Sacramento, CA – On Friday, December 4, 2009, the Center for Sacramento History (CSH) will unveil a new photographic exhibition, Red Menace! The Sacramento Conspiracy Trial of 1935. The exhibition documents Communist farm labor organizers on trial in Sacramento for attempting to “overthrow the government.” The evening will include an address about the trial by Dr. Kathryn Olmstead, a professor in the History Department at the University of California, Davis. The exhibition reception with light refreshments begins at 6:00 p.m., while the lecture begins at 7:30 p.m. at CSH (551 Sequoia Pacific Blvd, Sacramento). Tickets are $10.00 a person and must be purchased in advance at CSH or by callin

There are two things about the man in the picture that you would not believe unless I revealed them to you in this article. First of all, the man in the picture is not homeless. He is my brother Frank Nordby who has attended a couple of the Sacramento Press' workshops with me. It is hard to imagine just by looking at his appearance that this man is not only training to qualify for the Boston Marathon but he is also offering a $100,000 reward in his race for justice. Frank has been running as long as I can remember. In fact I remember him running after me as a child whenever I would pull some 'little brother" gag on him. Frank was able to palm a basketball in high school and was actually

The Asian American Journalist Association held it's third annual Photo Showcase and Silent Auction at the 20th Street Art Gallery on Tuesday. The auction benefited student scholarships, journalism training and mentorship programs, according to Chelsea Phua, events coordinator for the AAJA. "We raised $24,000 last year from sponsorships and auctioning photos," Phua said. "We are hoping to match or exceed that amount." The photographs were donated by The Sacramento Bee and The Associated Press. Photos exhibited included president Barack Obama on inauguration day and moving images from the Laura Ling and Euna Lee rally at the capitol earlier this year. "We want to have lots of fun and rai

Today's online edition of The Sacramento Bee featured an interesting story by Phillip Reese, the paper's stat master, who has been putting together a terrific series of interactive maps and charts using data from various state and local databases. Today's was a listing (and slide show) of the most liberal and the most conservative cities in the state, based on data from the Secretary of State's office. According to the charts, the most liberal city (that is, the city with the highest percentage of registered Democrats) in the state was -- no surprise -- Berkeley (only 4.5 percent Republican). The most conservative (highest percentage of registered Republicans) was tiny Canyon Lake, a gat

Some 50 or so people gathered Friday night at Bee reporter Ed Fletcher's East Sac home to say farewell to a couple dozen of the reporters, graphic designers, photographers and editors who were let go during The Bee's most recent staff cuts, this time through layoffs. For most, Friday was their last day. So you will not see the names of many wonderful reporters and photographers in the paper from here on out, and there will be little notice in The Bee's pages themselves. Melissa Nix, Chris Bowman, Florence Low, Brian Baer, Robert Faturechi, Walt Yost, Marty McNeal, Jennifer Morita, Bob Walter, Quwan Spears, Scottt Howard-Cooper, Sandy Louey, Ramon Coronado, Charles Waltmire, Brian Ching, R

The Sunday, March 1, edition of the Sacramento Bee, included an article written by publisher Cheryl Dell entitled "It's not a lack of readers, it's a lack of advertising."  The gist of the article was that despite the Bee's growing readership, advertising revenue has fallen, forcing the paper to reevaluate its business model.  While it's never a bad idea to revisit policies when times get tough, I don't think Dell's column went far enough to acknowledge one of the biggest albatrosses hanging around the Bee's neck : the McClatchy Company. I'm not trying to demonize McClatchy. The problem is that as a profit-seeking business, McClatchy has institutionally different goals and definitions of

Just one work day after union members voted to accept wage cuts and layoffs to postpone even more cuts, The Sacramento Bee started laying off some 128 employees in editorial and other departments Monday morning. Among the names of those getting pink slips today were pop music writer Rachel Leibrock and sports writer Martin McNeal, as well as general assignment reporters Ramon Coronado, Melissa Nix, Walt Yost, sports writer Scott Howard-Cooper, and photographers Brian Baer and Florence Low. And for virtually the first time since the paper started shedding positions nearly three years ago, there were editors among the casualties. Also leaving are IT wunderkind and newsroom gadfly Marco Smo

Another 34 employees of The Sacramento Bee will lose their jobs in an uncoming round of layoffs, after a vote today by the newspaper's union, the Newspaper Guild. The question put to the guild's members asked if they would be willing to take pay cuts of either three or six percent, depending on salary. It also forced employees to accept one unpaid week off per year. Two-thirds of the guild's voting members voted to accept the company's plan, after company management made it clear that an additional 19 guild-covered positions would be lost if there was a "no" vote. The 34 positions already targeted were not going to be saved no matter what the outcome of the vote. According to the Associ

The bloodletting at the Sacramento Bee is about to get much worse. According to an email sent out to Newspaper Guild members at the paper, a meeting this morning that was supposed to wrap up current bargaining got very ugly, very quickly. After the meeting, Guild representative Wendy Mejia posted the following email (written by reporter Jim Wasserman) to Guild members, printed below in its entirety:   Sacramento Bee employees should expect a serious wave of layoffs in early March, as well as other cost-cutting measures now being considered, including wage cuts and mandatory furloughs as McClatchy Newspapers’ financial crisis worsens, company representatives told the Guild’s bargaining

It’s one thing to read in the local paper about the outsourcing of jobs abroad, to India, to the Philippines, and it’s quite another thing to have it happen to you. And if you happen to work for the local paper, well... The Sacramento Bee, under enormous fiscal pressure, is finding some unique ways to cut costs, from offering buy-outs to a hefty percentage of the people who write and edit the paper, to outsourcing the work of the people who design advertising, and currently, to the people who have, for decades, kept track of where the money goes. The money is going to India. That’s the big story. It doesn’t seem right, but it adds up for The Bee’s parent company, McClatchy, which is

As Chuck D. of Public Enemy once asked rhetorically, "How low can you go?" The stock of the McClatchy Company, parent of The Sacramento Bee (where McClatchy has its corporate offices, at 21st and Q), "broke the buck" for the first time Monday, and continued to slide Tuesday. The stock finished at 75 cents a share on the NYSE Tuesday, after dipping as low as 66 cents a share. This, for a stock that was valued at $70.90 just four years ago this week. Stunning. So, as Chuck asked: How low can it go? Presumably, it has to stop somewhere short of ZERO, but really: Who expected it ever to go this low? From $70.90 to 75 cents in four years? That’s a 99 percent drop, using my rough math. Imagin