Have we yet to feel the true impact of the news media cuts that have plagued our nation over the past several years?

In Northern California alone, hundreds of journalists have been displaced from their longtime jobs. Many tried to hang onto their chosen profession by working as freelancers — providing a ready source of affordable labor for the region’s newsrooms.

Rebecca Rosen Lum

But with pay eroding and competition increasing, the arrangement is starting to feel less than sustainable for many veteran writers, reporters, editors and photographers. In a survey conducted by GuildFreelancers this spring, 60 percent say freelance jobs pay less than they used to, and nearly half agree that freelance work is getting harder to find.

Our freelance unit chair, Rebecca Rosen Lum, explores the problem in this morning’s California Progress Report. Click here to read the full story.

When Barbara Grady began reporting on the sexual trafficking of underage girls, she was disturbed by the extent of this epidemic in urban neighborhoods of the East Bay. Young men were chucking drug sales and moving into pimping with a frightening aggression; the girls were younger and more vulnerable than law enforcement officials were used to seeing.

In her most recent reportage, an eight-part series for Oakland Local, Grady and two colleagues gauge the recession’s effect on sexual trafficking. She was staggered by what they found: As the economy has tanked, trafficking has boomed, claiming ever younger victims with ever more violent means.

“There are more families in trouble, so more kids run away,” said Grady, a member of GuildFreelancers. “And there is less money going into foster care. In addition, government has less money to fight crime.”

The editors at Oakland Local had followed her coverage of sexual exploitation of minors for the Oakland Tribune, which netted Grady and colleagues Kamika Dunlap and Tammerlin Drummond a 2009 Sigma Delta Chi award from the national Society of Professional Journalists.

At the urging of Oakland Local, Grady and partners Sarah Terry-Cobo and photographer Alison Yin secured a grant from G.W. Williams Center for Independent Journalism, a project of the Tides Center, to follow the story.

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Fainaru tosses first pitch at City College event

(Story by Sara Steffens and Rebecca Rosen Lum, Photos by Russ Cain)

About 120 participants gathered Saturday at City College of San Francisco for the first “Spring Training for Journalists,” a daylong workshop we hope will become an annual tradition for news staffers, freelancers and students throughout our region.

This year’s offering, “Reinventing Your Career,” covered the job and technology skills demanded by a fast-changing news profession. Top-flight instructors ran seminars on topics such as entry-level multimedia, audio production basics and working with interpreters to report on underserved communities.

Steve Fainaru (photo), who won a 2008 Pulitzer Prize for his reporting on military contractors in Iraq, kicked it off Saturday morning by explaining why he gave up his gig at the Washington Post to take on a radically different assignment: managing editor in charge of news at the Bay Citizen, the nonprofit startup the Guild helped to create in the interest of quality journalism.

Investigative reporter Steve Fainaru (top) and photojournalist Kim Komenich, both Pulitzer winners, share their knowledge.

A partnership of philanthropist Warren Hellman and the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, Bay Citizen is set to launch May 26 with a new website and twice-weekly Bay Area content in The New York Times. Fainaru said he wanted to foster local journalism marked by as much ambition and skill as daily newspapers at their best. And he explained how freelancers will be a critical part of the new operation, supplementing a core staff of about 15 journalists to start.

One of the most crowded among six break-out sessions, “Driving Web Traffic,” led by Wired.com Science Editor Betsy Mason and Knight Digital Media Center Webmaster Scot Hacker, outlined how social networking and HTML coding can be used to help build an online audience.

Click here for the full story.

Whether you’re a newsroom veteran, a newcomer or a seasoned freelancer, surviving in journalism now means taking your future into your own hands.

If you’re ready to upgrade your skills and reinvent your career, join us at our inaugural:

Spring Training for Journalists
9 a.m.-5 p.m. Saturday April 24
SF City College – Ocean Campus
50 Phelan Avenue
San Francisco.

Steve Fainaru

Davia Nelson

A top-notch lineup of speakers and presenters will tackle topics ranging from driving Web traffic to your work to getting started in multimedia, revamping your resume, and overcoming language and culture barriers. The day will open with remarks by Steve Fainaru, the managing editor of The Bay Citizen; our keynote speaker is Davia Nelson, best known for her work as half of NPR’s award-winning documentary duo, the Kitchen Sisters.

You can download a PDF of the full schedule here, and read presenter biographies here.

Best of all: admission is free to all Guild members, including members of Guild Freelancers. San Francisco City College journalism students also get in free; others pay $20 with advance registration, or $25 at the door.

Spring training is sponsored by California Media Workers Guild, the SF City College Journalism Department, and the Bay Area Media Training Consortium.

Send us a note to register. Watch this site for details, or become our fan on Facebook. Here’s a flyer you can download.

By Rebecca Rosen Lum
Freelance Unit Chair

Fred Merkle was a 19-year-old rookie when the (then-New York) Giants played the Cubs on Sept. 23, 1908. Victory appeared certain when a decisive run crossed home plate. But instead of stepping on second base, Merkle made a run for the clubhouse – just as 10,000 fans streamed onto the field.

Where the game ball landed is anyone’s guess. At the Cubs’ behest, the ump declared Merkle out. The game was replayed, and the Cubs triumphed and went on to win the World Series. The National League president who ordered the replay was so excoriated by fans that he committed suicide within the year. Merkle endured heckling for decades afterward, and “Merkle’s Boner” became an indelible part of Giants history.

Dan Fost and his son on research duty.

“One of the fascinating things about baseball is that it is a sport of failure,” said Guild freelancer and die-hard Giants fan Dan Fost, whose “Giants: Past and Present” hit bookstores this month. “If you fail seven times out of 10, you are one of the greats.”

Fost had long nurtured an idea to write a book chronicling the 125-year history of the Giants – heartbreaks, gaffes and glories. When San Francisco magazine published his story commemorating the ball club’s 50th anniversary in the City, it caught the attention of MVP Books, a publishing company with a series of ball club profiles to its credit. They needed it turned around in two months.

No problem: “I had half the work done already,” Fost said. “I had notebooks full of stuff. My whole dining room became a baseball library.”

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