Photo by Kyan Mahzouf

“It’s the story of the city that radically changed itself and then changed the world.”

Thus began an evening with David Talbot, UC Santa Cruz alumnus and founder of pioneering web magazine
Salon.com. Talbot the journalist took a temporary backseat to Talbot the author at a 4 p.m. gathering in Humanities 1 on May 22.

The focus of the appropriately named “An Evening with David Talbot” (“lecture” would have been overly formal) was Talbot’s new book, titled “Season of the Witch.” In slacks and a black polo, Talbot took the lectern after a brief introduction from humanities dean William Ladusaw.

“I mean this as a compliment — it’s a ripping yarn,” Ladusaw said to the group of about 30, comprised largely of baby boomers, before segueing into a YouTube trailer for Talbot’s book.

“Season of the Witch” details the aforementioned city “that radically changed itself”: San Francisco in the late 20th century. Drawing largely from Talbot’s own experiences as a journalist and his interviews with San Franciscans, the book is a study of the city’s tumultuous history and the catalyzing effect it had on the nation as a whole.

“San Francisco was the cradle of the American cultural revolution, but it was also its coffin,” Talbot said. “So-called ‘San Francisco values’ are still hotly debated — gay marriage, a livable minimum wage, universal healthcare.”

But first, Talbot said, San Francisco had to take care of its own issues, and those issues are one of the book’s focuses.

“The city first had to settle its own civil war; savage murder sprees, mysterious bombing campaigns, the largest cult suicide in history, the AIDS epidemic,” Talbot said. “San Francisco values weren’t born with flowers in their hair, but in blood and strife. [San Francisco] went from a rough-and-tumble hierarchy to a progressive’s vision of Oz.”

Talbot graduated from Stevenson College in 1973. During his time at UCSC he worked on a radical student publication, Sundaze, which folded in 1976.

“At UCSC, I was an angry young activist. I investigated slaughterhouses in Watsonville, I investigated drug murders, I investigated the mayor,” Talbot said. “I didn’t have anyone training me, so the journalism was probably pretty sloppy, but no one ever told me, ‘You can’t do that.’”

A few decades later, Talbot founded Salon in 1995. After working for a variety of publications that included Mother Jones, Rolling Stone and The San Francisco Examiner, Talbot said he just wanted somewhere to work that wasn’t in the mainstream media.

“I cherry-picked [the SF Examiner’s] newsroom, and got the hell out of there,” Talbot said of the then-struggling publication. “The state of journalism today is you either have a patron or you get gobbled up.”

Talbot has thus far managed to avoid both fates.

“Salon is my baby. I’ve done everything I could to keep Salon alive as an independent,” he said.

In some ways, Salon’s trajectory is similar to Talbot’s vision of the evolution of the “city by the bay,” which he defended to audience members who expressed concern over a perceived stagnation and sterility pervading San Francisco.

“I still think San Francisco has this cool artistic underground — it’s rough, but it can be done,” Talbot said. “Bohemia has always had a hard time surviving.”

Illustration by Rachel Edelstein.

Alumni Awarded for Journalism

UC Santa Cruz alumni Dana Priest and Richard Harris were recently given awards for their work in investigative journalism. Long Island University awarded Priest, a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner, with her second George Polk Award for National Reporting. In Washington, D.C., the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) presented Harris, a Crown College alumnus, with a 2010 AAAS Kavli Science Journalism Award.

Harris, a National Public Radio science correspondent and UCSC graduate in biology, accepted his award on Feb. 19. His investigation of the BP oil spill prompted the formation of a federal panel to examine the Gulf of Mexico.

Senior editor Janet Raloff of Science News said Harris’ reporting on the Gulf oil spill is “important and ground-breaking.”

Kavli Science Journalism Award winners receive $3,000 and a plaque at the AAAS Annual Meeting.

Priest, a former Merrill student and City on a Hill Press alumna, received the award with fellow Washington Post reporter William M. Arkin for their story “Top Secret America.” The report uncovered the vast and growing network of national security and intelligence systems after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

2010 George Polk winners will receive their awards at a luncheon at The Roosevelt Hotel in Manhattan on April 7.

Priest and Arkin found counter-terrorism and homeland security involvement in over 10,000 locations across the United States, where some 854,000 people have top-secret security clearances to work on issues for 1,271 government organizations and almost 2,000 private companies.

Both Priest and Harris previously received UC Santa Cruz Alumni Achievement Awards. Priest received her UCSC AA award in 2008, Harris in 2010.

Priest said that formal experience is not essential to success as a professional journalism and offered advice to aspiring journalists.

“I still have never taken a class in journalism,” Priest said. “My advice would be to get out of the office or behind your desk or behind your computer and go immerse yourself in somebody’s world where you would ordinarily never be.”

$1 Million Donation to Baskin School of Engineering

Philanthropists Jack and Peggy Downes Baskin have donated $1 million to the School of Engineering at UC Santa Cruz to create a graduate student support fund, Chancellor George Blumenthal announced at the UCSC’s annual fundraising gala on Saturday.

“This new gift establishes the Jack Baskin and Peggy Downes Baskin Fellowships — the largest fund for graduate-student support in the history of the campus,” Blumenthal said at the benefit dinner.

The nearly 350 attendees raised an additional $160,000 plus to directly aid undergraduate student scholarships.

Jack Baskin has a long history of contributions to UCSC. He gave his first donation of $1 million to open a computer engineering program in 1983. Baskin’s support for the School of Engineering now amounts to more than $9 million.

Student Regent Responds to Sexual Battery Charge

UC student regent Jesse Cheng was arrested on Nov. 4 based on the accusation that he committed sexual battery. Charges were not filed, but his case was forwarded to the Orange County District Attorney for investigation. Cheng issued a statement on Feb. 21, detailing his point of view.

As reported by the Daily Cal, the Orange County D.A. rejected this case due to lack of “corroborating evidence.”

The UC Irvine student was accused by his ex-girlfriend, who claimed the act took place in October of last year. So far, her claims have not been substantiated by evidence, Cheng said.

“I think overall, about the case, it’s important — I’m innocent,” Cheng said. “The D.A. never filed any charges. I’m innocent.”

Cheng’s ex-girlfriend, whom Cheng dated for about a year, offered evidence to the police. However, none of that evidence proved him guilty, so he remains innocent, Cheng said.

The case does not affect Cheng’s standing as a UC student regent. And although UC Irvine lists dismissal from the university among the possible repercussions for committing sexual battery, Cheng will continue his studies there unless he is convicted.

Despite the ensuing threat toward Cheng’s good standing, he maintains his everyday duties as a student regent.

“Right now, I’m just continuing with my student regent work,” he said.

He said that the case is coming to an end, maintaining that he is not at fault.

“The case is over,” Cheng said. “The case is closed.”

The Daily has been getting a lot of attention lately for being the first newspaper produced solely for tablets.

Here’s what the Daily does right: It uses links, videos, and graphics to enhance the reading experience, as well as provide more information. It also maintains its own staff of professional writers, meaning it isn’t just feeding off more legitimate sources to make a profit.

Speaking of profits, it charges readers 99 cents per issue. The method of each issue being “delivered” to tablets is far more seamless than that of news websites, which try to charge for reading certain stories but not others.

But it also has its fair share of problems. For starters, it is only available on iPads, the most expensive tablet on the market, which means it promotes the idea of news as an elitist commodity. And behind all the bells and whistles, the content is more lifestyle than news. There’s nothing inherently wrong with that, except that it brands itself as a newspaper.

The recent merger of AOL and Huffington Post, which coincided with the leaking of documents revealing that AOL placed website traffic far above quality reporting, shows that in the Web’s free-for-all environment, serious content is too often missing — even in supposedly serious news outlets.

But just because the Daily has drawbacks does not mean there is nothing to learn from it. The future of journalism is in new technology, and there’s no reason not to use all resources that are available to give readers the most information and insight. The ideal would be a tablet newspaper with the functionality and sleekness of the Daily and the investigative and intensive reporting of the New York Times. According to online user reviews, the NYT’s iPad app has problems with crashing and isn’t very intuitive or user-friendly, but hopefully it can work towards being improved.

Just because the physical newspaper might soon be a thing of the past doesn’t mean journalism will be, too. With the rise of newspaper apps, the future is looking a little brighter — and well-informed.