it was not easy to meet the $20 budget. i checked everybody out and found some great produce. really lovely seafood. i think that you are going to love it. >> do not be shy. cyou know this can run you $35 to $45 for a bowl, so it is great you did this for $20. >> this will feed four to six people. >> not if you invite me over for dinner. i am ready to dig in. >> i hope you'll love it. >> mmm. >> what do you think? >> i think i am going to need more. perhaps you can have all you want. >> i am produce the that you have crushed this farmer's market challenge by a landslide. the first, we're going to have to tally of your shopping list and see what you actually spend

that the farmer's market. >> and go for it. >> incredible. you have shown us how to make super healthy, refresh chapino from the farmers market on the budget, that for the whole family. that is outstanding. >> thank you peter i am glad that you like it. i think anybody can do it. >> if you like the recipe for this dish, you can e-mail us at sfgtv@sfgov.org or reach out to us on facebook or twitter and we i'm derek, i'm hyungry, and ready to eat. these vendors offer a variety

of the streets near you. these mobile restaurants are serving up original, creative and unusual combinations. you can grab something simple like a grilled cheese sandwich or something unique like curry. we areher here in the average eight -- upper haight. you will be competing in the quick buy food challenge. an appetizer and if you are the winner you will get the title of the quitck bite "chompion." i am here with matt cohen,

from off the grid. >> we assembled trucks and put them into a really unique heurban settings. >> what inspired you to start off the grid? >> i was helping people lodge mobile food trucks. the work asking for what can we get -- part together? we started our first location and then from there we expanded locations. >> why do think food trucks have grown? >> i have gotten popular because the high cost of starting a brick and mortar or strong, the rise of social media, trucks can be easily located, and food trucks to offer a unique outdoor experience that is not easily replaced by any of their setting any worlwhere else in san franc.

san francisco eaters are interested in cuisine. there adventuress. the fact theyuse grea use great ingredients and make gourmet food makes unpopular. >> i have been dying to have these. >> i have had that roach coach experience. it is great they're making food they can trust. >> have you decided? >> we are in the thick of the competition? >> my game was thrown off because they pulled out of my

first appetizer choice. >> how we going to crush clear? >> it will be easy. probably everyone has tried, something bacon tell us delicious. >> -- people tell us is delicious. >> hopefully you think the same thing. >> hopefully i am going to win. we're in the financial district. there is a food truck right there. every day changes. it is easy and fun to go down. these are going to be really good. >> how are you going to dominate? >> i think he does not know what he is doing. >> i was thinking of doing [unintelligible] we are underrepresented. >> i was singing of starting an

irish pub. that was my idea. >> one our biggest is the corned beef and cabbage. we are asking people what they're thinking in getting some feedback. >> for a lot of people i am sure this combination looks very wrong. it might not sound right on paper but when you taste it to or have it in your mouth, it is a variety. this is one of the best ways in creating community. people gather around and talk about it and get to know different cultures. that brings people together and i hope more off the grid style and people can mingle and interact and remove all our differences and work on our similarities. this creates opportunity. >> the time has come and i am

very hungry. what have you got? >> i got this from on the go, a sandwich, and a caramel cupcake. i went with home cooking. what de think? >> i will have another bite. >> sounds good. >> that was fantastic. let's start with you. >> i had the fried mac and cheese, and twinkies. i wanted to get something kind of classic with a twist on it. >> it was crispy. >> i will admit.

>> want to try fieried mac and cheese? >> was that the best twinkie? >> would you say you had the winning male? >> definitely. >> no. >> you are the "chompion." clair has won. you are the first "chompion." >> they know it iwas me because i got a free meal. and check a map on -- check them out on facebook. take a peek at the stuff we have

cut. to get our -- check out our blog. i will have >> welcome to the 2011 spj town hall. i'm here with my co-host to welcome you to what promises to be a fascinating discussion about the changes taking place in journalism today. tonight's program is presented by the society of professional journalists in collaboration with the san francisco public library and san francisco bay area journalists. after several years of difficulty, we are seeing a lot of activity, particularly involving new media organizations. we have seen patch.com open hundreds of bureaus across the

country. yahoo! is expanding its staff across the country. aol bought the huffington opposed. in the middle east, we saw how citizen journalists are reporting on the uprisings, and in papers like the "san francisco chronicle" are finding ways to collaborate with groups like spj's journalist of the year in northern california. his last three of this year's winners were new or nonprofit media, a ratio that would have been unthinkable just a decade ago when newspapers and large tv stations dominated the news media. to be sure, most of the hard work is still ahead of us. few new start-ups turn a profit. many community newsrooms' still rely on volunteer labor, and broader economic issues.

we want to encourage the members of our audience here at the public library to drive this discussion. this is your chance to ask these experts what is happening to the news that you depend on to make your day to day decisions. our conversation tonight will include five elements -- we will talk about the quality of reporting available to the public and move on to what is being done to create sustainable newsroom jobs. we will talk about creating a new system that enjoys constitutional freedom of the press, celebrates the diversity of our communities, and enjoys the economic independence needed to support ethical journalism. i would like to introduce my coast -- co-host of the evening, and she will be introducing our panelists. >> thank you, rose. it is a privilege to stand up here. we are not used to looking this good.

we can go to radio in pajamas. i would like to introduce our panelists for today. we will start back from the left. executive producer of the "daily mandarin and cantonese newshour." next to him is the director of multimedia and technology programs at the night digital media center at uc-berkeley. next is the managing is theidd -- managing director at idd ventures sf. nexus' the editor in chief of marketwatch.com, part of news corp. -- next is the editor in chief. the co-founder and senior community manager of oakland local, a nonprofit media that promotes public discourse on

issues. in the front row is a media analyst, who publishes an was a key developer of the mercury center. next to him is an assistant professor of broadcast and electronic media at san francisco state university. next is the managing editor for local news at -- i'm sorry. he is not at yahoo!, right. he is editor-in-chief of patch.com, a division of aol that provides news to specific communities. very local. after him, we have the managing director for local news at yahoo.com, guiding the company's local coverage nationwide.

last but not least is the senator who represents san francisco and san mateo counties, and he is the recipient of spj's freedom of information award in 2010. that is our panel. back to you, rose. >> before we start, i want to get a sense of who we have in the audience. how many of you currently work in the media? lots. how many of you used to work in the media? how many of you want to work in the media? ok, good. that will give us a sense of who we are talking with. great. every friday, we have a media roundtable and invite international, alternative, and mainstream journalists to talk about coverage of the week's news. we believe it is important to highlight good journalism because so much of it gets passed over. we think it is also important to start off on a positive no. with that, i want to start off

on a positive note tonight. i worked with very. we were on staff before the web was even a mainstream word. i just want to ask you, since you were there in the beginning, and you have rode the wave, what is really exciting new as we face all these challenges? >> the good news is we see an emerging business model for media, and the bad news is it involves giving 30% of your revenue to apple. but i think there is a lot of potential, actually, for building a business on top of distribution through mobile. the other thing we have got going on is really profoundly exciting and far more exciting than five years ago, that the tools are so much better than they were five years ago. they are profoundly better.

compared to the dark days of 2005, media are now -- everybody is online. facebook can launch a product, and really, overnight, build community on thousands of websites. there really are some exciting things going on. in the last five years, things have changed a lot. >> does that count -- does that excitement also extend to content? >> i do not think we are there yet. i do not think we have seen any digital native content that has produced really ground-breaking journalism. a couple of years ago, we were pretty excited about what was happening at a place like talking points memo, where they were doing some great stuff. we have seen a lot of efforts, but things like rupert murdoch's daily have not excited us on a journalistic level. but i think we are laying groundwork for some institutions

that they possibly do that in the next three to five years. >> i'm wondering what you think it would take for it to go to that next level and provide quality journalism. >> i just want to offer a slight difference of opinion. i think that we are seeing a couple of things happen right now. they are positive things that are happening. while it may be true that the first wave of online-only journalism tended to be national and international criticism and opinion, which got the name of blogs, what we are actually seeing of the local level is something even more exciting than that. as newspapers have become challenged, and we have seen, sadly, the destruction of capabilities of newspaper and local television stations and other media in the local arena,

we are seeing a new layer journalism being created at the local level. some startups such as the "bases and close " in san francisco, "texas tribune" out in texas -- there have been others that attended some similar things -- are starting to use a digital- only medium to provide a layer of local coverage. after that, the other positive things that i see our outfits like -- are outfits like patch and yahoo!, which is looking to create semi-pro or citizen journalism to take place, a new layer, stuff that was not covered at all before. observational community-oriented journalism. things that might have been restricted to an e-mail newsletter or in the distant past, some kind of mimeograph letter. those are positive changes to

journalism, and they are happening at the local level. >> speaking of local, how many here have heard up hatch -- heard of patch.com? interesting. i love my local pact, not because they are here, but i follow it. it tells me what is going on in the schools, and it tells me what is going on down the street. but not many people know about it. i'm wondering why you think that is, or are you targeting certain communities that are covered by patch? >> and can you describe it for those of us that are not familiar with it? >> it is a hub for news and information for local communities, simply put. it goes beyond this, and we can get into that, but that is something it leads with. we hire full-time professional journalist who lives and works locally in that community that

it is serving. so it is a uniform platform so the technology is shared, so we can flip the switch, but the editor is really the key to making that all work. for us, for each of those, although it is part of a bigger brand and effort, what matters is how many people within that community know about it, so i'm gratified that you know about yours. the question would be how many more people know about it, and the ones who did not, how do we let them know? >> well, i am also a news person, so that helps. >> and it kind of markets itself to some degree in that the longer the editor is there covering the news, the more people they are talking to, the more people are interested in seeing photographs of the high- school football game and will look for it and that sort of thing. last year, we grew from 30 sites regionally on the east coast to 775 nationally. we were the largest hirer of journalists in the country,

something we are very proud of. we're definitely making an effort at serving those communities, but doing it at scale, and that has been the big challenge. >> can you elaborate on that? what does that mean exactly? >> we would not exist if there was not a feeling that a lot of these communities do not have the experience online of finding the information that is most relevant to them. there are a lot of great weekly newspapers. there are a lot of bulletin boards, facebook woods, you name it. there is a lot of media focused at local, but not every community has it, and even the ones that do often are not getting the kind of service that i think they used to historical because of downsizing and regional newspapers not serving those communities the way they used to. so you will have the council meeting not really being covered. we have had numerous examples where board meetings, council meetings, things that those members got used to not being covered.

suddenly, they were seeing the week after week and seeing that we were there to stay. >> in the audience, do you feel like you're communities are being covered well? do you know what is going on in your back yard? do you feel like your stories being told? majority no? ok. let's go to pat with idg because you argue that there is a lot of local news in san francisco, based on the data you have done, and a lot of people feel like they do not know what is going on. can you talk about that? >> we pulled together some numbers about what is going on, and i stopped counting after 100 local dot-com's. 14 city-wide newspapers, 13 ethnic, 16 different neighborhood papers.

the high schools, the special interest things, universities, tv stations, radio stations. together, those add up to 100 units of local coverage, and that is not counting all the new stock that venture capitalists like we fund in the jungle all the time. this is at some level deflowering of local journalism that happen because it is cheap to be in business now. you do not have to have a big printing press and truckers and unions and all those things. you can be right in the business in a way that was impossible in the last 25 years. i think there is a flowering going on of local journalism and lots of capital chasing that opportunity right now. >> would you agree with that? when you look at local news, do you think it is being covered well by the sources that were just cited? >> i think in the san francisco area that is true. that is probably not true in all areas, but we are seeing with

the development of patch and many other high for local news sites that there is a rebirth of coverage of local news -- and many other hyperlocal news sites. >> i was a foreign correspondent for a number of years. many freelances like myself have kind of jumped out of the business as it has steadily declined. my question is, on the sustainability side, as well in america over the last decades -- and it is an old story, and we have been hearing it for many years. people like paul krugman have been trying to get us to realize how well has been so concentrated in such a small group of folks.

what strategies could be used to attack this minority of individuals in a way that foundations and charities did in the past? if we had a few people, and quite a number of them at an immense amount of wealth, why are we not having them at the new macarthur foundation's and the people who will finance this community journalism? there should be a way of strategy and a mindset where they can help reduce the public interest journalism of the future -- help produce the public interest journalism of the future. >> you are seeing that from some of the wealthy. you have bill gates doing fantastic things. msn and msnbc sprang from microsoft. rupert murdoch, for all the criticism he gets, is invested in the media and innovation.

mike bloomberg is doing a ton of stuff through his company. they are hiring hundreds of people. i worked at bloomberg 15 years ago, and i was in europe as a foreign correspondent. there were 40 journalists, and now, there are thousands. i think it depends on the interests of certain people, but they are being tapped, and you can get them to lend to foundations and do this type of stuff. it is just creating the bridge from the journalism world into that world, and it is not as hard as you would think, in my experience. >> i would just say that a few of those individuals you had mentioned are not examples of the types of progress of journalism that i think a lot of people are here to talk about and listened of route -- was it about. these guys are kind of villains in a sense of where we want journalism to go.

fox news and the daily, who knows where that is going to go, but they are not necessarily public-interested, public radio, public tv, public press minded people. >> that is an opinion that has probably been ill-served in my opinion, having worked in two of those companies and seen the dedication that they give to journalism. everyone has their opinion of fox news, right? rupert also owns "the australian." he owns the "wall street journal." bloomberg sprung from nowhere to create progress of journalism online. i will respectfully disagree on that. >> thinking about california watch, we feature them regularly, and they are doing excellent investigative work. is anyone familiar with those,

and can you talk about the success and where you see that going? do you think that we will see more of these kinds of outlets? >> i think that paying for news journalism and especially for news journalism with a variety of political agendas, historically in san francisco, was paid for by real estate and automotive and help-wanted advertising. it was not paid for by the circulation nichols of the subscribers. if you think about government- boned journalism compared to the rich, benevolent owner boulders of journalism or the public opening of journalism, i think there is a time now where you do not need quite as much funding as ever, but some of the people who today are seen as barron's -- barons started off with a

pretty defined journalistic crusade in their mind, and most of the time in their own minds, it was progressive. i think that the dollars are more available than ever for people with an agenda, but the ability to spot the quality voices is a little bit harder now that they are so numerous. >> there will always be a market for investigative journalism. i do not know that it is the type of financial journalism that was referred to before, but i think that there will always be people willing to also spend the time to listen to that type of reporting or even to read it online. there is no doubt that investigative journalism will continue to flourish