Bob Kittle, editorial page editor of the San Diego Union-Tribune, claims he had never seen the 10-month-old AAN paper when he learned CityBeat Editor David Rolland would be appearing on a local NPR "Editor's Roundtable" alongside him. Directed to CityBeat’s Web site, Kittle was shocked to find profanity -- so shocked, in fact, that he tried unsuccessfully to get Rolland kicked off the radio program, on which Kittle is a regular pundit. "CityBeat is not journalism. It’s trash," Kittle wrote in a letter to radio station KPBS. In this week’s CityBeat, Rolland responds that Kittle’s real intent was to "limit the range of debate" in San Diego, which he says, "has been too narrow ... for too long."
On Oct. 3, New Times published a short news article about the lewd behavior conviction of Kevin Graves, a producer and television personality at KSBY-TV in San Luis Obispo. The conviction, handed down seven months earlier, never made it into the news until it appeared in New Times. Graves is married to Sharon Graves, a popular weather forecaster on the same station. When the New Times story broke, Sharon Graves abruptly quit her job and left SLO County with her husband and children. The public response to the family's sudden departure was overwhelming, with most callers and letter writers decrying New Times decision to publish the story. In this week's issue, New Times asks several journalists and local personalities: Was the furor the downside to aggressive journalism in a small community? Or was it a case of a newspaper publishing something that should rightfully have remained a secret in the interests of individual privacy?
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.
