SF Public Press Fall 2011 edition focuses on city budget — launch event Aug. 13

CONTACT:

Michael Stoll, Executive Director
Lila LaHood, Director of Operations and Development
(415) 495-7377 — news [AT] sfpublicpress.org
 
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
 

The San Francisco Public Press publishes its fall 2011 print edition — the fourth since launching last summer — on Wednesday, Aug. 10, with a special section on the prospect of better city budgeting, and engaging stories from 16 local public media and civic organizations.
 
The headliner for Issue 4 is a collaborative project with Shareable.net, a website focusing on the sharing movement, exploring how San Francisco’s perennial budget-cutting process might be improved. Reporters looked at the growing trend of “participatory budgeting,” the use of the Internet to promote transparency and the unfulfilled promise of government audits to identify and eliminate millions of dollars in waste.
 
The package also includes examples of how budget cuts almost derailed some vital city services, such as naturalization services for senior citizens, and how nonprofit organizations are forced to lobby politicians to “add back” funds after the budget passes.
 
The 16-page, two-section broadsheet newspaper will be available for sale for $1 at about 50 locations around the Bay Area. The print run is 8,000 copies. Parts of the budget package will be published online first on Shareable.net and later on SFpublicpress.org.
 
The latest edition of the Public Press also features in-depth policy-focused stories from partner organizations such as KQED’s “Forum” with Michael Krasny, California Watch/Center for Investigative Reporting, KALW News, the San Francisco Neighborhood Newspaper Association, California Northern Magazine and new partners such as the bilingual newspaper El Tecolote and the Public Policy Institute of California.
 
“The fall issue focuses on vital public policy choices facing the city of San Francisco in an unprecedented era of year-after-year budget cutting,” said Michael Stoll, the organization’s executive director. “It shows that small startup public media organizations can do important public-interest explanatory news reporting and fill in some of the gaps left by the ever-shrinking commercial press.”
 
The papers will arrive on Wednesday, August 10, at 6 a.m. and go on sale immediately at the Public Press office at 965 Mission Street, Suite 220, in San Francisco. Newspapers will be distributed to Bay Area retailers throughout the day. A regularly updated list of retailers carrying the paper can be found on the website: https://sfpublicpress.org/where-to-buy-the-newspaper. Also, check our Twitter (http://twitter.com/sfpublicpress) and Facebook (http://facebook.com/sfpublicpress) pages for live updates on where to get a copy.
 
LAUNCH PARTY: NOON ON SATURDAY, AUG. 13, CRISSY FIELD. The Public Press is sponsoring a “print launch picnic” on Saturday, Aug. 13, to celebrate Issue 4 and the more than 50 people who put it together. Drop by the East Beach picnic area at Crissy Field between noon and 3 p.m. for a family friendly afternoon of food, drinks and games. We’ll also be handing out free copies of the newspaper. Please remember to RSVP so that we bring enough food: http://sfpublicpress-picnic.eventbrite.com. Volunteers will be collecting donations — “sliding scale, pay as you wish” — at the picnic.
 
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The San Francisco Public Press is a local, nonprofit, noncommercial news organization covering local public-interest journalism — with a focus on economy, civics and streetscape — in the Bay Area. We aim to do for print and Web what public broadcasting does for television and radio. We produce news online daily and in a quarterly print newspaper.
 
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