the foundation wants. if you are advertising-focused, you have to focus on what the advertiser wants. so where is the space for this marginalized community? i did a story two years ago that focused on west oakland, dealing with asthma rates. nobody in west oakland had the money to pay for it, but everybody read it. i know because i walked around and handed out paper copies of it. how do we focus on those organizations, the people who cannot do it themselves? i am sorry to answer your question with a question, but it is something i am passionate about. >> hello, i am just graduating high school this year. i plan to pursue a career in journalism. like others, i get a constant reminder that it is a struggling field.

personally, i am not too concerned with money. i am just passionate about journalism. like many others, i want to know what it is looking like for people like me, who are planning to pursue a career in journalism, what steps do i need to be taking? >> four years from now, i believe she will be out of journalism school, what will landscaped look like? >> it will look great because you are cheap labor. [laughter] and there is plenty of room for you to work their way up. if you really focus on digital skills that make you stand out from everyone else, you are going to make it. fundamentally, you need to write well. if you can do that, you will be successful in this industry. i honestly believe that there is

plenty of room for people who want to pursue careers in journalism right now. >> what skills should they be learning, at this point, if they are just going into k school -- j scjool? -- school? >> certainly, the ability to write. being able to speak to the reader, you should certainly learn and probably already know how to do so, video. basically, how to use all of the social media channels available. but i would not really focus so much on those tools because they are getting easier and easier by the day. i am sure four years from now, -- you probably get that in school anyway, but you want to focus on the basics of

understand your role as a reporter in a community. and jobs are becoming available. there is more hiring going on. that will continue, going forward. >> one question would be, who is a journalist? that fundamental question. does she have to go to journalism school for four years to be considered? how can she distinguish herself from a citizen journalist or a blogger? need there be a distinction? that goes into a whole nother question of who is a journalist. nobody wants to tackle that question. >> you should also visit new terms and talk to journalists about what they do. >> i will try to be quick. i think there is a spectrum of journalism and there are professionals. citizen journalists along the spectrum, but they are all valuable.

i was going to say, one of the things you should learn how to do is promote yourself and promote your brand. you can get on tomorrow, you can build clips like no other time in history. you can do that on facebook, your web site. learning how to use your network to promote the thing that you care about, what to write about, is a huge scale that the internet will allow you to do. >> my name is claudia. i worked for pat. my question is for everyone on the panel. -- i work for patch. noting the lack of hispanics on the panel, how do newsrooms address in-language content and sourcing? try to get people in the community, the poor and marginalized, to interact with digital journalism?

>> and journalists need to know more than one language, it is that simple. you need to be able to interact with members of your community that you normally would not be able to if you were restricted by language. that is what i tell my students. i always tell them to minor in spanish, not just because it will make them better reporters, but it will get them jobs in a wider variety of markets. so i do believe that is incredibly important. if you do not speak the language, you find somebody who does. you have them help you. if you were to cover communities, for example, who speak mandarin or cantonese, and you do not speak a word, that is not necessarily a limitation. action--- definitely be part of a journalist's training and

anyone who is of having will have a better shot at telling stories. -- multilingual will have a better shot at telling stories. >> we are out of time. i want to thank all of our panelists. thank you all. and thank you all for coming. [applause]

>> good afternoon. thank you for coming out here on this beautiful summer solstice day with a phenomenal view. you can see mount diablo from here. you can also see our beautiful city. i am the director of public works. i am very pleased to be year. -- i am very pleased to be here to speak to this great community project. i will start you out with this fact, speaking of our beautiful city. 25% of our beautiful city is taken up by public right of way, streets, sidewalks, and scraps and parcels that the city

leaders laid out to convey people and vehicles. the public rights of way are important. that is what we stoeward. a lot of it was designed more for utilities and vehicles than people. what you have seen over the last few years is a rethinking of the public rights of way. we're here to talk about one small example of movement in a positive direction in terms of how we use our public spaces in san francisco. without further ado, the man you would all like to hear from. he is serving the great city now and once did as the director of public works, our mayor, mayor ed lee. [applause]

>> thank you. thank you for your leadership as well. i am up here for the ribbon cutting ceremony. i want to thank all the neighbors that live up here. you have seen corners of the city where grass is growing or people are neglecting these places. along comes a bureaucracy called dpw with others gaining confidence that we can do something about it. we can take a neglected part of our city where there is a corner that nobody takes responsibility for and is an eyesore some good conversations take place.

the streets and parks program at dpw with ed's help, engineering, they start talking to a bureaucrat about possible funds for a community grant program. then a leader starts appearing in says there is something we would like to have. the neighbors want it. we've been doing it on may flower, carver. can do it bigger and make it more beautiful. the neighbors and kids work closely with dpw, parks trust. as you can see behind me, i think somebody else's property discuss another $1 million in

value. it is worth it to transform light, to make sure we do it with our supervisors held and everyone concerned about the beauty of the neighborhoods. this is what makes neighborhoods strong. this is what i want to continue building on. leaders are working on everything from a little graffiti problem or staircase gardens saying that they want to get beyond neglect and bring it back to what it really is -- is paying attention to our neighborhoods, making them stronger, building community and building partnerships. that is what these street parks are all about. it is never about just the concrete or the flowers. it is about the life and increased value we bring to our neighborhoods.

that is what being a neighbor of the great city is all about. that is what i love about the city. my neighborhood is doing the same thing with our street. we want to pay attention to it. we want to get a little help. they get it. we bring the bureaucrats out to the neighborhoods. we make everybody that much more appreciative of what kind of city they are a part of. i want to emphasize the strength of our city relies on the strength of people likfrom the community. you build it here, in glen park, the mission, chinatown. it builds up the strength of the city. it comes back to our department's opening up their resources, not protecting it like other bureaucratic agencies

have historically done. we've said we can do it and be challenged with a grant program completely open to everybody. these things are worth the $1 million it looks like today. it is worth 10 times more in building camaraderie and companionship with our neighbors. i want to emphasize that. i want to represent that by giving what i can do to reflect our appreciation for the leadership. it is a certificate of honor to julian for his leadership on this project and many other projects that have kept this community working and expanding and growing. there is a design around his leadership. by voice vote as the mayor and city administrator that when you

have strong communities, things like disasters, we will have strong neighborhoods to help us recover back. this is the beginning of that. i want to give you this certificate on behalf of the city, parks trust, the challenge grant program. thank you for all of the leadership you have had. [applause] >> water? [inaudible] [applause]

>> thank you, mr. mayor, for your leadership on this. during his time as dpw director, during the community challenge grant program, and now as mayor, it is great for us to see a mayor that gets it on what matters to our neighborhoods and is encouraging all of the departments to embrace things the way he did. thank you for your leadership in enabling things like this to happen. someone else who really gets this is the supervisor that represents this area. he is very much focused on the importance of keeping the streets and sidewalks cleans welcoming, and beautiful. i know he was regretful he was

not able to be here today. he did send a representative from david campos' office. >> i want to thank the mayor for his kind words. as a member of the committee, i would personally like to show my appreciation and thank julian and the friends of bernal gardens for their work so that we can enjoy these beautiful places for generations to come. on behalf of the entire community supervisor comampos, in the board of supervisors, i would like to present this to julian for your commitment to excellence -- commitment of

excellence to the organization that has succeeded in turning a vacant lot to a beautiful garden. thank you for being an exceptional community leader. [applause] congratulations. >> thank you again to supervisor campos and his office. it is easy to have great ideas, but you need to turn to someone to get the work done. that someone in san francisco is sometimes known as mr. clean. he is our deputy director for operations who works to keep the city clean and make it beautiful. our deputy director.

[applause] >> let me join the mayor and our director in welcoming you all. thank you for contributing to such a beautiful asset to our neighborhood. san francisco has many hills and streets and lots of open spaces that have not been developed. people all over on the city had come together to help the city become stewards of the beautiful lands. here is another example of the community coming together, businesses, everyone contributing their share in making san francisco the great city that it is. i like to thank brought madmoor landscapes apply the gave

discounts and free materials to make this project happen. janet moyer landscaping assisted with the design. there was effort in trying to figure out the slopes the walls. they helped quite a bit. jordan kirkland, veronica brady , and the friends of bernal gardens who brought this burden to fruition. the department of public works is out there to hold hands and work with everyone. it is through their leadership that we are able to improve our neighborhoods. i would especially like to thank the staff of dpw who go out to all of these meetings and start these projects. i want to thank all of the

bureau's at dpw who assisted in bringing supplies, and doing some work, or making sure that the project was built as planned. thank you very much. [applause] >> there are a lot of other people to think. you have been hearing a lot about this gentleman, julian, who is responsible for a lot of this. i used to live not far from here. i used to walk my dog upon the hill there. it is so great to see the transformation of this space. it is something i want to see in my neighborhood as well. it does not happen without the leadership of the grass-roots level. we're there to support it, but the leadership is not there from the community, it does not happen. it is my great pleasure to bring forth a great leader in this community mr. julian wyler. [applause]

>> welcome to this point guard in v -- vista point guard. there are a lot of people who are not here today who contributed to make this possible. there are a lot of other people who come here and work and put in various parts of the garden, especially the unsung heroes of the volunteers in the neighborhood. working together and staying focused, this neighborhood has reached out and made partnerships with the city. we have worked together. we get more done that way. it is a real synergy. these gardens to them exist five years ago. they were all neglected, blighted, like a cross the street where you still see areas that can be in crude --