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Articles by David Downs | Email the Author

 

1. Behind the News

   Rock Bottom

   September 15, 2009 09:00 AM

   The strain of “reefer madness” that's been infecting American newsrooms since at least 1911 appears to be abating amid some sobering new economic realities. Salacious stories about cannabis continue to move newspapers just as briskly now as they did in... Continue reading

2. Behind the News

   Notes from Underground

   March 9, 2009 12:54 PM

   Storm clouds threaten downtown San Francisco tonight. The San Francisco Chronicle faces closure. Craigslist and its kind starve the local alt-weeklies with every click. Yet inside the Babylon Falling “revolutionary” bookstore, the warm, musty air roars with people excited about... Continue reading

3. Guide to Online News Startups

   New West

   May 25, 2011 01:12 PM

   MISSOULA, MONTANA — All over the harsh terrain of the Rocky Mountains, local fears of rampant development burst with the real estate bubble, leaving communities to... Continue reading

4. Guide to Online News Startups

   The Connecticut Mirror

   May 25, 2011 01:04 PM

   HARTFORD, CONNECTICUT — A tiny, talented, maybe-a-bit-too-earnest team of ex-Hartford Courant staffers is trying to plug the glaring gaps in Connecticut's political coverage at <a href="http://www.ctmirror.org"... Continue reading

5. Guide to Online News Startups

   Intersections South Los Angeles

   April 5, 2011 01:06 PM

   LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA — When conservative Fox News commentator Bill O'Reilly needs a sparring partner on immigration issues, his producers occasionally turn to a totally under-the-radar... Continue reading

6. Guide to Online News Startups

   Neon Tommy

   March 24, 2011 12:53 PM

   LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA — When swine flu heated up international headlines in 2009, University of Southern California's fledgling news site Neon Tommy discovered some cold... Continue reading

7. Guide to Online News Startups

   Oakland Local

   January 5, 2011 06:00 PM

   OAKLAND, CALIFORNIA — Born from the community outrage that followed a local police-on-civilian killing caught on cell phone and spread across the Internet, one-year-old <a href="http://oaklandlocal.com/"... Continue reading

8. Guide to Online News Startups

   voiceofsandiego.org

   January 5, 2011 05:30 PM

   SAN DIEGO, CALIFORNIA — Exposing the darker side of a sunny beach city, the six-year-old news site Voice of San Diego is having a... Continue reading

9. The Observatory

   Five Inconvenient Truths…

   June 26, 2008 08:57 AM

   In its June issue, Wired dedicated its cover story to the "inconvenient truths about global warming," taking conventionally unconventional looks at ten strategies to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions. The feature aimed to turn tenets of modern environmentalism on their... Continue reading

10. The Observatory

    Garbage Island Diary

    April 25, 2008 12:19 PM

    Fledgling online video Web site VBS.tv scored an environmental journalism coup this month with "Garbage Island" - a quirky, travelogue-documentary about man-made debris floating in the North Pacific Gyre. Currents in that part of the ocean naturally... Continue reading

11. The Observatory

    Neuroscience Reporting, Debugged

    April 14, 2008 03:50 PM

    Within the last month, Wired magazine's Mark Anderson and author Tom Wolfe, in an interview published in the San Francisco Chronicle, did something rarely seen in the manic world of neuroscience reporting. They broke rank with the chorus... Continue reading