LiveTalk is The College Preparatory School's evening lecture series for parents, students, and the community. Join us for these engaging, thought-provoking lectures by local and national experts and celebrities on intriguing topics and current events.

THE DEATH AND REBIRTH OF LOCAL NEWS

Thursday, February 8, 7:00 – 8:30 pm at College Prep’s Buttner Auditorium
On February 8, the College Preparatory School Parents' Association will host a LiveTalk panel featuring four extraordinary guests at the heart of the rebirth of local news.
 
To save your seats, please register now. Doors open at 6:30 pm for light refreshments and mingling, panel begins at 7:00 pm.
 
Tickets:
Free: Current College Prep Students, Faculty, and Staff
$15: College Prep Parents, Alumni Parents, and Alumni
$25: Non-College Prep Community Members
 
Local news is the lifeblood of democracy, but that blood is running dry. Between 2005 and the end of 2024, the U.S. will have lost a third of its newspapers and two-thirds of its journalists. Of the great newspapers that once ringed the San Francisco Bay – the San Francisco Chronicle, Oakland Tribune, and San Jose Mercury News, along with the Contra Costa Times, Marin Independent Journal, and Vallejo Times-Herald – only the Chronicle survives as a full-scale newspaper. The rest are owned by the hedge fund Alden Global Capital, which has bought hundreds of American newspapers, slashed their staffs and is now squeezing the last bits of revenue out of them.
 
Yet a new generation of news sources is rising fast – news sites funded by national, community, and family philanthropies, which in 2023 committed more than $500 million to support local news. California is teeming with nonprofit news sites, including local news sites like Berkeleyside, statewide policy sites like CalMatters, and national issues sites like KFF Health News, along with sites like El Tímpano serving communities historically ignored by the media.
 
Is nonprofit news sustainable? Can the model serve the full civic information needs of citizens, both in the Bay Area and in regions with little local wealth and sparse populations? Can these sites deliver local and regional news in a way that is relevant to the TikTok generation? Or are we heading into a near future where only well-funded special-interest groups like property developers and public employees’ unions are informed and engaged enough to influence local decision making?
 
Our panelists include:
 
Martin G. Reynolds is co-executive director of the Maynard Institute for Journalism Education, former editor-in-chief of the Oakland Tribune, and former director of Reveal Investigative Fellowships at The Center for Investigative Reporting. He conducts Fault Lines diversity training programs for media companies and colleges and universities, and is co-founder of Oakland Voices, a community storytelling project that trains residents to serve as community correspondents. He began his reporting career in Oakland covering economic development, crime and general assignment. Martin views journalism as a public trust and is concerned about journalistic redlining happening in certain communities due to industry turmoil, mergers and acquisitions.
 
Katherine Ann Rowlands, publisher of Bay City News, founder of LocalNewsMatters.org, president of the board of the First Amendment Coalition and co-founder of Women Do News. Bay City News, where she began her career as an intern and which she bought in 2018, has expanded to cover news in 12 counties 24/7, supplying trustworthy, original journalism for media ranging from TV and radio to legacy newspapers to start-up digital outlets. Its nonprofit affiliate LocalNewsMatters.org has trained more than 40 paid interns and published thousands of stories about arts and culture, equity, demographics, the environment and civic life that would otherwise not be told, and partnered with other nonprofits to bolster the information communities need to strengthen democracy.
 
Madeleine Bair founded and leads the civic media organization El Tímpano to reach Bay Area residents who have never had robust access to local news—the region’s Latino and Mayan immigrants, many of them day laborers, house cleaners, caretakers, and fast food workers, living in one of the world’s costliest regions. El Timpano’s unique model of public service journalism delivers news by text message on issues relevant to its audiences, including combating anti-vax disinformation, addressing rumors of ICE raids and reporting on illegal housing evictions. On December 18, the MacArthur Foundation named El Tímpano one of the first recipients of $48 million in grants to fund nonprofit local news, as part of the new Press Forward initiative. Support from nearly two dozen foundations has enabled El Tímpano to grow from a single-person start-up into an established organization with a full-time staff of 12. The organization has also built a revenue stream from public agencies and nonprofit service providers who work through El Timpano to communicate with hard-to-reach audiences. 

Geoffrey King is founder and executive editor of the two-person nonprofit news outlet Open Vallejo, president and CEO of the Informed California Foundation and a First Amendment litigator. Geoff’s reporting on Vallejo’s extraordinarily high rate of civilian shootings by police revealed the “Badge of Honor” ritual, in which Vallejo police officers would bend in a corner of their star-shaped badges for each citizen they killed. In 2019, Open Vallejo reported, nearly 40 percent of Vallejo’s police officers had been in at least one shooting, and more than a third of those had participated in two or more.
 
Please Note: Folks may choose to mask. If someone is symptomatic, they should stay home, even if testing negative for COVID-19.
 

2023-24 past events

List of 1 items.

  • COLLEGE SPORTS FOR COLLEGE PREP GRADS—THE INSIDE STORY

    a group of people smiling
    A panel of College Prep Alumni who played competitive sports in college, describe what the experience was really like. What did they gain and sacrifice, and were the benefits worth the costs? Did training and travel detract from academic and other college goals? D1 vs. D3? What do they wish they knew in high school?

2022-23 past events

List of 4 items.

  • COLLEGE SPORTS FOR COLLEGE PREP GRADS—THE INSIDE STORY

    A panel of College Prep Alumni who played competitive sports in college, describe what the experience was really like. What did they gain and sacrifice, and were the benefits worth the costs? Did training and travel detract from academic and other college goals? D1 vs. D3? What do they wish they knew in high school?
     
  • Democracy and Distrust in Artificial Intelligence

    A talk by Sonia Katyal, Associate Dean and Roger J. Traynor Distinguished Professor of Law, UC Berkeley

    Since the release of ChatGPT less than 5 months ago, talk about AI—its promise and perils, and how it will shape, and perhaps threaten, our world—is everywhere. Professor Katyal has been studying these issues for years and will discuss how the rise of AI is challenging how we think about creativity, trust, and prediction, and why AI is already raising questions about the future of civil rights, the rule of law, and democracy. She will also talk about what we can do to address some of the challenges posed by AI as the technology takes an increasingly central role in an uncertain future.

    During the Obama administration, Katyal was selected by U.S. Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker to be part of the inaugural U.S. Commerce Department’s Digital Economy Board of Advisors. 
  • The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence

    A Talk by Seth Shostak, Senior Astronomer at the SETI Institute

    Are we alone in the universe? That seems increasingly unlikely given the recent revelation that there could be more than a trillion planets in our own Milky Way galaxy. Yet the scientific hunt for extraterrestrial life is now into its sixth decade, and we still haven’t discovered any cosmic company.
     
    New approaches and technology for discovering extraterrestrial life provide hope that we could uncover evidence of sophisticated civilizations within our lifetimes. If so, what might the aliens be like?
     
    Seth Shostak, Senior Astronomer at the SETI Institute, discusses one of the most profound questions humanity can ask: Is there anyone out there? Seth is host of the SETI Institute’s weekly science radio show, “Big Picture Science.” He is a recipient of the Carl Sagan Award for the Popularization of Science, and the Klumpke-Roberts Award for outstanding contributions to the public understanding and appreciation of astronomy.

    Feel free to read his recent Wall Street Journal essay Could the Government Really Cover Up UFOs?, about an upcoming report expected from U.S. military intelligence agencies on what they know about 144 "Unidentified Aerial Phenomena."
  • Performing Arts and The Pandemic

    Live Renaissance chamber music concert and discussion on how COVID-19 has impacted music and the arts

    With Elisabeth Reed, Julie Jeffrey, David H. Miller, Farley Pearce, and soprano Jennifer Paulino. Moderated by Andrew Luchansky.

    A live performance of early music by a viola da gamba consort and voice ensemble. The event is a rare opportunity to hear a group of internationally renowned artists—Elisabeth Reed P '25, Julie Jeffrey, David H. Miller, Farley Pearce, and soprano Jennifer Paulino—perform a variety of exquisite Renaissance compositions in the intimate setting of the Buttner Auditorium. Cellist and professor of chamber music, Andrew Luchansky P '25 will moderate a conversation with the musicians to discuss their backgrounds, passion for the viola da gamba, and this unusual instrument's singular repertoire. The group will also discuss the unprecedented challenges the pandemic created for performing artists, and what is ahead for the live music scene in the Bay Area and beyond.

    ARTIST BIOS:

    Elisabeth Reed, a College Prep parent, teaches Baroque cello and viola da gamba at University of California at Berkeley and at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, where she is co-director of the Baroque Ensemble. A soloist and chamber musician with Voices of Music, Archetti, Pacific Musicworks, and Wildcat Viols, she has also appeared with the Smithsonian Chamber Players, the American Bach Soloists and the Seattle, Portland, Pacific, and Philharmonia Baroque Orchestras. She can be heard on the Virgin Classics, Naxos, Focus, Plectra, and Magnatunes recording labels and has many HD videos on the Voices of Music Youtube channel. She is a Guild-certified practitioner of the Feldenkrais Method™ of Awareness Through Movement™ with a particular interest in working with musicians and performers. 

    Julie Jeffrey has been playing the viol since 1976. She has performed throughout the U.S., in Canada, Mexico, Europe and Australia, and teaches privately and at workshops in the U.S. and abroad. Ms. Jeffrey is a founding member of Sex Chordae Consort of Viols, Wildcat Viols, Antic Faces, and The Barefoot All-Stars, and she embodies half of the viol duo Hallifax & Jeffrey. She is co-founder and co-director of Barefoot Chamber Concerts, and has served on the board of directors of The Viola da Gamba Society of America, The Pacifica Viola da Gamba Society, and The San Francisco Early Music Society.

    David H. Miller is a musicologist and performing musician, and Assistant Professor of Practice in the Department of Music at the University of California, Berkeley. David holds a BA in music from Harvard University and a PhD in musicology from Cornell University. His research focuses on modernist music, particularly that of Anton Webern, and its performance and reception in the United States. As a performer, David plays a variety of early bowed bass instruments, including the viola da gamba, violone, and Baroque double bass, focusing on the music of the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries. He has worked with ensembles such as the Handel and Haydn Society, Trinity Wall Street, New York Baroque Incorporated, and the Arcadia Players, and collaborates frequently with the Renaissance band Seven Times Salt. 

    Farley Pearce is a San Francisco based freelance musician who plays cello, viols, violone, and contrabass. He has performed with the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra and the baroque orchestras of Portland, Vancouver, and Los Angeles. He appears in many YouTube videos with the Voices of Music ensemble.

    Jennifer Paulinosoprano, is celebrated for her “graceful yet powerful” and “sensitive and clear” voice (San Francisco Classical Voice). Specializing in baroque, contemporary, and chamber music, Ms. Paulino has performed as a soloist in Australia, Denmark, Poland, The Netherlands, and across the U.S. In 2012, she was the Cal-Western regional winner and a national finalist in the NATS Artist Award Competition. Ms. Paulino is on faculty at the San Diego Summer Choral Festival, and holds degrees from The Royal Conservatory of The Hague and Westminster Choir College.

    Andrew Luchansky, a College Prep parent, is professor of cello and chamber music at the California State University Sacramento, School of Music. He has performed at Lincoln Center and Carnegie Hall in New York as principal cellist in the Musica Sacra orchestra and in Spain, Italy and Denmark as a chamber musician and soloist with Camerata Deia. As a member of the Classical Band he performed in Germany at the Schleswig-Holstein music festival and recorded for Deutsche Grammophon. Mr. Luchansky teaches string pedagogy at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music and cello and chamber music at the SF Conservatory Pre-College. He is the founder/director of the Sacramento State String Project, a nationally recognized service-learning program that provides string instrument lessons to underserved children from Sacramento. He is also the founder and artistic director of The New Millennium Series which presents eminent concert artists from all over the world.


2021-22 past events

List of 3 items.

  • Artificial Intelligence: Opportunities and Challenges

     
     
    A discussion with Nand Mulchandani, Chief Technology Officer to the U.S. Department of Defense Joint Artificial Intelligence Center. Mr. Mulchandani will discuss the application of Artificial Intelligence, including machine learning, and how it is revolutionizing entire industries. Beginning with a short introduction and history of this technology and the current state of applying AI to a broad spectrum of use cases, Mr. Mulchandani will also discuss current challenges including data issues such as bias, the ethical deployment of this technology, testing, and adversarial attacks. Finally, he plans to discuss the possible future direction of this technology including narrow vs. general AI and the fear of "killer robots" taking over the planet.

    Nand Mulchandani serves as the Chief Technology Officer of the U.S. Department of Defense Joint Artificial Intelligence Center. He brings more than 25 years of experience in the technology industry as a serial entrepreneur and senior executive in the enterprise infrastructure and security software industries to his service in the government to help transform the Department of Defense in adopting next-generation AI and software technologies. Prior to government service, Mulchandani was at the Harvard University John F. Kennedy School of Government and Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business, and remains a non-resident Fellow at Harvard’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. Mulchandani holds a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science & Mathematics from Cornell University, a Master in Science in Management from the Stanford University Graduate School of Business, and a Master of Public Administration from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.
  • CRISPR And Sequencing Covid-19 Variants



    A discussion with computational biologist and senior scientist, Stacia Wyman, as she talks about her work on a CRISPR-based therapeutic for Sickle Cell Disease, which has recently been approved for a clinical trial.  In the past 18 months working at the Innovative Genomics Institute at UC Berkeley, she has also focused on sequencing COVID-19 genomes to monitor the evolution and spread of COVID-19 variants. 

    Stacia Wyman is a computational biologist and senior scientist at the Innovative Genomics Institute at UC Berkeley. She holds a B.A. from Smith College, an M.S. from the University of Wisconsin at Madison, and a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Texas, Austin. Her postdoctoral work at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center focused on discovering cancer biomarkers in tumor genomes. Prior to the IGI, Dr. Wyman’s work focused on discovering biomarkers of neurodegenerative disease in families with Huntington's and Parkinson’s disease at the Gladstone Institutes.
    Read More
  • Vincent Chin: Racial Violence and the Role of Storytelling


    A moderated discussion of the facts and legacy of the Vincent Chin case, with filmmakers Alle Hsu and Anthony Ma, and U.C. Berkeley's Acting Director of the Interdisciplinary Studies Program (and College Prep parent), Rakesh Bhandari. Hsu and Ma will share their in-depth research—interviews of key players and review of court transcripts in the Chin case—for a narrative series they are developing on this historic moment in civil rights history.
     
    In June 1982, Vincent Chin, a Chinese American celebrating his impending marriage, was killed by two white men in Detroit—a Chrysler plant manager and his stepson, a laid-off autoworker. A witness overheard one of the killers blaming the Japanese for taking American jobs. The no-jail-time sentence the killers received in state court led to grassroots activism by Asian American communities, and a federal civil rights prosecution.
    Read More

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