After hearing arguments on SF Weekly's three motions for summary judgment, Superior Court Judge Richard A. Kramer ruled Thursday that the San Francisco Bay Guardian's predatory pricing lawsuit against the Weekly and Village Voice Media can go to trial. The jury trial is now scheduled to begin in January. Read more from the Weekly and the Bay Guardian.
A few weeks back, we noted that the San Francisco Bay Guardian had joined a number of Bay Area groups in the investigative project to continue the slain journalist's work. But there was one glaring omission from the list of participating organizations: The East Bay Express, which five years ago investigated the group Bailey was writing about and whose staffers suffered death threats because of it, was not included. "It's definitely odd that the one newspaper that owned the story of Your Black Muslim Bakery wasn't invited to participate in this project until after it was formally announced," Express editor Stephen Buel tells SF Weekly. Buel says he'd heard that one of the news outlets in the Bailey Project had a beef with his paper, but that a project organizer recently assured him that it was not an intentional snub and invited the Express to participate. The paper has declined the belated invitation, and will continue to pursue the story on its own.
"I didn't want to end up the creepy 40-year-old taking notes in the corner of The Casbah," Troy Johnson tells KPBS. "It's a crisis in music journalism that I wanted no part of -- the aging rock critic who never goes out except to 'marquee shows,' but occupies space as a music editor because that's all they know." Johnson, who has been with CityBeat for five years, will be the new senior editor at the glossy RIVIERA magazine. "There's a lot to miss about CityBeat," he says. "That's a small paper built on chewing gum, bailing wire and severely passionate, severely talented, severely underpaid editors and writers."
The San Francisco Bay Guardian has signed on to the Chauncey Bailey Project, which will continue the investigative reporting the Oakland Post editor was pursuing when he was murdered a few months ago, Editor & Publisher reports. More than two dozen Bay Area journalists and organizations are taking part. "A group of us agreed to put aside competitive rivalries and work together to send a crucial message: that you can't kill a journalist with impunity," Guardian executive editor Tim Redmond tells AAN News. "The combined weight and resources of our community will come down on you and push until all the facts are out and everyone involved has been brought to justice."
The San Francisco Bay Guardian's G.W. Schulz won "the coveted Public Service award" for his coverage of MediaNews Group's purchase of nearly all Bay Area daily newspapers. SPJ's panel of judges noted that the Bay Guardian "demonstrated by example the value of diversity in news media ownership." Eliza Strickland's examination of questionable practices at an expensive cooking school and how California has failed to regulate for-profit schools for SF Weekly won for investigative reporting, while East Bay Express' Kara Platoni took home the award for feature writing for her piece on gun violence and gun availability. The Society of Professional Journalists' Northern California Chapter will honor the winners at a Nov. 8 dinner.
"I can't lie to you -- this business is a struggle," CityBeat editor Dave Rolland writes. "Whereas we're dying to get into the neighborhood of 72 to 80 pages each week, we're still slogging along at 48 or 52." Looking back on the reasons behind the paper's Aug. 21, 2002, launch, Rolland writes: "There was no publication that represented the city's politically progressive population, no publication that focused on street-level arts and culture and no publication that told stories with lively, conversational flair. It's in these three areas that I believe CityBeat has done its job particularly well."
In its annual list of 10 newspapers that "do it right," E&P has singled out the San Francisco Bay Guardian as "the archetype of the politically involved, locally focused alternative newspaper that's an alert and occasionally rabid watchdog." Editor/publisher Bruce Brugmann tells E&P that he worries that he and his wife and Bay Guardian co-founder Jean Dibble "are almost anachronisms" in today's media environment, with their brand of crusading alt-journalism. "Every good newspaper man ought to be controversial," Brugmann says.
Writing for the defendant newspaper and its parent company, Village Voice Media, Will Harper reports that the Weekly said it sold ads below cost for "pro-competitive" reasons like generating new sales and "increas(ing) the customer base in a severely depressed market." VVM's motion, which was filed last week in response to the Bay Guardian's Oct. 2004 lawsuit, also asserted that the newspaper chain never engaged in a conspiracy to put its Bay Area competitor out of business. And in a unique counter-argument, the Weekly claimed that by filing suit, the Bay Guardian is trying to force it to reduce editorial expenses in order to adhere to a business model that relies heavily on freelancers and unpaid interns, instead of full-time reporters. THE BAY GUARDIAN'S REPORT: Judge advises attorneys to prepare for October trial even as summary-judgment motion is filed.
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