Over the phone, Olantis Livingston’s gravelly voice is tinged with fear. In addition to a viral pandemic, the 46-year-old must confront a sudden loss of income. Livingston has sold Street Spirit, a Berkeley newspaper covering local homelessness issues, for 16 years.
Posted on April 2, 2020 - 12:44pm
In 2012, William Drummond had begun to lose faith in journalism. A changing media landscape in the age of the Internet had led to what he saw as an abandonment of the fundamentals. So when the Berkeley journalism professor was invited to teach a class at the San Quentin State Prison and become an advisor at the San Quentin News, the renowned paper published by inmates, he saw an opportunity to do something meaningful and decided to put his students to work at the paper as well.
CALIFORNIA magazine is seeking full-time interns to work on our award-winning quarterly print publication and general interest website starting in February of 2020.
Are you enthusiastic about getting coffee?! Running errands?! Doing senseless busy work for no pay that won’t help your career in the future?!
That’s great! But do it on your own time, because it won’t happen when you’re a CALIFORNIA magazine intern.
Posted on January 23, 2020 - 4:53pm
In May of last year, Laurence Du Sault and Katey Rusch stood hunched over a single desk in a records room in a courthouse in Lancaster, California, carefully parsing and then photocopying court files they had pulled on numerous police officers convicted of crimes. No chairs and no breaks, they had already overstayed the window during which they were supposed to have access to the files. When their visit was complete—one of dozens of trips to courthouses they had made that spring and summer—they left with copies of pages from 13 case files.
Posted on January 8, 2020 - 1:43pm
Here’s the thing: The climate is warming, our population is growing, resource consumption is surging, and it isn’t looking so great for us—or our fellow earth-dwelling organisms. Speaking of which, the UN just released a report warning of “unprecedented” decline in environmental health and the threat of imminent extinction for some 1 million species.
I know, you’ve heard it a thousand times. Those environmental journalists just won’t leave you alone!
Posted on June 20, 2019 - 3:30pm
It was more Keystone Cops than Law and Order. On May 10, wielding a sledgehammer and drawn guns, San Francisco police raided the apartment of Bryan Carmody, a freelance videographer who had leaked a police report on the death of popular and progressive public defender Jeff Adachi. The confidential account contained salacious hints of drug use and extramarital sex.
“There’s a message implicit in the denouement of this affair, and it’s this—messing with the press carries risk.”
Posted on June 20, 2019 - 3:29pm
Bright, sherbet colors form the palate of Wesaam Al-Badry’s newest exhibit, a series of portraits that features Muslim women in traditional garb—with a twist. Instead of the usual neutral-toned veil, the women don designer scarves, made by brands like Gucci and Chanel, that have been repurposed as high-fashion niqabs.
Posted on January 18, 2019 - 3:41pm
Chris Beale doesn’t call himself a photographer. Or a journalist. Or an activist. When asked his profession, the 42-year-old is quiet for a moment before replying, “Gardener. I’m a landscape gardener.”
Posted on December 24, 2018 - 7:02am
With a wide smile and a penchant for laughter, Pulitzer-prize winning journalist Geeta Anand is hardly as intimidating in person as she seems on paper. From her start at Cape Cod News, a free weekly newspaper, she’s gone on to cover everything from local courts and cops, to biotechnology and business, to foreign correspondence in South Asia, most recently for The New York Times. Her 2006 book The Cure: How a Father Raised $100 Million—and Bucked the Medical Establishment—in a Quest to Save His Children, was turned into a CBS movie starring Harrison Ford.
Posted on December 17, 2018 - 3:22pm
For most of the last ten years, this spot has been home to my 500-plus-word personal essays—somewhat eccentric attempts to lure readers into the magazine by riffing on the current theme. Themes that have included, among the 43 issues, global warming, electioneering, music, war, food, and power.
For a journalist it seemed the ultimate dream gig: working for the Great Gray Lady herself, the New York Times—but operating from a lovely California beach town, not the dreary main newsroom in Manhattan. And indeed, Mike McPhate appreciated his position as producer of the Times’ newsletter, California Today. He had, after all, paid his dues.
Posted on May 22, 2018 - 5:06pm
Two journalists who’ve spent varying amounts of time teaching their craft at Cal give themselves an assignment that, in the end, blows away that well-worn rubric of “who, what, where, when, why.”
They are Michael Pollan, famous for his smart writing about food, and Don Lattin, a.k.a. me, known for my reverently irreverent writing about religion. Pollan and I found a subject that falls within each of our “beats,” a magic mushroom that offers the omnivore a tantalizing glimpse of God.
Posted on May 2, 2018 - 4:27pm
The North Bay fires were national news mere hours after they ignited early in the morning of October 9. The dawn sun, glimmering wanly through the pall of smoke cloaking Sonoma and Napa Counties, illuminated the smoldering ruins of hundreds of homes. No relief was imminent: the hot, dry winds that had sent the flames howling from Calistoga to Santa Rosa continued unabated, and the forecast was for more of the same. This was a natural catastrophe on the scale of Hurricane Katrina—possibly worse.
Posted on April 25, 2018 - 4:31pm
Earlier this month, the New York Times published its first feature story with augmented reality, or AR, depicting 360 degree models of Olympians suspended in action: a figure skater frozen in the middle of his quadruple jump, a speed skater paused during the sharp angling of a turn.
Posted on February 20, 2018 - 12:55pm
The 50th anniversary of iconic rock magazine Rolling Stone arrived in November, and the party was long and loud. Origin stories have festooned the magazine and its website; a coffee table book appeared in May; Joe Hagan’s biography of cofounder Jann Wenner, Sticky Fingers, was published in October; and an HBO documentary is scheduled for November. To keep things interesting, Wenner announced that he plans to sell his company’s stake in the magazine, prompting a round of retrospective articles in The New York Times and elsewhere.
