Category: Media

By Chuck Dunning / May 30, 2025
In his Gettysburg Address, Abraham Lincoln called this country “a new nation conceived in liberty” guaranteed by the First Amendment of the Constitution: “Congress shall make no law …abridging the freedom of speech, or the press.”

In the 1920s, with the advent of radio and later television, Congress realized the enormous potential in these media for the public good. It deemed the airways as belonging to the public. For the right to use them, license holders would be required to operate in the “public interest, convenience and necessity.”

In 1949, the Federal Communications Commission went a step further and passed what became known as The Fairness Doctrine, requiring radio and television stations to devote airtime to issues of public importance and to present opposing perspectives. But in 1987, the Reagan administration, believing the growth of cable TV and the Internet would guarantee multiple points of view, repealed the Fairness Doctrine.

Today, that guarantee of freedom of the press is under assault like never before.

Institute for Nonprofit News / May 28, 2025

For the first time, local news outlets make up the largest segment of the Institute for Nonprofit News’ member network, which earlier this month reached 500 independent, nonprofit news organizations across North America.

The percentage of local news outlets in INN’s eighth annual Index survey rose to 51% in 2024 from 48% in 2023. Along with this growth in local outlets, INN sees a larger share of newsrooms (52%) covering current news and events on a range of topics. While more than half of newsrooms in the INN Network still focus on deep, explanatory reporting, the proportion of outlets that focus exclusively on investigative news has declined, to 27%.

The differences are most pronounced when compared over the eight years has tracked the field. In 2017, 39% of INN members focused primarily on investigative reporting, and 19% focused primarily on news and events.

“INN’s roots are in investigative journalism. And while many of our members still produce that kind of in-depth accountability reporting, today they also cover topics like local government, schools, housing, and jobs,” said Karen Rundlet, CEO of the Institute for Nonprofit News, “It’s the type of coverage that’s essential to any healthy, functioning town, or city or county. And local news outlets keep turning to INN to learn how to increase their revenues and their reach.”

By Madison Beveridge / Pt Loma-OB Monthly SDUT / May 25, 2025

Three students at Point Loma’s Correia Middle School were rewarded for short documentary-style films they made for the C-SPAN network’s 2025 StudentCam competition.

Students, parents, teachers, administrators and C-SPAN representatives turned out to honor the young filmmakers at a gathering May 21.

The trio’s works were among nearly 1,700 student entries from across the country.

For the 21st edition of the competition, C-SPAN asked contestants to focus their films on the issue most important to them or their community as though they were presenting it to the president of the United States.

Harper Haden and Helena de la Houssaye, seventh-graders at Correia Middle School, won second prize and $1,500 for their video titled “One Pill Can Kill,” a look at the fentanyl crisis and how the San Diego-Mexico border plays a role in fentanyl and other drugs entering the U.S.

By Kate Callen

Community college students running an underfunded newspaper in Chula Vista have just taught the nation a lesson about the power of diversity.

The Southwestern Sun of Southwestern Community College has won the Gold Crown award from the Columbia University Scholastic Press Association for being the top collegiate newspaper in North America.

The Sun’s multi-cultural staff are student reporters from working-class and immigrant families. They surpassed peers who attend prestigious universities and grew up in privileged surroundings.

If you badly need a ray of hope in a dark time when journalism and equity are under siege, this might do the trick.

Sun reporters have had plenty of reason to give up. For many, English is a second language. They juggle full courseloads with jobs of 25 hours a week or more to support themselves and their families.

But they are unyielding. “These students do journalism the right way for the right reason,” said Max Branscomb, professor of journalism at Southwestern and a decades-long Sun adviser.

By Eric DuVall / Pt Loma-OB Monthly SDU-T / April 16, 2025

We were a Tribune family. In other words, we got San Diego’s afternoon daily, the Evening Tribune.  A high school kid rolled down our sidewalk on a cool old bike with extended front forks and flipped the Trib onto our driveway. I didn’t know the guy, but as a second- or third-grader, I thought that looked like a sweet gig.

Many homes had televisions by that time, black and white portables mostly, but news consumption in the early 1960s was predominantly the domain of print media. We subscribed to Life magazine, which was still a weekly in those days. National Geographic came every month, and twice a week — Thursday and Sunday mornings — we got the Peninsula News.

Very local coverage was the calling card of the Peninsula News. “Serving the 60,000 population in Ocean Beach, Point Loma, Loma Portal [and] Midway,” the Peninsula News claimed to be “the only newspaper 100% interested in San Diego’s Peninsula area.”

Sound familiar? It should. The Peninsula News was a new moniker for the publication originally known as The Beach News.

By Michael Moore / Substack / April 8, 2025

This weekend, MILLIONS OF PEOPLE took to the streets of America to protest Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and what this administration of dangerous idiots, creepy billionaires and outright white supremacist fascists are doing to this country.

MILLIONS OF PEOPLE! There were 1,500 registered protests and hundreds more that just sprung up spontaneously in places where nothing had been planned but people said… “F*ck it! Let’s just go down to the courthouse!”

You would think this would be front page news. This would be blasting every 20 minutes of “Breaking News” and “This Just In!” and “Happening Now in the Situation Room!”

But, according to CNN, it was “scores of people” and USA Today said it was “tens of thousands” which was at least more than FOX News which said it was just “thousands of people.”

They refused to believe that MILLIONS of everyday Americans left their homes and packed tens of thousands of streets — even though they knew in advance there were over 600,000 people who had already RSVP’d to rallies nationwide weeks before the protests even started! And if you’ve ever met any Lefties and Independents and Traditional Non Voters… we don’t sign up for ANYTHING. For every 1 person who RSVP’d there were at least 8 who said, “Dude, I’ll just show up, why do I have to RSVP? This isn’t a bridal shower!”

Due to an all-day medical procedure tomorrow, Thursday, March 27, I will not be able to administer the Rag during the day and the site will be dark. That means there will not be any new posts and I will not be able to okay comments.

By Justine McDaniel / Washington Post / Feb. 25, 2025

The Trump administration will determine which journalists participate in the White House press pool, press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Tuesday, breaking with nearly a century of practice in which the independent White House Correspondents’ Association has overseen the rotating group of news outlets that cover the president in Washington and on travels.

It is an aggressive move by the government to control which news outlets have access to the president — one that is unprecedented in modern American politics and comes amid Trump’s long-standing efforts to erode Americans’ trust in fact-based reporting.

As journalists and media critics warned that White House control of the press pool threatens the foundations of a free press and could allow the administration to more easily block reporters from the White House, Trump boasted about the move.

“We’re going to be calling those shots,” he said from the Oval Office late Tuesday afternoon.

What we are witnessing is not simply right-wing ascendancy in national politics but a long-term decline and corporate consolidation of American journalism.

By David Helvarg / Common Dreams / Jan 13, 2025

Two billionaire publishers, the Washington Post’s Jeff Bezos and the LA Times Patrick Soon-Shiong, blocked their editorial page editors from endorsing Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election (a Washington Post editorial cartoonist than quit when her cartoon depicting Jeff Bezos, Son-Shiong and other billionaires abasing themselves in front of Trump was killed). If you believe the Washington Post’s slogan that ‘Democracy Dies in Darkness,’ their owner was the first to switch off the light.

Soon-Shiong also blocked an editorial asking the Senate to perform its constitutional duty to provide advice and consent on Trump’s cabinet picks. Next ABC News (owned by Disney) agreed to pay $15 million in a settlement of a Trump defamation lawsuit

By Kate Callen

Not sure if you’ve noticed, but some of the most tantalizing OB Rag entries are comments posted in response to our news articles.

Some commenters share trenchant insights that bring us joy. Others entertain us by huffing and puffing (shout out to Paul J!).

And a very few, like Scott Lewis, editor-in-chief of Voice of San Diego (VOSD), post comments that leave us gasping: Did he really say that?

Just the other day, on January 7, Lewis commented on a Rag story about Colin Parent’s 79th Assembly District election loss. He challenged an opinion by Mat Wahlstrom that VOSD and Circulate San Diego, Parent’s money-minting nonprofit, have formed a mésalliance. (Mésalliance is French meaning a marriage with a person of lower social status.)

Frank Gormlie Book-Signing
and Talk on The May 1970 Rebellion
Saturday, Dec. 14, 1–3 pm

Frank Gormlie will be available for book-signing
and will give a short presentation on his book,
what led him to write it and
what it means for us today in the Trump Era.