San Francisco Citizen

F. Warren Hellman’s Bay Area News Project announcement has been raising a few hackles the past few days. The San Francisco Chronicle frets that a possible KQEDNYTimesUC BerkeleyHellman joint could “threaten the remaining local news industry” and Robert Gammon at the East Bay Express is saying the project “threatens bay area journalism.”   Uh oh.

Our new media overlord, Fonzerelli Warren Kramer Hellman:

Be sure to read the insane Gammon bit to see what he thinks constitutes ”slave labor.” You see, the UC Berkeley students won’t get paid, so that amounts to slave labor – they’ll be just like the workers of Mittelwerk who were forced to manufacture missiles underground during World War II. Or something like that.    

Who will free the slave laborers of UC Berkeley’s current MissionLoc@l and the future Bay Area News Project? Is it even necessary to save them?

We should have more reporters! More media! More, I say! Hang those who talk of less!

Check it all out at the Twitter, the Facebook and KQED Forum:

Host: Dave Iverson

Guests:

• Carl Hall, local representative of the California Media Workers Guild, the union representing the San Francisco Chronicle’s newsroom and commercial departments
• Jeff Clarke, president and CEO of KQED/Northern California Public Broadcasting
• Neil Henry, professor and dean of the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism and author books including “American Carnival: Journalism Under Siege in an Age of New Media”
• Noelle Leca, chair of the board of directors of KQED/Northern California Public Broadcasting
• Tom Rosenstiel, director of the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism and co-author of “The Elements of Journalism: What Newspeople Should Know and the Public Should Expect”

Good luck BANP!

Cheer up newsie, help is on the way.