Since April, I’ve been working as the San Francisco correspondent for a startup out of India called Firstpost. An online partner of the CNN/Forbes affiliate of India, Firstpost is an online magazine that offers a smart mix of breaking news and incisive views from an Eastern perspective on current events, politics, the global economy, and culture. Lately, the site has published some especially fantastic coverage on the anti-corruption efforts in India galvanized by Anna Hazare. But of course, you’ll also find reports tackling everything from Obama, to Facebook, to Bollywood. Give it a read!

Before moving over to Firstpost, I had a nice yearish-long run as a contributing editor at California Lawyer where I was editing the front-of-the-book news and trends section (which recently scored a silver medal Azbee Award from the American Society of Business Publication Editors!). My second turn there was just as great as the first—I’ve always been impressed and inspired by the staff’s dedication to quality of content, especially in this quick-churn, feed-the-online-beast publishing world we find ourselves in currently. It’s probably no surprise that I support both Slow Food and Slow News.

Lastly, I’ve been working intensely on a story for California Watch about communities that face some severe and shocking infrastructure problems. To complete this project, which has involved extensive travel across the state, I received a Dennis A. Hunt Grant via USC Annenberg/California Endowment, for which I’m hugely grateful. In-depth reporting can’t be done on the cheap, my friends.

The last point is one that I—and every other journalist—have been obsessing over in recent years. How do we make quality journalism, which is time-consuming and expensive to produce, “pencil out”?

Thankfully, there are many live minds out there trying to sort this out, including Paul Carr of TechCrunch. In this piece, he posits that people are starting to get wise to the fact that most of the content offered online is drivel, but that there is a future for great writing and reporting—we just aren’t likely to find it where we’re expecting to, and we won’t get it for free.

First, some good news! The Treasure Island Special Report that ran in the SF Public Press this summer was selected for a SPJ NorCal 2010 Excellence in Journalism Award in the Explanatory Journalism category! Go team!

And after more than six months of word wrangling, a piece by Peter Byrne about the problematic investments by the University of California Regents, which I helped edit and coordinate — and which I did a little reporting for — was published on Spot.Us in August. The Sacramento News & Review ran this version of it, and California Watch gave it a nod here. There’s also talk of it being published in a couple other venues.

HYPHEN MAGAZINE

Tons of action on this front:

• In August, we were invited to serve as a mentor for NewU, a Unity and Ford Foundation initiative to support minority media entrepreneurs. Congrats to AAJA’s Toan Lam of Go, Inspire, Go! for winning the $5,000 seed money for producing some seriously inspiring stories!

• Mr. Hyphen, our signature fundraiser/philanthropy event that celebrates Asian American male community leaders, takes place on Nov. 6. You’ll be dazzled by the quality of the contestants, who are representing organizations such as the Center for Asian American Media, United Playaz and the Mabuhay Health Center.

• I’ll be in Los Angeles this week for the Kaiser National Diversity Conference, where I’ll be speaking on a panel about ethnic media.

• Issue 22 drops in December, and it’s never too late to support us with your tax-deductible donation!

NEW-ISH STORIES

Yahoo! News

Bay Area writers on Litquake, making history and the diversity of South Asian-American poetry

California Lawyer

Lawyers Meditate to Elevate Skills

East Bay Express

Retail Climate Delays Jack London Market

Passion Is Not Enough to Sustain a Business

Feeding the Demand for Mid-century Modern

The Crime Report

One Vision One Life

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As of January, I’m contributing to the Small Business Monthly of the East Bay Express. Some recent stories:
Joel Makower Q&A: Use Your Checkbook and Your Trash Can

Arizmendi Q&A: Running a Business With 26 CEOs

Neighborhood Revitalization Through Retail

Shoplifting? Or Organized Retail Crime?

I’m also doing a little writing for Shareable.net, and my first piece for the site is about the quiet revival of Throwing Muses via community-supported music.

In late January, I went to NYC as a Guggenheim Symposium Fellow via the John Jay College Center on Media, Crime and Justice, where I met a slew of amazing journalists and fascinating practitioners. As part of this fellowship, I’m putting a story together about probation for Miller-McCune magazine that’s slated to run in the May/June issue. John Jay also runs The Crime Report, and I have a story on the site this month.

And while we’re on the topic of what lies ahead, at a time where California public university tuition is reaching new highs, I’m working with investigative reporter Peter Byrne and Sacramento News & Review’s R.V. Scheide to look at where the University of California has chosen to make its financial investments. We’re funding this project via Spot.Us.

Later this month, I’ll be participating in a multimedia storytelling seminar via the Knight Digital Media Center for independent journalists—audio slideshows and digital mapping, here I come… And next week, I’m heading back to Los Angeles for Session 2 of the California Endowment Health Journalism Fellowships at USC’s Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism.

For the California Endowment fellowship, I have a story in the works that looks at the intersection between parolee health, public health and public safety (yes, a topic I’ve been chipping away at for a while now), and I spent the day with a chronically ill parolee who was released from San Quentin at 7am last Monday. I’ll post a link to the story here, so y’all come back again soon, y’hear?

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SPJ ANNOUNCES 2009 EXCELLENCE IN JOURNALISM AWARD WINNERS

HOLLY KERNAN OF KALW PUBLIC RADIO GETS TOP AWARD

Since its inception 24 years ago, SPJ’s Excellence in Journalism Awards competition has always sought to recognize those whose work reflects the organization’s ideals of integrity, initiative and achievement.

— Excellence in Journalism Competition « Society of Professional Journalists – Northern California.

Debate about whether the governor’s plan is tough or even smart on crime will continue, but it also doesn’t take a mathematician to see that for all of its potential strengths and weaknesses, the plan doesn’t meet the court mandate 40,000 fewer prisoners by 2011.

via newsdesk.org: Is Schwarzenegger’s Prison Plan Good Enough?.

Concerned that journalism’s economic problems are reducing Americans’ understanding of science, medicine and other research, 35 of the nation’s top universities — including Stanford and UC-Berkeley — on Tuesday announced they will feed their own accounts of their discoveries directly to top news sites on the Internet.

- via With science journalism in retreat, universities try new strategy for informing the public – San Jose Mercury News.