American Dispatch

Peter-Astrid Kane is a freelance journalist and communications manager at S.F. Pride. Their work has appeared in the Guardian, 48Hills, the S.F. Bay Times, the S.F. Examiner, SFGate, The Infatuation and the San Francisco Chronicle, among other outlets. From 2015 to 2019, Peter-Astrid worked for SF Weekly, ultimately becoming its editor. On Sept. 14, in response to the news that SF Weekly would be shutting down for an “indefinite hiatus,” Peter-Astrid wrote a farewell column for 48Hills about SF Weekly's legacy and what it was like to be the leader of a newsroom where resources kept dwindling every year. Here's a great paragraph towards the end of the piece that reflects on Peter-Astrid's time there: I got to eat very well for a number of years, and these are the anecdotes I'll be dining out on forever. Above all else, I am proud of what my colleagues and I accomplished during the last phase of maddening foreshadow, a full quarter-century since Craigslist started chipping away at the business model's viability. Back then, I think there was even an assistant calendar editor, a luxury as unfathomable now as a newspaper erecting its own Art Deco mid-rise, or staples. Peter-Astrid gave a shoutout to Nuala Bishari of the S.F. Public Press and a fellow at ProPublica. They also mentioned Chris Roberts, a New York-based freelance journalist. Please follow them and read their work!

Kristen Hare is the editor of Locally, a project at Poynter that chronicles the challenges that newsrooms continue to face during the pandemic. She also works at the Tampa Bay Times as an obituary writer. Her work at Poynter has been crucial in understanding the scope of Covid's effect on newspapers. Since the beginning of the pandemic, more than 85 newspapers have shuttered, and many more have had to make layoffs, a story that Kristen has closely followed for a year and a half now. Before joining Poynter in 2013, Kristen was a reporter with the St. Louis Beacon and the St. Joseph News-Press in Missouri. After receiving her degree in journalism at the University of Missouri-Columbia, Kristen spent two years with the Peace Corps in South America. Please subscribe to Local Edition, a newsletter from Kristen that features the latest developments in the local news industry. Kristen gave shoutouts to Richland Source in Ohio and Candice Fortman and Sarah Alvarez of Outlier Media in Detroit. Please follow and support these journalists/newsrooms!

Annie Gaus is the founder and editor of Public Comment SF, an online news startup launched in October 2020 that offers coverage of the city's economy and policy matters. In May, Annie's site merged with Here/Say Media, another online local news startup that started at the beginning of this year. She is currently a News Lead at Here/Say. Annie started her career as a video journalist and much of her reporting has focused on the tech industry. Her work can be found in the San Francisco Business Times, the Guardian, VICE, The Daily Beast and Bisnow. Annie gave a shoutout to ProPublica, a nonprofit news outlet that started in 2007 and has since grown to become a successful model for deeply reported investigative journalism. Donate to them here. (Two notes about this episode. First, there were technical difficulties with my microphone so I had to resort to using my iPhone for recording my voice. Apologies for the slight decrease in audio quality. Second, this episode was recorded in June, right when ProPublica released an extensive series on leaked IRS reports showing how billionaires avoid paying certain taxes. I make mention of the article and urge you to read it, too!)

Victor Pickard is a professor of media policy and political economy at the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg School for Communication. He is also the co-director of the university's Media, Inequality and Change center. He has been writing about the crisis facing journalism for over a decade and recently published a book titled, “Democracy Without Journalism?: Confronting the Misinformation Society.” Along with his colleague Timothy Neff, Victor recently published an article in the Columbia Journalism Review about the lack of funding the American government has traditionally offered publicly funded media (the topic of this episode). Victor previously taught at NYU and the University of Virginia, and has worked in Washington D.C. for various media reform organizations and think tanks. Victor offered a shoutout to the Independent Media Center, a global network of activist journalists that launched in 1999. Their slogan is: "Don't Hate the Media, Become the Media!" (Their website is currently under construction. You can follow them on Twitter here.)

Jacob Simas is the managing editor of The Oaklandside, an online news startup that launched in June 2020 and is overseen by Cityside, a nonprofit media organization whose portfolio also includes the online publication Berkeleyside. To support The Oaklandside, click here. Jacob's career started in community non-profits, where as a counselor and later a program director of Horizons Unlimited, he helped organize violence prevention and arts programs for Latino youth in San Francisco. He later went on to work at New American Media, where he led a community news network called YouthWire, which helped amplify student and youth reporting in California's news deserts. He then went on to work at Univision, where he established Rise Up: Be Heard, a journalism training program for youth and community organizers in underserved areas of California, with an emphasis on rural regions. Jacob received his bachelor's degree in sociology from UC Berkeley and later graduated from the university's journalism school. Jacob gave shoutouts to three awesome Bay Area news outlets: 1 - El Tímpano: a “local reporting lab” that serves Spanish-speaking residents in Oakland. Support them here and follow them on Twitter here. 2 - Richmond Pulse: a community-based, youth-led online and print newspaper that covers the East Bay town of Richmond. Support them here and follow them on Twitter here. 3 - El Tecolote: a bilingual newspaper in San Francisco based out of the city's Mission District. Support them here and follow them on Twitter here.

Lily Jamali is a co-host of the California Report at KQED. The radio show covers a variety of topics about California, including the economy, immigration and education. While at KQED, Lily has covered the utility company PG&E, which announced bankruptcy at the beginning of 2019 after being found responsible for causing wildfires in the state. In May, Lily released an investigation about PG&E's Fire Victim Trust, which was set up to help those affected by fires over the years. Lily found that much of the money was going to overhead costs like paying lawyers, and a very small amount was going to victims. (Lawmakers are now seeking a probe into the trust.) Before joining KQED, Lily was an anchor for Bloomberg Markets in Canada and a reporter and producer for Reuters TV. She's also worked for TV stations in New York and Northern California. Lily is a graduate of UCLA, and she eventually went on to obtain her master's degree in journalism at Colombia, as well as an M.B.A. in finance from NYU. Lily gave shoutouts to Robin Epley, who came onto the podcast in May, Adriene Hill from NPR's California Newsroom and Aaron Glantz, also from NPR. Note: Lily was gracious enough to record her voice while she was in a car during a heatwave! About 20 minutes into the episode, she had to switch recording devices, so you'll hear a noticeable difference in the sound at that point.

Meira Gebel is a freelance journalist based in Portland, Oregon who writes about culture, business and technology. On May 27, Meira published an article for Business Insider that looked at how journalism schools were not preparing their students for the challenges facing the industry, specifically freelancing, which Meira argues journalism schools need to build a stronger curriculum around. In addition to her work at Business Insider, Meira's reporting can be found in Digital Trends, the Willamette Week, USA Today, the Detroit Free Press and other outlets. She's a graduate of San Francisco State University as well as Columbia Journalism School. Follow Meira on Twitter here. And check out her reporting here. Meira gave a shoutout to a bunch of folks/pages/outlets, including Clara McMichael, Marsha McLeod, Abby Lee Hood, Sonia Weiser, Missed Pitches, Study Hall and The Objective. Meira also runs a Twitter list of “freelance writers, editors, and journalists whose work I deeply admire” that you can check out here.

Robin Epley is the editor of the Fort Bragg Advocate-News and the Mendocino Beacon and previously worked as a staff reporter for the Chico Enterprise-Record. In 2019, while on staff at the Chico paper, Robin and her fellow reporters were finalists for the Pulitzer Prize in Breaking News Reporting for their coverage of the 2018 Camp Fire, the most destructive and deadly wildfire in California history. Robin was also the creator of a podcast for the Chico-Enterprise Record called “Inhaled,” a five-part investigative series about the health problems caused by the state's wildfires. In addition to her duties as editor of two newspapers, Robin is also the host of The Future of Journalism, a podcast that digs into the challenges that young journalists face during the first 10 years of their career. Click here to subscribe to the Fort Bragg Advocate-News and click here to subscribe to the Mendocino Beacon. And subscribe to The Future of Journalism on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Robin gave a shoutout to three great Bay Area journalists: Natalie Hanson at the Chico Enterprise-Record, Lily Jamali at KQED and Lizzie Johnson at the San Francisco Chronicle.

Geoffrey King is the president and CEO of Open Vallejo, a startup, nonprofit online news site that publishes longform investigations about police and government misconduct in the city of Vallejo, California. An investigative report by Geoffrey for Open Vallejo published in July 2020 about the city's police officers bending their badges to commemorate fatal shootings went viral, causing a major scandal and a subsequent third-party investigation of the police department. Geoffrey is a native of Vallejo and went to UC Berkeley for undergrad. He then went on to Stanford Law School. As a litigator, he's represented journalists, activists and artists. He's been a member of multiple press freedom and reporting organizations, including the Committee to Protect Journalists and the Northern California Society of Professional Journalists, where he co-chaired the group's Freedom of Information Committee. In addition to his duties at Open Vallejo, Geoffrey also teaches privacy law at UC Berkeley. Click here to support Open Vallejo's work. And click here to watch Geoffrey's recent interview with CNN's W. Kamau Bell. Geoffrey's shoutouts were to The Monterey County Herald, the Half Moon Bay Review, and the Shasta Scout. He also gave shoutouts to individual reporters, including John Glidden, Scott Morris and Otis R. Taylor Jr. (Geoffrey also mentioned Oaklandside and Berkeleyside, which have both been mentioned on this podcast before.) (You may notice this episode is a little longer than the others, which are usually around ~45 minutes. I did my best to edit this episode. But I thought the conversation was too good to cut out extensive portions of it. Enjoy!)

Lydia Chavez is the founder and executive editor of Mission Local, a hyperlocal and bilingual news site that covers the Mission District in San Francisco. Lydia was born and raised in Albuquerque and her first reporting job after graduating from Columbia's Journalism School was with The Albuquerque Tribune (now closed). She then went on to work at TIME Magazine, the Los Angeles Times and The New York Times. In 1990, Lydia started working at UC Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism, which was where Mission Local originally was founded as a project in 2008. In 2014, Mission Local became independent. The outlet publishes articles about city corruption, police misconduct, and, more recently, how the coronavirus is affecting the Mission District majority Latino population. To donate to Mission Local, click here. To read some of their most recent (and very excellent) investigative work, check out their most recent stories, “Special Report: Structural engineers' warnings over city's mandatory retrofits have gone unheeded for years,” and “Special Report: ‘It could become a San Bruno' — the explosive problem buried beneath San Francisco homes,” both published by Joe Eskenazi. Lydia's shoutout was to some great Bay Area outlets that haven't been mentioned yet on the podcast, Cityside, a local journalism nonprofit that oversees two great hyperlocal outlets, Oaklandside and Berkeleyside. Lydia also gave a shoutout to Open Vallejo, a nonprofit newsroom that covers police misconduct.

Thomas Peele is a Bay Area-based investigative reporter who has been working in the industry since 1983. For 20 years, he worked at the Bay Area News Group, where he was part of the team that won the 2017 Pulitzer Prize in Breaking News Reporting about the Ghost Ship warehouse fire in Oakland. Thomas is the author of Killing the Messenger, a book about the 2007 murder of Oakland journalist Chauncey Bailey. Thomas was also the lead reporter for the Chauncey Bailey Project, where a collaborative group of reporters investigated who was behind the murder of Chauncey. Thomas is currently an investigative reporter for EdSource, a nonprofit news outlet that covers education in California. He is also a lecturer at UC Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism. To read Thomas's work, click here. And to follow him on Twitter, click here. Thomas's shoutout is to David DeBolt, a reporter for the San Jose Mercury News and the East Bay Times who shared the 2017 Pulitzer Prize with Thomas. To read David's work, click here. To follow him on Twitter, click here. Note: When I interviewed Thomas Peele for this episode, Tribune Publishing, a newspaper chain that owns the Chicago Tribune and the Baltimore Sun, had reached a deal to be purchased by Alden Global Capital. It's a New York-based hedge fund that is notorious for destroying local newspapers by buying them up, selling off their assets and cutting reporting jobs. Then, in mid-March, it was reported that a Maryland hotel executive and Swiss billionaire were also interested in the purchase, potentially saving the newspaper chain from Alden. On April 4, the hotel executive and billionaire made a better offer than Alden to buy Tribune Publishing. The final buyer has yet to be announced. To learn more, click here.

Hana Baba is a longtime, award-winning radio journalist in the Bay Area. She is currently the host of “Crosscurrents,” a daily radio show on KALW Radio. In addition to her role at KALW, Hana is the co-host of another show, a podcast called The Stoop, where she and Leila Day discuss stories from across the Black diaspora. I met Hana back in 2017 when I interned with KALW during the summer. Hana later met with our student newspaper when I was editor-in-chief of the San Francisco Foghorn. I was struck by how she approached community journalism, representation in newsrooms, and how the coverage of a community can affect the larger narrative about that group. In this episode, we discuss those themes, as well as the vexing problem of diversifying journalism talent while local/regional news outlets suffer financially. To listen to KALW, click here. To donate, click here. To subscribe to The Stoop, click here. Hana's shoutout was El Tecolote, a fantastic bilingual, biweekly newspaper that covers San Francisco's Mission District. To read El Tecolote, click here. To donate, click here. To learn more about the American Dispatch Podcast, go to amdipodcast.substack.com.

Tim Redmond is a political and investigative reporter in San Francisco who has been in the muckraking business for close to 40 years. He's currently editor of 48Hills, an online, progressive, non-profit news outlet based out of San Francisco that offers breaking news, investigative reporting and arts and culture pieces. In addition to his duties at 48Hills, Tim teaches undergraduate journalism at the University of San Francisco as well as a class for the School of Arts in Urban and Public Affairs program. In this episode, we speak about how Tim got into journalism, the basics of the local news crisis, who is to blame for the crisis, why it is important that local news outlets exist in the first place and why Tim does this kind of work. The idea was for this episode to serve as an introduction so that listeners of this podcast could start wrapping their heads around the issue at hand. Click here to support Tim and his work at 48Hills. Here are Tim's shoutouts: El Tecolote - a bilingual newspaper covering San Francisco's Mission District Mission Local - an online news outlet covering the Mission (and the rest of the city) Berkeleyside - an online news outlet covering Berkeley Joe Fitzgerald Rodriguez - a reporter and producer at KQED To learn more about the American Dispatch Podcast, go to amdipodcast.substack.com.

As a young boy 20 years ago, I landed on page two of the Sharon Advocate, the local newspaper in my hometown of 18,000 people in Sharon, Massachusetts. Sadly, that newspaper is now a shell of what it once was. Its story is like many other local/regional news outlets in the United States. Since 2004, close to 2,000 newspapers in the United States have shuttered. Local radio stations and television stations are also suffering. Thousands of journalists have lost their jobs. We are now facing "news deserts" in this country, where entire counties don't have a newspaper. The American Dispatch Podcast is a chance to discuss the crisis of local and regional journalism. I'll be interviewing local journalists and media figures from across the country to dive deep into understanding the roots of the problem and what can be done about it. This podcast is also a chance to highlight the important work that local reporters are doing and drive either subscriptions/donations to their website/newspaper/podcast/etc. Going forward, you can expect to find links to the work of the individuals I interview. For more information about the podcast, visit amdi.substack.com. ### Thank you to David Renda and Kevin MacLeod for the royalty-free music.