Veteran reporter Savannah Blackwell is among those whose jobs were eliminated. Several other workers had their hours cut. Executive Editor Tim Redmond blames the downsizing on "a brutal economy that the president isn't making any better and a very difficult national ad sales environment." REDMOND TELLS AAN: "The Chronicle and E&P stories weren't accurate; the number of layoffs was fewer than six."
Ron Curran (pictured), a "dogged, award- winning investigator and unblushing idealist" died this week in his Southern California home, according to his former employer, the LA Weekly. Curran, who left the Weekly after ten years to work at the San Francisco Bay Guardian, recently founded the alternative wire service, Pulp Syndicate. "Ron was one of the best writers and reporters I ever worked with," Bay Guardian Executive Editor Tim Redmond tells the Weekly.
The San Francisco Bay Guardian wins two first place awards in the National Newspaper Association's 2002 Better Newspaper Contest: Tali Woodward for Best Health Story, and Dan Zoll for Best Education/Literacy Story. Willy Stern of the Nashville Scene takes a first in Best Investigative or In-Depth Story or Series for his five-part dissection of The Tennessean.
The San Francisco Bay Guardian wrote its first article about PG&E's monopoly on power in the Bay area in 1969, not long after the paper was founded. The San Francisco Chronicle looks back on this "lone, frequently bombastic crusade to make the city establish the municipal power utility Congress intended" and how the daily papers in San Francisco have opposed public power. The article quotes Stephen Buel, editor of the East Bay Express, as saying, "The sad fact is that a lot of the Bay Guardian's criticisms of PG&E are very apt, but the way in which the paper hammers home its message makes it get lost because it is so mind-numbingly repetitive."
Annalee Newitz, culture editor of the San Francisco Bay Guardian, joins nine other reporters from around the world in the 2003-03 class of Knight Science Journalism Fellows. Newitz is also author of the syndicated column, "Techsploitation," which she describes as "rants about high tech media and everyday life." She founded the online publication Bad Subjects in 1992. In 1997 she co-edited "White Trash: Race and Class in America," a small-press best seller.
The San Francisco Bay Guardian expects to move into its own $4.7 million building sometime this month – where they will "never have to worry about an eviction … never have to worry about a bad landlord," says Executive Editor Tim Redmond. A 1950s era law banning SBA loans to media companies was repealed in 1994. Milwaukee’s Shepherd Express took advantage of the program in 1995. Now the Bay Guardian has swung a deal for a 30,000-square-foot building with a rooftop view of the Bay Bridge thanks to an SBA loan guarantee package.
Under a settlement with the city, Bay Area newspapers have agreed to let the city erect pedmounts in high-traffic areas. Problem is, a subsidiary of media conglomerate Clear Channel Communications will control those pedmounts, who gets to use them and what's advertised on the back. "The idea of giving Clear Channel exclusive control over newspaper distribution -- and ad space on the back of the news racks -- in the city is extremely troubling," the San Francisco Bay Guardian writes.
In an article penned by Executive Editor Tim Redmond, the 35-year-old weekly announces that it has "launched the first stage of a legal offensive to stop" its New Times-owned competitor "from engaging in anticompetitive business practices that may violate federal and state (antitrust) laws." Redmond also details a settled lawsuit in which the Bay Guardian charged a sales rep who had decided to jump ship with secretly downloading over 1,000 pages of sales records and providing them to her then-new employer, SF Weekly.
