Evaluating print and broadcast news in the San Francisco Bay Area from A to F.

Local media contacts

Let 'em know!

Most news operations in the Bay Area value what their customers think.

The link below will connect you to an environmental activists' Web site called Step by Step: Advocacy for a New Dream. It contains contact information, e-mail, phone and U.S. mail for most Bay Area media companies, small and large. For some newspapers, individual editors are named and can be contacted directly. For others, only general contacts are provided.

Click here for Bay Area media contacts provided by Step by Step.

Tips:

Even if you strongly disagree with something, be polite and respectful. You'll get much better results.
Tell journalists what you like as well as what you loathe.
Be specific: Refer to a specific day's news, story and reporter if you can, or to a pattern in a particular time period.
Be brief. Try to limit your message to no more than four or five paragraphs. Shorter is better.

What do you think? Discuss it in The Coffeehouse.

A project of the School of Journalism and Mass Communications at San Jose State University, Grade the News is affiliated with the Graduate Program in Journalism at Stanford University and KTEH, public television in Silicon Valley.

Monitoring the Bay Area's most popular news media:

Knight Ridder

Hearst

Knight Ridder

KTVU, Oakland (FOX)

KRON, San Francisco

KPIX, San Francisco (CBS)

KGO, San Francisco (ABC)

KNTV, San Jose (NBC)

Bay Area media advocates:

Media Alliance

Center for the Integration and Improvement of Journalism at SFSU

Maynard Institute

Youth Media Council

Project Censored

New California Media

Society of Professional Journalists, Northern California chapter

National Writers Union Bay Area chapter

Site highlights

THE GROWTH OF FREE NEWSPAPERS

The three-part series follows the rise of three Bay Area handouts:
• Part 1: At free dailies, advertisers sometimes call the shots
• Part 2: Free daily papers: more local but often superficial
• Part 3: Free papers' growth threatens traditional news
• See also: SF Examiner and Independent agree to end payola restaurant reviews
• And: The free tabloid that wasn't: East Bay's aborted Daily Flash

FATE OF KNIGHT RIDDER NEWSPAPERS

Lou Alexander started a firestorm with his original guest commentary predicting the company would be sold. Several other experts on newspapers have weighed in:
• Newspapers can't cut their way back into Wall Street investors' hearts, by Stephen R. Lacy; Alexander responds
• Humbler profits won't encourage buyouts, by John Morton; Alexander responds
• Newspapers can't maintain monopoly profits because they've lost their monopolies, by Philip Meyer
• Knight Ridder in grave jeopardy, by Lou Alexander...

KQED-FM AUDIO PERSPECTIVES BY JOHN MCMANUS

• Leakers and plumbers: There's no difference between a good leak and a bad leak? Journalists need a shield law. 11/22/05
• Unintended consequences: How Craigslist and similar services are sucking revenue from faltering newspapers. 9/13/05
• Is CPB irrelevant? As Congress moves to cut public broadcasting funds, has CPB become obsolete in the modern marketplace. 6/26/05
• The paradox of news: There's more news available and its cheaper than ever before, but fewer young people are interested. 5/12/05

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