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tv   [untitled]    March 27, 2012 7:00pm-7:30pm PDT

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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
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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.
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>> 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.
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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.
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[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.
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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.
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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.
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-- 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
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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]
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>> of the community clean team gathered in district 11. after the rally, the mayor and the supervisor at 20 teams went to work at a new mold around young trees. school children worked with adults while the youngest volunteers were entertained. the bill planters and learned about waste reduction. led by the department of public works, the main focus was on a tree maintenance. the city is looking at the health of the new trees, making sure they are able to stand on their own. this year's arbor day was dedicated to the memory of an environmental activist they used the planting as a community building activity in kenya. san francisco's leaders plan to the new tree in the playground. the remembered her during the opening kickoff rally.
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>> i want to thank everybody for coming out today. we appreciate that you, your family and friends got up early on saturday morning to come out and help clean a green san francisco. give yourselves a big hand. i want to thank the supervisors in district 11, and give them a big hand. and i am really excited that some many different groups are here today to celebrate arbor day. does anybody know what arbor day is? all right. we have lots of the information for you about arbor day. this year, and the emphasis is maintaining trees. over the last several years with merrilies leadership and many of the supervisors, we went to
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plant 25,000 trees and will be looking after them. we will spend today beginning that process where you work in santa's go to give back and make sure that these trees do well for us. all right. we have several vendors here, i want to thank them. they have the information they will be sharing with you. we will be commemorating arbor day by dedicating a tree to a very significant person that has contributed a lot of the world, mostly africa. on the left, the big three will be planted in honor of a person. i also want to take this opportunity to thank many of our sponsors.
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it provides the bulky items services and every time we go to the cleanups, we provide services for items from their house. things in their garages. a big hand for ecology. they are also providing lunch today. some of them over there are already cooking. you will have a good meal. starbucks has been a part of the claim team and they provided the coffee this morning. i know is getting a little cold, so make sure that you are getting starbucks coffee. walgreen's provides water to us, they provide money to us and everything to help keep san francisco kleine. -- clean. luxor cab, local 261, they're
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all part of arbor day. give them a big hand. and of course, but for right and who's the mayor, we thank the volunteers, all of you for coming out to give back this and francisco to share and do everything to make this the cleanest city in the world. i will introduce our mayor that has introduced the claim team. i need you do something for us, he is right there for us. >> good morning. no, that's toow eak. -- too weak. this is arbor day. all right. well, you know, arbor day is an
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internationally recognized efforts and a movement that we are all part of. if not, you should be. i am proud to stand on the stage with supervisor avalos, agencies from recon park to the environment department, puc, dpw, where a lot of you grew up on this effort. our clean team, so many agencies and housing authorities are with us today. they are in honor of our day. i want to recognize the great nabors with us as well. a wonder the -- the wonderful
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neighborhood association. we made sure that we paid attention. this year's theme is taking care of trees. that is something i try to do with my kids a few years ago. they're like trees, they grow on you. everybody has to share in the responsibility of our green canopy. that is why i have embraced today's effort on the only for the claim team, but also the co fair that you have an opportunity for the kids and neighbors to come and learn how you can work with the most professional nonprofit agencies
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as well as the city agencies to learn how to take care of the trees. it is one that if we don't take care of it, it will be destroyed. sometimes it is the way the city operates. the efforts that are going on here today, we have an effort since 2008. it is something that we are very proud of. we can't do it alone. we have to educate new generations of people to recognize the value of our trees. there'll be other generations, i will thank all of you for coming up on arbor day. we will thank our sponsors as
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well. in recognition of that, in recognition of this movement and being part of an international movement, we are recognizing today that we are planting a tree for a woman that does not with us now, but her spirit as a former recipient of the golden environmental prize in san francisco, a nobel laureate, as someone that we honor today of who started from the country of kenya and worked very hard with organizations throughout the world to start a movement to be sensitive to our environment. that is 47 million trees during her lifetime that were planted across the world.
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today, we have the honor of declaring this day per day in san francisco. it will be pretty close in her honor. and also an honor of the movement that she started that resulted in very good organizations. on her behalf, receiving this award today is huey johnson. he has established offices in san francisco and has been here for many years. i would like to present the award for the green belt movement with huey johnson. >> may i say a few words? thank you. good morning.
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i'll be brief. our city was honored by the doctors establishment of the first international office, the greenbelt international, the first in the world. eventually, it moved to washington and other places in the world. it is the most successful of the many environmental organizations begun here that are functioning in the world. the reason for san francisco's distinction was not just in the generosity, the individuals at the foundations making the world a better place to live. thankfully, they continue to benefit from these resources. it has resulted in over 1 billion trees planted. the un behind the idea, a bunch of agents assigned on.
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it is almost beyond belief. the other part of her work, a little-known and much appreciated, she used tree planting as a social and political the virus to be able to shake the oppression that many third world countries were relegated to a community's status. she was a very astute person. she was the first to win a nobel peace prize. it is a sight i will never forget. an even greater tribute occurred last week. the continent of africa and the african union summit voted to make march 3 the day for the
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entire continent of africa. she is one of the first to have a holiday and all of africa. today will be an annual celebration for environmental activities throughout the continent. i think you on behalf of greenbelt international. >> and so, with all the work that mr. johnson has done all over the world, we go out to the various communities, district 11, we go to community meetings, we look for ways to help them doing all sorts of work. and one person that is always there and in support of the project that the city agencies