People & Places

Pierre Omidyar is the latest Bay Area kajillionaire to jump into the save-the-news-business fray. According to a note posted on the site of his new business, Peer News, the eBay founder is creating a Honolulu-based "local news service" that will "produce original, in-depth reporting and analysis of local issues in Hawaii."

The note offers few details, other than to say it will be online-only (this is 2009, after all, the note says), that it will focus on "public affairs and civic matters that impact communities across Hawaii," and that it will launch in "early 2010."

"The new venture intends to demonstrate that a digitally native, technologically fluent web organization can profitably serve targeted readers who want sophisticated journalism focused on local civic affairs," writes Howard Weaver on his Etaoin Shrdlu blog. Weaver is former VP for News at The McClatchy Co., who has advised Omidyar and his partner, former eBay VP Randy Ching, on the venture.

According to Dan Gillmor, with whom Omidyar also consulted, the service will combine professional journalists and citizen journalists in "a commercial model that hasn't been tried yet."

And if Weaver's comments are any indicator, the project is also likely to eventually become financially sustainable. Says Weaver: "I think tomorrow's best local public service journalism (like today's) is most likely to come from organizations built on success in the marketplace. I applaud any effort to create the journalism democracy needs... but my heart and my guts both tell me that journalism that meets real needs can pay its own way."

In the meantime, if you want to move to Hawaii, they're currently looking for an editor.

Photo: Joi Ito (Creative Commons License)

The Guardian (UK) published an interview this weekend with Dave Eggers about the issue of McSweeney's that will be published next month as a broadsheet called the San Francisco Panorama.

In it, Eggers repeats what he's said elsewhere, that the purpose of doing McSweeney's in newspaper format was, in the middle of all the dirges about the death of print, to demonstrate "what newspapers do uniquely well."

In response to a question about whether newspaper editors can "take heart" from the project, Eggers replied:

We're inviting them to borrow any ideas they want, to steal anything they can. Anything that helps any paper stay afloat.

We'd always thought New York was ground zero for media power-brokering, but if Katie Couric's list of the most powerful people in media is any indicator, the center has shifted to the new media whizzes in the Bay Area.

The CBS Evening News anchor prepared her list as part of Forbes' special report on "The World's Most Powerful People." So when she put pen to paper, who did she choose? Rupert Murdoch? Bill Keller? Anderson Cooper?

Nope. She pegs your humble servants laboring away in the trenches of Silicon Valley:

Iran charged the three American hikers who were detained on the border with Iraq with espionage today.

Tehran's chief prosecutor said the inquiry into their case is continuing, AFP reports.

In Berlin, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called on Iran to release the three Cal grads—freelancer Shane Bauer, Sarah Shourd, and Joshua Fattal. "We believe strongly that there is no evidence to support any charge whatsoever," AFP reports Clinton as saying.

Yesterday, family members organized a series of vigils to mark the 100th day since the three were detained.

Shon Meckfessel, the fourth American who was traveling with the three hikers detained on the Iraq-Iran border this summer, published a letter to Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmedinejad on the The Nation Web site today, asking him to intercede "with the appropriate authorities for the immediate release of my friends Shane Bauer, Sarah Shourd and Josh Fattal."

Mr. President, by continuing to deprive Shane, Sarah and Josh of their liberty, Iran is working against some of the very causes it supports. Each of these three has a long and public record of contesting injustice in the world and addressing some of the inequities between rich and poor which you have spoken about through their humanitarian work in their own country and overseas.

More, after the jump.

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The families of the three American hikers detained in Iran at the end of July submitted a petition to Iran's U.N. mission on Thursday, requesting their release.

"The families, friends and supporters of Shane, Sarah and Josh share the deep hope that the Islamic Republic of Iran will show compassion in this unfortunate case and release them as soon as possible," says the petition, according to CNN. It was signed by 2,500 people, both online at the site FreeTheHikers.org and at vigils.

Bay Area freelancer Shane Bauer, Sarah Shourd, and Joshua Fattal, all Cal grads, were detained on July 31 after allegedly crossing into Iran illegally, from Iraq, during a hike.

"They all have great respect for different cultures and societies and for the law. If they did enter Iran, it can only have been by accident," CBS5 quotes the petition as saying.

"As an immediate step, we appeal to you to allow Shane, Sarah and Josh to speak with their families, in order to ease the worry of their loved ones," says the petition. Switzerland's amabassador to Iran visited the detainees last month on behalf of the United States, which does not have relations with Iran. But, according to CNN, the three have not been permitted contact with their families.

Swiss diplomats have finally been allowed to visit the three Cal grads who were detained in Iran at the end of July, Reuters is reporting.

No other details were available, but it was the first time the three—freelancer Shane Bauer, 27, his girlfriend Sarah Shourd, 31, and Joshua Fattal, 27—were permitted access to officials representing U.S. interests. (The United States does not have a diplomatic presence in Iran; Switzerland has represented its interests there since the 1980 Islamic revolution.)

For the record, it was the 60th day since the three were detained after allegedly crossing illegally into Iran during a hike from Iraq.

The visit comes in advance of rare talks in Geneva Thursday between Iran and six major powers, including the United States, which will touch on Iran's nuclear program, among other topics. The other nations attending are Britain, China, France, Germany and Russia. A State Department spokesman declined to confirm the two were related.

"Obviously we welcome this step, but obviously we are anxious to see Iran seriously engage on Thursday and we look forward to that meeting as well," P.J. Crowley said.

Photos courtesy of FreeTheHikers.org

The Associated Press is reporting that Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told them yesterday that he will seek "leniency" for the three Cal grad hikers who were detained at the end of July.

Speaking in New York where he is attending the U.N. General Assembly, Ahmadinejad said Iran is not happy that the hikers broke the law by, as they claim, entering the country illegally, but "what I can ask is that the judiciary expedites the process and gives it its full attention, and to basically look at the case with maximum leniency."

Among the three is Shane Bauer, a freelancer who has contributed to a slew of Bay Area outlets, including Current TV, Mother Jones, the San Francisco Bay Guardian, and New America Media.

Photo credit: Daniella Zalcman

Earlier this month, the New York Times' ombudsman explored potential conflicts of interests in the scribblings of David Pogue, the widely followed technology writer who pens a popular Personal Tech column for the Times and who also contribuets bits to CBS News and CNBC, as well as posting his own blogs and videos online independently.

His "multiple interests and loyalties raise interesting ethical issues in this new age when individual journalists can become brands of their own," wrote Clark Hoyt.

Pogue responded to the criticism on Monday's edition of the "This Week in Tech" podcast (hosted by local tech reporter and CNBC/ZDTV veteran Leo Laporte). Pogue's defense: He's not a reporter.

"Since when have I ever billed myself as a journalist," he said. "I am not a reporter, I have never to journalism school, I don't know what it means to bury the lede—okay, I do know what it means, but I'm not a reporter, I've been an opinion columnist."

What the Columbia Journalism Review had to say about that, after the jump.

Photo credit: Randal Schwartz

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How awkward.

While "the Google guys" (Sergey Brin and Larry Page) jointly made the top of the Tech100, the British gadget site T3's rankings of the most influential people in technology, only one of "the Twitter guys" made the list: CEO Evan Williams, in the number two spot. Co-founders Biz Stone and Jack Dorsey, however, were regrettably MIA.

Other Bay Area players on the list: Steve Jobs (#7—Apple), Eric Schmidt (#8—Google), Mark Zuckerberg (#9—Facebook), Jon Rubinstein (#17—Palm), Phil Schiller (#22—filled in while Jobs was on sick leave), Chris Anderson (#47—Wired), Kevin Rose (#57—Digg), Michael Arrington (#58—TechCrunch), Carol Bartz (#66—Yahoo!), Pete Cashmore (#71—Mashable—check out mediabistro.com's recent Q&A with him), Jimmy Wales (#83—Wikipedia), and Jonathan Kaplan (#100—Pure Digital, maker of the Flip video camera).

Also on the list, Julius Genachowski (#15), the first Chairman of the FCC (which regulates technology and telecoms) in recent memory to come from a business and tech background and who has been poking into the iPhone-Google Voice imbroglio. Another unusual pick: President Obama (#18), not the least for saying they'd have to "pry" his Blackberry from his hands before he'd give it up.

After the jump, how T3 compiled the list.

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