Events - Bay Area

The Knight Digital Media Center at University of California, Berkeley, is hosting a four-hour multimedia training session for Bay Area bloggers tomorrow (Saturday, November 14), which will cover everything from Photoshop, Garage Band, SoundSlides, search engine optimization, and podcasting.

The class is free to bloggers who've been at it for at least three months. It's part of a larger initiative at Knight to support high quality journalism in the Bay Area. "We recognize that the industry is changing and many journalists are now working as freelancers and bloggers," Knight program specialist Alisha Diego Klatt tells us. "Many non-journalists are contributing to quality hyper-local news coverage with blogs."

Deets:
KDMC Bay Area Blogger Training
Saturday, November 14
10 am - 2:30 pm
Free
Register by emailing kdmcinfo at journalism.berkeley.edu with your name, your blog's domain name, and a note indicating which sessions you are interested in during each time slot. (Max: 30 participants)

It used to be court systems knew exactly who the reporters were. They were the ink-stained wretches with the press passes roaming the judicial halls and showing up in the gallery at particularly interesting trials. And they knew exactly who was writing about them. The clipping services sent them the articles written by those ink-stained wretches.

Technology, though, has now made it possible for anyone to publish information on the business of the court—from local bloggers to law professors thousands of miles away. Meanwhile, as the mainstream media contracts, fewer reporters from traditional news organizations are covering the courts.

To begin to unpack the implications of that shift, the Northern California district of the Ninth Circuit is hosting a mini-conference on Wednesday (November 4).

"With the upheaval that's taking place in the media landscape, we no longer know who's covering the courts," says David Madden, of the Public Information and Outreach Committee of the Ninth Circuit. "The court reporter is a dying breed. They're not around. Generation X and [the Millenials] are not getting their information in the same manner as we're getting ours."

"If the traditional media is constricting, and if other people, bloggers, and tweeters are covering the courts, or passing along information that gets to people about what's happening at the courts, we should understand that, and they should understand what the court's about," Madden said.

Deets:
"New Media in the Courtroom: How Blogs, Twitter and Social Media are Changing Legal Reporting"
Wednesday, November 4
1 pm - 5 pm
Phillip Burton Federal Building and U.S. Courthouse
450 Golden Gate Ave.
San Francisco

More, after the jump.

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Waggener Edstrom is hosting a panel discussion on October 29 called "Embargo 2010: An Industry Discussion on Future Rules of Media Engagement."

"Love them or hate them, embargoes are a familiar and much-discussed element of the rules of engagement with media and influentials. Clearly the old rules are not working. Is 2010 the time to re-write that rulebook?"

Panelists include TechCrunch editor Michael Arrington, who recently declared embargoes dead; New York Times technology editor Damon Darlin (with whom, incidentally, Arrington got into a bit of a spat this summer); Tom Foremski of Silicon Valley Watcher; and Mark Glaser of PBS' MediaShift. Moderated by PR consultant Sam Whitmore.

Deets:
6 pm, October 29
Varnish, 77 Natoma, San Francisco
Free
Registration at EventBrite

Columbia's j-school is hosting a webcast/call-in show Friday to teach journos how to use Facebook to turbocharge their reporting and branding.

Advanced Facebook for Journalists: "Tips and tricks on making better use of Facebook to connect with sources, learn about several new and newish features, get more attention to you work and protect your privacy. New FB features include: Photo Tag Search, Prototypes (FB's version of Google Labs); Desktop Notifications; Friend Tagging in Status & Posts; among many others."

Speakers:

Appropriately enough, on Friday(Sept. 11), Berkeley's j-school is hosting a discussion and book-signing of Berkeley photographer Richard Gordon's new book American Surveillance, whose photos "graphically explore the USA Patriot Act, which allows law-enforcement agencies unprecedented access to citizens' private communications and records."

Deets:
September 11, 7-9 pm
North Gate Hall, Room 105
UC Berkeley

Photo credit: Richard Gordon, from American Surveillance

Former newspaper and cable TV executive (and pay wall fan) Alan Mutter speaks at the University of California, Berkeley, j-school on Wednesday on "Journalism in an Era of Disruptive Change."

Mutter, who once was the San Francisco Chronicle's assistant managing editor, will talk about "how journalism will evolve in an age characterized by disruptive changes in technology, consumer behavior and the economics underlying the traditional media—and what journalists can do to preserve the values and traditions of this vital profession."

Deets:
September 2
6 - 8 pm
North Gate Hall Library
UC Berkeley

Google, the Association of American Publishers, and Publishers Weekly are co-hosting a free webinar on July 29 to explain what the Google Library Project Settlement will mean for publishers and authors.

Panelists include:

The latest in journalism's efforts to secure financing for its endeavors: sponsor a journalist. Specifically, sponsor an unemployed journalist to hear Twitter CEO Evan Williams speak at the Online News Association's annual conference in San Francisco, Oct. 1-3.

That's right, as little as 10 tax-deductable dollars will help ONA's Support a Journalist campaign, which has already sponsored 53 recently downsized journalists receive training in emerging technology, digital news know-how and networking with people inside the digital-media world.

"ONA wants to do everything it can to help quality journalism survive in these challenging times, and we're doing so by helping to ensure journalists have the digital skills they need to thrive," said ONA Board President Jonathan Dube, Vice President of ABCNews.com.

In addition to Williams, conference keynoters include "The Tech Guy," Leo Laporte and BlogHer CEO Lisa Stone. Features include multimedia training, expert panels and a career summit and job fair.

Applications will be accepted once the fundraising drive ends on Aug. 1.

The folks from Good magazine are coming up to Northern California to host a shindig at 111 Minna on Tuesday, June 16, featuring awesome social enterprising and all around doing-good organizations Kiva, Project H Design, and Virgance.

Deets:
June 16
7 p.m.
111 Minna, San Francisco
Free, but they would like you to RSVP

There are an impressive number of folks blogging about transit goings-on in the Bay Area: The N-Judah Chronicles, StreetsBlog San Francisco, The Overhead Wire, and Muni Diaries, just to name a few.

Now some of them are stepping out from behind their keyboards to read to you live and in person tales of "the good, the bad, and the gross" at the Muni Diaries-hosted Riders with Drinks* this Friday.

Deets:
Riders with Drinks
Friday, June 12
7:30 to 9:30 pm
The Makeout Room
3225 22nd Street, SF

* A riff, of course, on Charlie Anders' awesome monthly Writers with Drinks gathering.