Bridges to the New California and The World According to Young People, San Francisco, CA 2001 

Partners:

Pacific News Service
New California Media/a>
KALW-FM
San Francisco Chronicle 

The partnership gave wider circulation, through the Chronicle’s Sunday edition and through KALW programs, to the diverse ethnic and youth voices gathered by two of the Pacific News Service’s major projects: New California Media and YO! Youth Outlook. 

The New California Media (NCM) project distilled the major stories in dozens of ethnic newspapers in the Bay Area, papers such as the Sing Tao Daily, Iran Today, India West, and Philippine News. Beginning in April 2001, the Chronicle ran articles from NCM under a sig called “Bridges to the New California.” 

At the same time, the paper’s weekly opinion section, Insight, began running pieces by teenage correspondents from YO! Youth Outlook. The paper debuted the feature April 31, 2001, with four essays on “Rage in the Suburbs.” The essays grew out of a Youth Forum the Pacific News Service sponsored earlier in April, entitled “Rage in the Suburbs: Why is it primarily white, male and aimed at schools?” The forum drew more than 125 high school students, teachers and youth advocates. Seventeen teenagers spoke on subjects ranging from “cliques in my school” to “what’s exhilarating in a mall culture.” The Insight editor attended the forum and commissioned essays from four of the speakers.

The forum also kicked off a series of 15-minute radio segments produced by YO! reporters for KALW, the public radio station owned by the San Francisco school district. Each week, the pieces aired as part of an hour-long show called “Up Front: Connecting Neighborhoods through the New California Media.”

Contact:

Sandy Close
Executive Editor
Pacific News Service
660 Market St, Suite 210
San Francisco, CA 94104
Phone: (415) 438-4755
Email: sclose@pacificnews.org