Testing testing  -

My top watchdog story to date is an October 2006 cover story in the Cleveland Free Times about disturbing evidence for what appears to be an EPA coverup of dangerous levels of radioactivity from secretly dumped Cold War weapons waste leaking into the water supply at a Superfund landfill site in Uniontown, Ohio. See:

http://www.freetimes.com/stories/14/25/buried-secrets

Dear friends,

David Cohn here from Spot.us.

I am beside myself and ecstatic to let you know that we have successfully fundraised $2,500 that will be used to hire reporters who will fact-check the political advertisements for the upcoming SF election. WE DID IT!!!!

House cleaning: The content produced will most likely run at Newsdesk.org, Public-Press.org and blog.spot.us.

Our colleague Tom Murphy, over at RedwoodAge.com, picked up an AP story the other day: "Soft economy speeds newspaper decline, job cuts." McClatchy, owner of the Bees in California, is among the chains leading the cutbacks, with the Sacramento Bee offering buyouts to a majority of its full-time employees. While it's true that, as the AP points out, "Newspaper executives are cutting operating costs even further because advertising revenue has fallen faster than anyone anticipated," there's another element in the mix: Most of these major cutbacks are coming from large newspaper chains, which have borrowed billions from private and public equity markets to finance recent newspaper conglomerations that they claimed would help put the industry back on firm financial footing.

Update on the political ad fact-checking project, a Public Press collaboration with Newsdesk.org:

As of Aug. 24 we have raised 89 percent of the $2,500 goal, courtesy of David Cohn's experimental "crowdfunding" tool, Spot.us.

We're already working with two reporters who have started researching ballot initiatives and candidacies on the Nov. 4 election in San Francisco. The goal is to scrutinize claims from all sides of these political contests, research where the money is coming from and hold the partisans to account.

We need 12 more people to donate $25 each to make the project happen. An article in the New York Times Week in Review section this morning that highlighted the project will no doubt help. If you haven't given to the project, please do!

The collaboration with Spot.us is only a piece of the funding puzzle for a startup news organization. Please also consider giving directly to the Public Press (select us from the project dropdown list under "Please direct my contribution to"). Your donation is 100 percent tax-deductible.

San Francisco free-speech poster child Josh Wolf, who was alternately defended and attacked as an "anarchist and activist" for refusing to disgorge to the authorities his video of a protest -- and paid the price by serving 226 days in federal prison in 2006 -- is now a "real" journalist, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.

Where else will people find the solid reporting on events near and far that no other outlet creates?

By Leigh Donaldson

Recently, the American Society of Newspaper Editors reported that about 2,400 full-time newspaper-related jobs were lost in 2007, considered the largest annual drop in 30 years. You don't have to be in the journalism business to see this as a troubling trend.

Two interesting postings from journalists, expressing outrage at the destructive effects of corporate consolidation in the newspaper industry:

The Public Press is gearing up to compete in the Knight News Challenge this year. The $5 million award from the Knight Foundation goes to a handful of projects deemed by the judges to be innovative uses of technology for the fulfillment of the unmet information needs of society.

This year the foundation opened up what it's calling the "garage," a Web space where applicants, thinkers, critics and dreamers can post preliminary ideas and debate them in public. Check out our page and leave some comments for the Public Press project and others.

The controversy concerning layoffs of Northern California Media Workers Guild leaders at the Contra Costa Times we posted about in July has resulted in an online petition calling for fair labor practices, with the intention of presenting it to management of the Bay Area News Group on Wednesday.

According to the petition, 20 of the 29 employees laid off at the Times were highly active in union organizing, including Sara Steffens, who was chosen to negotiate the new union's contract.

The layoffs are under review by the National Labor Relations Board.

We were saddened to learn late last week that the San Francisco Chronicle again is pursuing another round of staff reductions, seeking to eliminate 125 jobs through buyouts.

Carl Hall, the eternal curmudgeon (we love you, Carl!) at the Northern California Media Workers Guild, told SF Weekly that "It looks like the end for print journalism." We're not so sure about that. It is true that the advertising market has tanked with the advent of Craigslist and Monster. It's also true that for national and international news, there are a surfeit of online alternatives to the newspaper. But we continue to believe that there's a hunger out there for quality, timely and accurate news about the local community. We also believe that many people are willing to pay for a printed product because it is more portable, affordable and easy on the eye than any existing digital medium.

The Public Press is actively seeking volunteers to help us shape the editorial agenda for a new news service in San Francisco focused on public policy, social trends and consumer education. If you're an experienced journalist who wants to be part of a conversation about creating something new, instead of dismantling something old, we'd love to have your help.

Apparently, under the terms of the buyouts at the Chronicle, staffers get at least four weeks' pay -- and two weeks' pay for every year of service. We'd love those journalists to consider working with us on a volunteer basis during the transition time. Right now we can't afford to pay. But we hope to have a budget for staff within the next 12 months. In the meantime, get involved in our brainstorming and skill sharing! E-mail us: volunteer (AT) public-press (DOT) org.