We just got our issue of Quill Magazine and are tickled pink to see the write-up for our friends at NewsDesk.org for their award winning coverage “A Toxic Tour of the Bay.”

Our friend Amy Gahran chronicled how this project came to fruition. You can see the entire project at NewsDesk.org or Spot.Us.

From Quill:

The project incorporates text articles, video, audio and picture slide shows to show in stark detail that ship pollution from the port has health consequences for local residents. But as the presentation showed, local regulations are mostly ineffective against vessels governed by international maritime law.

…
More than just a multimedia journalism venture, the work of Komenich, Booth and Wilson is notable for its truly grassroots effort — from the appeal of the content to the way it was funded. By using Spot.Us, a Knight Foundation News Challenge project pioneering and enabling crowd-funded journalism, Newsdesk.org raised nearly $1,800 to cover the project’s expenses — including hiring freelancers Komenich and Booth.

Spot.Us is honored to play our part. But the real kudos goes to NewsDesk.org, Kwan Booth and Kim Komenich. Our hat is off!

Crowdfunding in the Spot.Us way includes many features that are radically new in journalism.

Pitching in public is one of them. In the traditional journalistic process journalists pitch to editors, not to readers.

According to my study, the Spot.Us reporters find pitching in public intriguing, yet challenging in many ways. One of the reporters describes his experience with pitching in public:

“I don’t like pitching in public. Yeah, hell, it is scary to pitch in public. I didn’t reveal everything in the pitch – I know more than I wrote in the pitch, and have learnt more too since the pitch was published.”

The reporters are concerned about exposing their story in public because there is a risk that a competitor might use their idea. Investigative reporters identify the risk that the publicity might affect their sources, and the actions of the people the reporters are investigating.

However, the reporters think experimenting with the new level of transparency and publicity is worth it.

“If this story was easy to cover, somebody would have done it already. You need to have the experience and resources to do this story. And if I don’t try crowdfunding now, when will I try it?”, one reporter says.

I have interviewed Spot.Us reporters and donors for my study about crowdfunding in journalism. The study is a part of my Ph.D. project, in which I’m studying collective intelligence in journalism. More about my findings on the PBS MediaShift, and a SlideShare presentation based on my paper here.

Yesterday students, teachers, and labor unions joined in protest across California. From San Diego to Sacramento the message was clear – public education is an important public good and tuition hikes and budget cuts threaten that. No doubt you probably knew about the day of protest already. Almost everyone in California is touched in some way, shape or form by the public education system. A system that used to be described as a crown jewel of public education.

Peter Byrne continues his investigation into the regents financial holdings and what, if any, overlap they might have with the UC investments. He hopes to be done with his reporting by the end of the month. The media was certainly out in force covering the protest, but few are asking the tough questions. At Spot.Us we are proud to be supporting Peter as he goes beyond media hype and easy coverage of this issue. We hope you join us in supporting his work. Every small contribution helps.

Meanwhile: Spot.Us has collected some other coverage of the protests from around the state. Enjoy the articles below along with YouTube clips and photos.

David Cohn was at the Civic Center protest and grabbed some photos and video.

And nine short YouTube videos

UC Santa Cruz Protest Draws Nearly 1,000 Students – Neon Tommy
blogs.uscannenberg.org
The largest on campus protest was probably at UCSC which virtually shut down the school with 1,000 students. By noon, a large rally formed with students yelling “Student Power!” (YouTube).

March along Telegraph – a set on Flickr
flickr.com
A Flickr set of photos of the march along Telegraph Ave

From Santa Barbara
thedailysound.com
The rally and march, dubbed March Forth on March 4, began at noon at UC Santa Barbara, where about 400 students railed against state budget cuts that have resulted in 32 percent hike in student fees. From there, four bus loads of university students were taken to De la Guerra Plaza, where they joined with hundreds of students and teachers in the Santa Barbara School Districts for a march up State Street to the Santa Barbara County Courthouse Sunken Gardens

UC Berkeley Blackout Protest

YouTube
A look at racial issues tied to the UC protests.

Education Crisis: Behind the March 4 Day of Action
oaklandlocal.com
California spends $2,400 less per student than the national average and ranks 47th in per-pupil expenditures compared with other states, according to the Oakland Unified School District’s Every Student Blog. The state also ranks at the bottom of barrel for staff-to-student ratios. According to the blog, California cut money for education by $18 billion for 2008-09 and the first half of the current school year. As a result, each classroom has lost about $11,750.

UC Irvine March 4 Protest 3

YouTube
Students block traffic at the intersection of Campus and University.

KALW News Erica Mu gives a blow by blow on her blog.

Cal Students Rally to “Educate the State” on Day of Action

YouTube
From Youth Radio: UC Berkeley students, their parents, faculty, and labor unions rallied and marched from Berkeley to Oakland as part of a statewide Day of Action protesting fee hikes and budget cuts in state educat.

Protests Spotlight UC Fee Woes

YouTube
“There is not an atmosphere of cooperation with the legislation because there is an aura of secrecy within the UC system” Senator Leland Yee – at 1:10 into the video.

From the AP: Millions Protest Education Cuts in California

YouTube
Millions rallied across California to protest deep spending cuts to schools and universities. Demonstrations, marches, teach-ins and walkouts were planned in what was called the “March 4th National…

Shutting down 880
SFGate.com
More than 150 protesters were arrested on Interstate 880 in Oakland after using an exit ramp to walk onto the freeway and shut it down for nearly an hour. Many wore black, identified themselves as anarchists and carried a banner that read, “Occupy everything.”

In San Diego
San Diego Union Tribune
At San Diego State University, the University of California San Diego and other campuses, students, faculty and staff members banded together in anger over the budget upheaval, saying it undercuts the state’s 50-year-old promise to provide students with an affordable, quality education.

Lesson in SF grade schools: protest education cuts
sfpublicpress.org
Many students intending to begin the protest early were initially going to do so as a school-organized field trip, with fellow students and teachers, until the superintendent’s office issued a memo Friday banning field trips to the march, citing of safety concerns. “The notice came out on the 26th, very late in the organizing, and since then we have had a lot more families come on board to be part of the march,” said Adrienne Johnstone, a teacher at San Francisco Community School. She said many families were “coming to take their kids out of school early.”

NPR station KPCC in Los Angeles reports:
scpr.org
Audio interview with the following guests. Adolfo Guzman-Lopez, KPCC’s education reporter John Travis, Chair of California Faculty Association’s political action committee, Professor of Political Science at Humboldt State Issamar Camacho, By All Means Necessary (BAMN) Organizer at UC Berkeley, at UCLA today Joaquin Beltran, Associated Students President at Cal State Los Angeles. He will also be emcee of the Pershing square rally at 5pm. Steve Boilard, Director, Higher Education in the California Legislative Analyst’s Office Jack Scott, Chancellor, California Community Colleges H.D. Palmer, Deputy Director of External Affairs, California Department of Finance

UCSC protesters stream toward downtown Santa Cruz again…
San Jose Mercury News
The protest at UCSC continues.

Protest outside my office – UC Berkeley

YouTube
Video of the UC Berkeley Protest – March 4th, set to calm music

Icing American Apparel from Patrick Burke on Vimeo.

The LA Times has taken notice of the piece produced by The LA Garment and Citizen that we collectively funded.

“A newspaper asks whether taxes are applied to golf courses in a fair way.”

The LA Times piece gives us a bit of insight into how Jerry Sullivan and our reporter Benjamin Mark Cole approached the topic.

The most important part of the article, however, is this statement: “Thanks to the Garment & Citizen, Auerbach has now referred the matter to the State Board of Equalization for review.”

The story we funded could have a real impact. And that’s the power of journalism and why it’s so important that we continue to fund meaningful reporting. I think we all, including our reporters, deserve a pat on the back. This story has wings and could make an impact.

I hope more of our original reporting, like our current investigation in the UC Regents could have similar impact.

Updates from stories in progress.

Interview with a desperate family. Reporting by Patrick Burke part of the American Apparel story.

These sisters both worked in American Apparel’s sewing department before the I-9 audit.  Now they’re looking for work and hoping for a way to avoid catastrophe for their family.  I conducted this interview, with translation help from Natalia Garcia, on 11/18/09.  Today, the 19th, I’m told that American Apparel CEO Dov Charney will be helping the Perez family, at least with this month’s rent.

A Desperate Family from Patrick Burke on Vimeo.

More than just a number: Theresa Rutheford – Part of the SF Public Press’ look into “SF city downsizing slashing worker’s paychecks.”

Supes will vote whether to restore funding for pink slipped workers next Tuesday.  Theresa Rutheford, a CNA at Laguna Honda, talked about how the cuts would effect her.UpdateFinal by monica.jensen

Inside the Alameda Courts: Day two. Part of the Crime Courts and Communities investigation with KALW. (Also see Day One).

Stanford law professor Robert Weisberg added another perspective on jury selection. He said that an experienced lawyer who tries the same types of cases will over time, start to come up with profiles of ideal jurors. Prosecutors, who are particularly prone to specialize, are great at this, he said. Weisberg added that in high-stakes, well-funded cases like lawsuits against big businesses, a defense attorney might even hire a jury consultant to research demographics. But ultimately, “lawyers know that there are a certain number of people that they won’t be able to get out of a jury,” he said. “That’s when they start using their questioning not to expose a bias in the juror, but to start to seduce the jurors into their way of thinking.”

New Jails, No Treatment, in California Prison Plan

With his first proposal rejected by a federal court, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger last week submitted a new, 130-page plan to cut California prisons’ inmate population by 42,000 in two years.

The proposal (PDF) would build new prisons and transfer inmates out of state, but comes amid a hefty budgetary slash to drug treatment programs that lawmakers had previously identified as an effective way of in keeping people out of prison.

Published: Parent and community groups fight uphill battle to reform public school food.

Tavon Frazier is a skinny 9-year-old squirming in front of his Styrofoam lunch tray. He’s eaten most of his chicken taco and his friends, all wearing the navy polo shirts of East Oakland’s Korematsu Discovery Academy, are wiggling around him, chewing on their flour tortillas and nibbling on baby carrots. Tavon didn’t stop at the salad bar on his way to the cafeteria table today. He says sometimes he’ll get applesauce when they have it, but mostly he doesn’t like vegetables, especially broccoli and carrots. His ideal cafeteria meal would be “donuts and cupcakes and a cake,” he says with a mischievous sideways grin.

This comes to us from Rina Palta

Rina is reporting from the Alameda Courts for us. Follow along the next two weeks as she takes us inside the court system.

I remember visiting a courthouse once on a school field trip and a judge telling us, after annoyedly referencing both Perry Mason and Judge Judy, that “the court is nothing like you see on tv.” After day one in my two-week embed at Alameda County’s Superior Court, part of a series on the courts funded through Spot.us, I have to say that’s not entirely true.

Yes, most of the courthouse is surprisingly serene. The first floor is a little bustley with civilians milling about, waiting for their shot at jury duty. The rest of the building, including the court rooms, is pretty sparse. And at first glance, even the criminal jury trial rooms, like Department 8, Judge Vernon Nakahara’s chambers, are quiet, smallish, and lightly populated. But as the day wore on over in the criminal trials division, rhetoric flared, demonstrations ensued, and the courtroom started to live up to its dramatic grandeur.

On the docket today, People v. Christopher Evans. In April, 2001, Evans shot and killed Tina Rose, 28, and Tommy Lee Brown, 41, in her hair salon at 85th & E. 14th in Oakland. Rose’s brother had punched Evans in the head, moments earlier on the street, and a friend had handed Evans a gun. When Evans walked into the salon, waving the gun and apparently seeking revenge, Brown attempted to intervene. Evans shot him twice, then chased down Rose and shot her in the back of the head. This jury convicted Evans of a count each of first and second degree murder earlier this year. Now, they reconvened to discuss punishment–specifically, whether Evans will serve life without parole for his crimes, or be put to death.

Being on a jury in a criminal trial looks tough enough, but it’s hard to imagine being pulled in off the street (missing work the whole while) to sit through a gruesome, emotional, months-long legal tug of war, not be able to talk to anyone (including fellow jurors, your spouse, and even your therapist) about it, and then be asked, after all that, to sign off on an appropriate punishment–namely, whether or not to put a person that you’ve been staring at and talking about for months, whose 13-year-old child you’ve heard beg for his life, and whose victims’ families sit about 10 feet away from you, to death. The jury, 5 men and 7 women of various backgrounds, looked a little worn down.

The prosecutor, however, deputy District Attorney Michael Nieto seemed energized as he opened up the day’s arguments. Nieto spoke for about an hour, imploring the jury to do what he said was the right thing and the difficult thing, to sentence Evans to death. Nieto said that Evans had shown Rose no mercy when she begged him not to shoot her, that Evans hadn’t cared that Brown himself was a father when he took his life. Nieto flashed through pictures of the crime scene as he spoke, showing a particularly graphic panoramic of a blood-pooled hair salon and another photo, a close-up taken of Rose’s face just after she died.

Nieto said that as time passes and initial revulsion abates, victims of a crime like this fade and become historical characters, while the sympathy the public feels for them morphs and transfers to the criminal himself, who now appears vulnerable and pitiable. Nieto said that pity for the defendant was misplaced, and that the jury should choose death.

Evan’s lawyer, William DuBois (a prominent Oakland defense attorney who’s represented many a high profile defendant, including software engineer and convicted murderer Hans Reiser), took over after lunch, and began by instructing the jury that while it’s Nieto’s job as a prosecutor to do so, he was trying to manipulate them into unnecessarily killing another human being. While Nieto had spent his allotted time trying to ease the jury’s conscience by assuring them that the case against Evans was indisputable and the justification for death legally called-for, DuBois made it personal.

The government, DuBois said, is trying to “stone Chris Evans to death.” The members of the jury could cast the first stone, could “vote to kill Chris” or could vote for life, he said. Evans’ acts, Dubois said, were 26 seconds out of a then-27-year life, clouded by a concussion sustained when Rose’s brother hit him in the head–Evans defense had (unsuccessfully) centered around the idea that he still does not remember the murders he committed in a post-concussion haze. DuBois flashed images from a security camera outside of Rose’s salon. The pictures show Evans hit hard, and then staggering to stay upright for 40 seconds before entering the store with a gun. While Evans had taken Rose’s and Brown’s lives irrationally and spontaneously, DuBois told the jury, if they choose the death penalty, they will have taken a life deliberately, after discourse and rationalization and ultimately, unnecessarily.

In closing, DuBois referred to an 8.5 by 8.5 space he’d spent the last part of the lunch break measuring out. That’s the size of the cell Chris Evans will spend the rest of his life in if the jury sentences him to life without parole, DuBois said. He’ll get visits from his family at first, but they’ll taper off. Two iron slats and an hour of yard time per day will be his only connections to the outside world, until the day when a guard finds he hasn’t finished his meal tray, knocks on the cell door, and finds Evans dead inside.

“They’ll put him in a body bag, take him out, and he’ll be free,” DuBois said. “And that is enough.”

The jury went to deliberate with instructions from Judge Nakahara to weigh the aggravating and mitigating factors in the case for themselves. They’re expected back within the week.

Though listening in turn to Nieto and then DuBois made the decision to first execute, and then not, seem obvious, it’s clearly a ridiculously difficult and fraught task. Even Jessie Brown, mother of the Tommy Lee Brown, told me she didn’t know if Evans should get the death penalty for killing her son. Brown sat in the second row on the prosecution’s side of the courtroom, crying lightly for much of the afternoon. She said she’d been to every single day of the legal proceedings against Evans, save one.

“I just wanted him to be punished,” she said. “That’s all.”

One challenge that I often face during the reporting process is uncovering more information than I know what to do with. That was definitely the case with my recent sustainable school: what’s for lunch? story. While blogging has helped share my discoveries along the way, I still have a lot of data floating around that hasn’t seen the light of day.

Since the Revolution Foods contract at Santa Cruz City Schools has garnered the most attention and sparked a few questions from the community, I wanted to publish the full interview I conducted with Founder and CEO of Revolution Foods Kristin Richmond on August 6, 2009. Get an inside look at the company that hopes to take the Bay Area — and the rest of the country — by a storm with its healthy alternatives to processed school meals.

Kristin Richmond – CEO of Revolution Foods by SpotUs

Kristin Richmond (Photo courtesy of UC Berkeley's Haas School of Business)

August 9, 2009

Serena: Could you provide a brief overview of the daily routine at Revolution Foods in terms of how the food is prepared, packaged and shipped to local schools?

Kristin: Our kitchen opens at 3am and we’re working throughout the day. It’s a combination of prepping fresh and then heating the meals in the morning, and any time between 6 am and 11 am, trucks are going out the door to serve meals fresh in schools. And we’ve got a couple different formats depending on whether schools are right at our back door of whether they’re a little further away. One format is to deliver food fresh and hot to schools that are very close by. For schools a little further away, we do a cook, chill platform where we cook every thing fresh then chill it, not freeze it, but chill it then send it out to school sites who then heat it up on site. That’s a really high-quality platform. We have a really great partnership with Whole Foods and that’s similar to the platform they use for their prepared foods department. We offer family style, which is a bulk platform where you’d get a large serving that you would serve to students at the site, and we also offer individually packaged meals. But the trick with our individual packed meals that we’re really proud of is using all sustainable packaging so it’s all 100 percent compostable. We just want to make sure that if schools are opting for individually packaged food that we’re using a green, sustainable solution. We serve a really broad range of schools; we serve districts; we serve charter schools; we serve head start programs, and it totally depends on the format. The younger students often do family style while the older students like more grab-and-go individual service, but it depends on the structure of the school. If the school has a lot of food service workers who are able to scoop and serve the food, then family style is a lot more realistic than if they’re very thinly staffed.

You could have a meal prepped at 4 pm, chilled and then warmed up in the morning. You could have meals that are prepared at 3 am and sent out at 5 am. It really depends on the exact menu, but certainly there are several stages of prepping. There’s the actual grating the cheese and chopping the potatoes. That’s often happening the day before just because we have a lot of prep to do. We’re chopping herbs; we’re getting vinaigrettes ready. We make a homemade pico de gallo for our healthy grande burrito and that can be chopped and prepared the day before. So it kind of depends on the menu and the size of the operation.

Serena: What happens if there’s an accident on the freeway en route to a school district?

Kristin: We give ourselves plenty of time and it’s amazing to say that in four years we’ve never had major complications on that front. Obviously, we haven’t had any natural disasters in the past four years, knock on wood, but we give ourselves a lot of time. We have very experienced drivers. We’ve been doing this for a while. We look at our route planning very carefully. We don’t overload our trucks and our drivers to the point where they can’t get to where they need to go. Of course if there’s an accident or something, we might inform our schools and say ‘hey, we may be a couple of minutes late.’ But we deliver early enough so that we’re not infringing on lunchtime. We might be a little late for our delivery, but it’s not going to stop kids from eating. Districts have been really smooth since the day we started. We invest a lot of time and training into that.

Serena: I’ve talked to several food service directors who are trying to incorporate stricter health standards into their meal programs, but they face some major challenges. I’m wondering if you’ve run into similar issues upholding your requirements to serve rbST and hormone free milk, hormone and antibiotic free meat, no high fructose corn syrup and scratch-cooked food that is local and organic whenever possible. What are the main challenges? What advantages does Revolution Foods have over most local school districts in meeting these criteria?

Kristin: We always face challenges; I’ll be totally honest about that. It’s not easy. One of the biggest pieces that’s challenging for Revolution Foods is that we set out to serve all students. What I mean by that is a very broad economic spectrum and broad demographics. Santa Cruz is case in point. Their population is just around 40 to 50 percent free and reduced lunch. These districts and schools operate on incredibly tight budgets and we have to make our foods as affordable as possible while meeting our health standards, which we’re very proud of and committed to. I know for instance that we’ve used a ton of local produce in the last 30 days. We’ve used plums, pluots, white peaches all from the Growers Collaborative, but we’re also in the middle of summer. In the spring, fall and summer, it’s much easier to access local, organic fruit and produce than it is in January. You really have to have great partnerships like we do with the Grower’s Collaborative. We’ve had a partnership with them from day one and they know that when they have a product at a certain price we will buy it. So it’s about letting your suppliers know that when they have seasonal organic produce that can be at an affordable rate, you are there ready to buy as many units of white nectarines as possible. So I think the secret is really establishing those great partnerships and letting your suppliers know that they can take a risk to get more product in house because there’s a market for it. Revolution Foods is a bigger operation now — not big compared to a big school district but compared to a small school district — so we do have some economies of purchasing there that certainly help us out. As you grow, you’re able to access higher quality goods at lower prices typically. We have a track record of building these partnerships. We’ve always had this partnership with Whole Foods, which introduced us to local suppliers. A perfect example is Joan Diestel at Diestel Turkey Ranch, where we’ve been buying local turkeys. She knows the names of her turkeys. That’s how personally it’s grown. So suppliers that are willing to take a risk and say, ‘hey, I support this cause of getting healthy meals out to all our kids and really increasing the quality of school [food].’ And we try to reciprocate and say, ‘hey, we’re getting bigger and bigger and now this business is going to be better for you.’ So I would say we face a lot of the same challenges. We’ve also gotten good at what we do in terms of building those relationships and really telling the story of what we’re doing and why it’s so important.

Serena: Would you say that you also have more money to spend than most school districts?

Kristin: We face a lot of the same challenges. We face the same reimbursement rate caps. The fact that we’re trying to provide this incredibly high quality meal for a very low rate [is a challenge in itself]. Federal reimbursement rates just went up to 2.68 but CPI adjustment for California is like $2. So think about putting together an incredibly healthy meal, with the cost of labor, food and every thing, and that’s going to pose serious challenges for any one trying to do it. So we’re a slightly different entity but all in all, we run such a cost-conscious operation where we’re trying to put as much as we can into our food for our kids and I think we probably face a lot of the same challenges and struggles that traditional operations face.

(more…)