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]

a hundred kids actively participating in our programming. it doesn't stop here, we're continuing the momentum and continuing to grow. and like those students, we want to make sure that college becomes the rule and not the exception. so i want to thank everyone here who is gathered here today. and because of all you in the room, you have contributed time, resources, advocacy, energy, to make this dream a reality. so thank you all for coming. i want to introduce some -- everyone here is a v.i.p. and i thank people for coming. they are behind me.

first of all, mayor lee, mayor of san francisco. please give him a round of applause. [applause] >> and supervisor malia cohen from district 10. thank you very much. who is doing an awesome job representing district 10. we want to make sure she is on board. she's been a great supporter since she was elected to the board of supervisors so we thank you, again, supervisor cohen. with that, and one last person i want to introduce is randy lenit. randy is a graduate of college track oakland, a graduate of san francisco state university with a degree in civil engineering and randy was instrumentally involved in planning this entire building. you'll hear randy's story in a little while. round of applause for randy. and so with that, i would like to invite mayor lee up.

thank you. mayor lee: thank you, omar. and thank you, everybody, for coming to college track. what a wonderful, wonderful name and a beautiful goal. you know, i don't know if you know this, during my college years i worked for this program called the upward bound program and i did that for about 3 1/2 years. during those years in the 1970's, it was about just persuading parents to let their kids try to get a college education. what we didn't know at the time, for, particularly, low-income kids, and kids from challenged neighborhoods, was there was a lot more than just persuasion at work. there was a lot of dissuasion going on with our kids, a lot of distractions. and over the years old, working with programs like college track and bridge to success, we learned a few things in

partnership with our school district. rich caransaz is here today, in partnership with wonderful non-profits and our business and philanthropic communities, many are here to support this today, we learned there was more than just persuasion to be done. if you look at kids going through high school these days, if they're there, and if we're preventing truancy, they're there sometimes alone. they're there with tremendous financial pressures, community pressures to do things other than seek success for themselves. and so we figured some of those things out and it led to needing to have a place for additional support to happen and there's where this wonderful program called college track has appeared with us. and i'm here today to signify the first success, because i know in june, the first class,

although we started in 2007, the first class graduated this june and 100% of that class is going to college. isn't that wonderful? and did you know that 85% of that graduating class are kids that are first time going to college for their families, the first in their families to do so. that's another great goal. [applause] as omar said earlier, there's a bunch of us that sometimes we're v.i.p.'s but i really think the v.i.p.'s today are the college track kids that are right here with the blue shirts. thank you very much for -- thank you very much for joining this wonderful, wonderful program. we're here today in this beautiful -- looks like a shell right now but if you see the designs, you'll see how

wonderful this will be filled in. it's the additional 13,000 square feet that's going to more than double the number of kids that we'll reach out. and i want to especially thank someone who's been working alongside with me for many years and his leadership along with the redevelopment commission. i want to give a personal thanks to fred backwell. fred, take a bow, fred. fred blackwell and malia cohen and so many other wonderful people who have really been leading this effort to revitalize the whole of bayview hunters point and third street but i know fred's heart has been in this from day one. i've watched him. i've worked with him. and i know that he's gone through every emotion in life to bring revitalization and hope in this neighborhood and now on the eve of his so many successes

going on and we shared some tears with him a few weeks ago when we announced the alice griffin from neighborhood choice program. we knew that that, along with college track, and his droction droction -- direction in getting this building and his leadership not only in redevelopment -- work with our school district, working with city college, working with san francisco state university, working with the private sector. he's crowning so many things before he leaves to be the deputy city administrator in oakland. i want to thank you, fred, for all your wonderful leadership and your commitment here. [applause] i know that college is going to be a reflection of everyone's

success here and from the years that i worked in upward bound to now, i want to congratulate the kids who are here right now. because, guess what, not only have you joined a very successful program that will work very hard on your behalf to deal with things like academic affairs, college affairs, student aid, to get you where you need to have a sustainable economic forecasting so that you can be successful there, but you're also joining a a very exclusive club that i think will be more and more kids coming from this neighborhood. you have just committed to joining the million dollar club. did you know that? the million dollar club, do you know what that is? the million dollar club is the difference between a high school diploma and a college degree. it's the difference in economic income that you will earn relative to those who don't graduate and go to college.

that's the million dollar club. you're joining that club and you're going to make yourself successful and by the way, as you do your part in graduating from college, we, in the city, working together with all of the different entities here, we're going to do our part to make sure we create and sustain the jobs that you want, the best kind of jobs, the high-tech jobs coming in. the life science jobs, the jobs that are going to make a difference in your lives. we will do. that we will keep those jobs here in san francisco so that when you graduate if college, those jobs will be there for you. how do you like that as an agreement? [applause] and i know there are so many partners. i see great partners in carmen policy and wilkes bashford and mrs. fisher is here and the board on behalf of college track, there are so many people that are participating in this because they have the same

belief, they have the same knowledge that if we can help take care of those distractions that afford you the opportunity to keep focused on your education, we're going to do right, we're going to succeed, just like randy. randy's going to tell you about his engineering light that's about to be successful. he's going to work on many projects here in san francisco, right? we've got a lot of development going on in the city, successful developments that will have those wonderful jobs, because that, at the end of it, is your prize. going to college is a sacrifice. you will be faced with distractions, no doubt about it. and we've identified those distractions with the college track program we have here so they don't become distractions for you, so you can focus on your education and focus on the goal. that's what i want to do and that will be the commitment of this mayor and this administration as long as we are here, we'll get the jobs to you and keep supporting these

wonderful programs. thank you very much for being here at college track. [applause] >> thank you very much, mr. mayor. i would like to invite supervisor cohen up to speak, please. thank you. >> thank you. ladies and gentlemen, once upon a time ago, about six, seven years ago, i met a man named ed lee and he was a quiet little bureaucrat. he was an administrator -- actually, no, before that, he was the director of d.p.w. and then an administrator. he just did what he was told to do and worked very hard at doing it and was very diligent and now over the last nine months, i've had the opportunity to watch him blossom into a mayor and to listen to his speak, he's so mayoral. i mean, there was a time he would start his opening remarks would be two or three minutes and that would be .