independent radio, and the and the media. it is sort of a positive note and a lot of what we're seeing. >> i just wanted to add to that. that is a unique funding model that happens in public radio we have listeners supported content. that is something we were talking about funding earlier, talking about rich people donating, where if you had this micro finance model -- that is part of why president obama was elected as well. his campaign finance open it up to everyone to be able to donate. i think journalism, and going forward, can learn a lot from that model. >> and we got many $5 donations from people who are not working right now. >> my name is luke. i worked as a generalist for seven years. currently -- journalist for

seven years. currently, i worke with photographs. it is really all about the business model. patch believe they can make money based on advertising. other local newspapers believe advertising is not enough to support journalism. i am interested in your thoughts 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]

>> thanks for joining us today for th the first clean tech

accelerator in san francisco. my name is tim nadeau from blue practice. we are going to try to close here at 2:00. business is open at greenstart and our four start-ups have a full agenda for the rest of the day so we'll try to move things along as best as possible. but for now, welcome, and really have the pleasure first to introduce to you, managing director of greenstart, mitch lowe, to say a few words. mitch? [applause] >> all right. hello, thank you. welcome. it's an exciting day for greenstart. it's an exciting day for the companies that are in our program, and it's an exciting day for san francisco. we're super pumped to finally formally introduce greenstart to the world. so thank you for being here. thank you, mayor lee, for being

here. we have mentors here. we have our interior designer, one of our interior designers, kimberly ryder, who put this space together in less than seven weeks, which is really astounding. thank you all. there's a lot of people here who have been super supportive and are here to help. we started greenstart because we believe that reducing the use of fossil fuels is the defining problem of our generation. and the answer is innovation. we need to innovate around expanding the use of clean energy. we need to innovate around energy efficiency and where does that innovation come from? over the last hundred years, especially in san francisco, especially in silicon valley, entrepreneurs have proven they're the heros that can make disruptive, powerful change. we want to nurture that. we want to accelerate that. we want to create that ecosystem right here in san francisco.

so we're a start-up accelerator for clean tech. we're trying to make start-ups that are focusing on renewable energy and energy efficiency more success. there's four pieces of that. there's funding. we make an investment somewhere between $20,000 and $100,000 in each. we're a combination of a small venture firm and start-up academy bolted together. we then introduce the start-ups that are in the program to other investors to help them raise more money from great investors to move forward. the second piece of the program is mentoring. so me, dylan mcdonald, dave graham, the three partners here, we've been starting companies since our early 20's. we've had some really nice successes. we've had some failures and have learned from both. there's a lot of wisdom and knowledge that we want to help impart to the companies going through the program. it's not about us. we're here and full-time and all in on it, but there's another 35

mentors and growing that are breathing life into what we're doing. these are highly accomplished entrepreneurs that have started businesses. these are experts. these are investors. and they're committing time. they're coming in on a weekly basis and doing workshops and sitting down and dedicating time and attention to try and help the start-ups that go through the greenstart program thrive. third piece is we provide resources. start-ups, by definition, are resource constrained. we try to connect them with people and organizations to help them move faster and as part of all of that, the goal is, they get connections. they come out of the program and have a network of people that want to help them be successful. we're going to do this three times a year, which is a little bit crazy. most start-up accelerators do it once or twice a year. we'll do it three months, three times a year starting every september, every january, every may, and that will continue. we have an audacious goal that

we want to help launch more 500 start-ups here in san francisco in the first 10 years. we might need your help to get that all happening. we chose san francisco because it's widely recognized as the greenest city in the world and it's right in silicon valley which is the hart of starting companies and we want to work to make san francisco the center of gravity for clean energy companies. that translates to making a difference in the world. it translates to job creation and economic activity. we want to do that all right here. there's four companies in first program. we're super excited that they're here. we're joking that it's harder to get into greenstart than into stanford or harvard. we had 130 applications and through a rigorous process, we narrowed it down to four. we're going to invite them up to say a few words. this formally kicks off today. it's a 12-week program.

it's going to be high intensity and keep an eye out for these companies because they're going to be out there changing the world. thanks for being here, guys. [cheers and applause] >> thank you, mitch. and now i've got the great honor to introduce mayor lee, whose commitment to clean tech and jobs to san francisco. it's a testament that you're here. welcome. mayor lee: welcome, tim. thank you, and welcome, everybody. welcome to the greenest city. it's in the world, right? we just have north america but i'll accept the world. mitch, congratulations. thank you for starting greenstart right here in downtown san francisco. and it's amazing, our was on of workforce development and our department of environment, we are very much loving today because we've been talking with clean tech for a long time and

everybody asks, when's the right time for this to start happening? well, now. and i love this term "accelerator" because we don't have time to waste. we need innovation right now if we're going to reduce carbon emissions below the 1990's levels, by 20%. we need that now and we need people to have that vision in a very real way. it's more than a vision. we have to have those examples out there and not only to maintain our world class status of being the cleanest site, but i think we need to use our city as the guiding post for the rest of the country, that we can actually do it here and use innovation, support the companies that want to the start here, grow them here, and then nurture them to stay here because one of the things i'm looking at is when you stay here, those jobs that you're starting out right now, the one or two jobs, they're going to go in the hundreds as your business models take off. so i love this whole idea of

accelerating this opportunity and having these four firms kind of come out of a really good competition of 130 firms. but it isn't just the physical space that they're starting here right now of the it is what mitch said earlier, where they're going to introduce them to resources, introduce them to relationships they haven't had and then, i think, been forewarning the four companies as i saw some of their initial products, this december they get to make their first real pitch to angel investors and the capital investors who want to take a look at what they have. but these are the four that have already presented a high level of promise already with their product innovation, with their energy. and they covered areas like smarter shades. get ready for your pitch because they'll explain smarter shade, or the newest combination of diesel fuel that's more efficient, or the two companies that are helping you, either as an individual or as a small

company, measure your energy efficiency, your energy consumption, so that you can begin as a base to understand how you are going to do better in monitoring your energy or using a smart plug to let you know what's going on throughout your building. these companies are innovative, they're smart, they're using clean technology. that's the industry that we're aggressively inviting into our city right now as we speak and it will begin with these four companies, mitch, and we're going to not only watch them grow, we're going to work with you to make sure that we, as a city, can support your efforts here by also creating relationships they don't have today, as well. so behind greenstart, there's going to be the city and county of san francisco. this will be a department environment who can introduce someone like silva tech into our fleet, because they're struggling with doing better than just biodiesel. all of these companies so lono,

silva techs, 10 rat, and watt, those are the four companies that will introduce themselves. i'm excited to be the mayor right now because this is the start of many, many other names that you're going to mispronounce like i did, because when they start out, they haven't gotten the cool names yet. they will evolve their cool names to introduce themselves to the rest of the world. and when they do, watch out. the clean tech industry will grow like the dickens. they'll really accelerate. because everybody is looking now for how to reduce emissions, how to really contribute seriously to our environment, making a better place. that's what san francisco is. we're going to use this innovation but we're going to also invite them in the most responsible thing that these young folks want to do and that is to save our planet, save our energy, reduce carbon emissions,

be part of the smartest city in the world to do better. it's our urban settings that will contribute significantly in the next few decades. whether or not we're going to survive as a better planet and it's going to happen in the urban settings. it's going to happen in downtown san francisco. congratulations, mitch. congratulations to your sharing the vision. i don't mind all the mistakes that go on here because then we get to recover and do even better. in the spirit of innovation, we don't mind the mistakes happen. but the investors, when they come in, they're going to put serious money behind all the best ideas and they're going to want that relationship with san francisco, as well. we are still the seat of innovation but also the city of doers. we're going to do this with you and congratulations. i want to invite all the companies up to make their pitch. thank you. [applause] >> please join us.

>> thanks, mayor lee. i'm the c.e.o. and founder of 10 rate technologies. we make wireless companies for the energy efficiency environment. our first item is a wi-fi based outlet adapter that lets you control the energy use of your buildings at the outlet. buildings can save 20% to 30% just from the outlet. so spank the grid by starting small at the outlet. i think it's really important to say that what attracted us to greenstart was not just the three musketeers of mitch and dylan and dave, but the culture of being here in san francisco. this is -- san francisco has always been a boomtown and it's a welcoming community to entrepreneurs so we're happy to be here. thanks for having us. [applause] >> hi, thank you so much for being here. i'm virginia classmore,

co-founder of silva techs. we've develops renewable fuel, injecting renewable biomass, non-toxic ingredients to diesel fuel to make it go longer and better and reduce emotions. we have our product ready to be used for beta testing and i'll be taking mayor lee on his support there. we're very excited to be here to accelerate and really get to market sooner because we want to make that big impact that the world needs. so we have access to the amazing mentors out there and all the support that greenstart offers and we're really excited. thank you very much for being here and helping them support this. [applause] >> my name is mike stacy, c.e.o. and co-founder of smarter shade. smarter shade is a new technology that allows any windo