Blogging experiment succeeds for KQED, KAWL

A one-year grant from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and the Knight Foundation to pay for bloggers for 12 public radio station websites will expire at year’s end. But what’s called the ARGO experiment has proven to be a success for those stations, including San Francisco’s KQED and KAWL, according to Andrew Phelps of NiemanLab.org.

“Really, by hiring just one person, you can build an audience, build engagement, and demonstrate knowledge of a particular topic,” said Joel Sucherman, the project’s director at NPR. The first year of traffic for the whole Argo network surpassed published traffic numbers for startups such as the Texas Tribune and the Bay Citizen in their first years, he said. … 

KQED and KPBS [Los Angeles] were the top performers, each averaging more than 100,000 monthly visitors. Both stations have committed to keeping the blogs alive next year. … 

At San Francisco’s tiny KALW, for example, Rina Palta covers cops, courts, and communities for The Informant. Early on, Palta caught a good story: California was short on sodium thiopental, the lethal drug used for executions. She became a leading reporter on the story, not by writing one big investigative piece but by filing frequent, incremental updates, Thompson said. (Even Stephen Colbert cited her work.) Thompson calls it the quest: The body of work makes a bigger impact than any single post.

Belva Davis recalls violent GOP convention in SF

Longtime Bay Area journalist Belva Davis sat down with KALW to discuss her recollections of covering the 1964 Republican National Convention at the Cow Palace.

It was a mean-spirited crowd up in the galleries where we were … there was a speech by former President Eisenhower that was like lighting a match, in which he talked ... the words he said could have been interpreted as being racist. And after that, all hell broke loose. 

Reporters were being, I mean really big-name reporters, were being taken and arrested, really – one of the leading reporters was arrested on that night. So, we watched all this from up high, and finally we heard somebody from down below yell, “What are you N-word people doing up there?” And he screamed it in sort of a chant. 

The next thing we knew, there’s a mob of people screaming all kinds of things. Up there, isolated where we were in semi-darkness, we felt threatened. We started down the stairs and garbage started being thrown at us. 

I didn’t really get nervous until I could feel a bottle whiz by my head. It crashed against the concrete, and my knees started to shake as we were walking down the ramp to get out of the Cow Palace. 

[Davis’ boss, KDIA News Director] Louis [Freeman] said to me, “If you cry, I will break your leg.” Just like that! And I looked at him, I was shocked! Straightened my back, and we both kept eyes straight ahead and got down to the bottom. 

And then we looked at each other because we saw uniformed officers, but coming from the South, we knew that was no safe passage. And we knew we still had the outside to the parking lot to go.

We were both terrified. We were at a political convention, or you know, one of the two organizations pledged to protect the rights of American citizens and feeling that our lives were in danger. But that’s the way it was that year.

Davis was interviewed by Holly Kernan of KALW’s “Crosscurrents.” Davis has a new book, “Never in My Wildest Dreams: A Black Woman’s Life in Journalism,” which is available at amazon.com.

SF school board lends KALW-FM $200,000

AT KALW — Matt Martin, left, visits with Martina Castro and Ben Trefny as Casey Miner, right, readies a report. Photo by the Chronicle's Lance Iversen.

Noncommercial KALW 91.7 has received a $200,000 loan from the San Francisco school board, according to the Chronicle and Bay Citizen.

The school board holds the license for the station, but the station runs independently. KALW must repay the loan, with 1.5% interest, by the end of 2012.

The Chron said the station has been losing money for the past three years and is now $120,000 in the hole. It's annual budget is $1.4 million, most of which comes from listeners like you. GE engineers put the station on the air in 1939 as an exhibit for the World's Fair on Treasure Island.

In 1941, the station was donated to the school district to train students in radio broadcasting. In 1992, KALW cut financial ties to the district and survived on donations and grants alone. However, the district has provided administrative services and free rent at Burton High School, according to the Chron. The Chron said the line of credit is equal to the salaries of two teachers.

KQED, KALW join in-depth news experiment

KQED-FM 88.5 and KALW 91.7 are among the outlets picked by National Public Radio to participate in a major news experiment backed by $3 million in support from foundations, according to paidContent.org. With USAToday.com editor Joel Sucherman at the helm, each station will focus in-depth on one major issue, such as green energy, health care or immigration, to name a few examples. The coverage will have a strong local focus for each station, but will also have national relevance.

KCBS, KGO, KALW, Chron win Headliners

Bay Area winners of the 75th annual National Headliner Awards, sponsored by The Press Club of Atlantic City, N.J., include:

• Newspapers, editorial cartoons, second place: Don Asmussen, SF Chronicle

• Newspapers, portrait, second place, Chron's Mike Kepka, "The Rev. Cecil Williams"

• Radio, newscast, first place: KCBS News Team, "Winter Storm"

• Radio, breaking news or continuing coverage of a single news event, first place: KCBS, Doug Sovern, "Campaign 2008"

• Radio, feature or human interest story, first place: KGO's RJ Peruman, "The Milk-Moscone Murders: 30 Years Later"

• Radio, news series, second place: KCBS, Doug Sovern, "Down, But Not Out"

• Radio, documentary or public affairs, third place; KALW FM 91.7, JoAnn Mar and Alyne Ellis, "Prisons in Crisis: A State of Emergency in California"

• Online, radio affiliated journalism, second place: KCBS.com

• Online: newspaper affiliated journalism, first place: SFGatte.com