The New Face of SF Media Party!

Constant Readers,

One of my favorite things about writing in San Francisco is meeting other writers. That's why I'm looking forward to the party honoring the winner of the "New Face of SF Media" contest being sponsored by the Commonwealth Club.

I was nominated to win the contest by my friend Jim (thank you, Jim!). The full list of nominees is here, but I can tell you that it also includes my friends Brock Keeling from SFist and Joe Eskenazi from SFWeekly. If you are so inclined, you can email your votes to mkim@commonwealthclub.org or tweet your pick with #inforumsf.

Voting ends on March 17th. Now the 18th.

Nominees will be at the party, which includes a panel about the future of media (also featuring Brock!) on March 24th at the Commonwealth Club. Details here. Come on out if you can!

-Melissa

Comments

[Matt Stewart]

I'll gladly vote for you and Eskenazi but not Brock.

[Beth Spotswood]

Congratulations! I will be there to support both Melissa and Brock. And @Matt Stewart, will you be attending? I have some things I'd like to say to your face.

[Matt Stewart]

Beth,

I don't know the next time I'll be in San Francisco, but I would welcome a face-to-face meeting with you. Of course, if you make it to Palo Alto, give me a heads up.

I'll expand on why I won't vote for Brock. First off, I stopped reading SFist a long time ago so I don't know if it's changed much. However, one of the reasons I stopped reading SFist is that under Brock's watch, the insightful and breaking political stories that were so common during the Batey/Hao era have all but died. Long gone are the days when SFist made stories that put the Chron and Examiner to shame. In fact, unless you consider gossip about politicians news, Brock doesn't seem to write about politics whatsoever. In addition, I have found that Brock relies far too heavily on "snark" and far too little on substance. Finally, at least for me, what he does write about just isn't interesting or even funny. I'm sorry if saying this offends you but it is what it is.

[Eve]

And yet, SFist under Brock's watch is far more popular, influential, and lucrative than it ever was under Rita and my watch! So, I think Brock's not just doing something, he's doing lots of things far better than Rita and I did.

But I feel very rude discussing this when we should be congratulating Melissa on her nomination!

[Melissa Griffin]

Wow! Looks like I missed all the fun!

Matt, Aside from being the hottest ginger I know, Brock is my friend, and has done a great job at SFist. He's also brilliantly funny, and you may not like his snark but that's the spoonful of sugar that helps the boring medicine of politics go down for most people. (You and me might read it anyway, but we are exceptionally geeky and not representative of society as a whole.)

And anyway, I agree with the Marvelous Eve Batey!! Let's talk more about how cool it is that I got nominated!!

[generic]

Ooh! Ooh! Can we totally geek out and talk about both? Because I think the Brock/Melissa contrast is the most interesting one on that list (representing, as it does, the far left and right poles of snark v. substance.)

I'm voting for Melissa over Brock, so I'll agree that Matt's point is wrong, but for the right reasons. For every version of Matt that SFist lost, it gained 100 versions of me. Gossip about politicians is news in the same way that "letters to editor" is news, amirite? There's a substance to snark, isn't there? I use this Mamet quote over and over but "Gossip is merely the enforcement of social norms." I get 90% of my local news from Appeal & SFGate, but not all news is worth comment or discussion, and it takes a certain personality to facilitate that kind of thing. Who said SFist is the digital office watercooler? Was it SFWeekly? I forgot.

We can talk about why Melissa is awesome too, but that just seems self-evident to me. I don't know if any of the others are even capable of her level of analysis. If Brock died tomorrow, his discussion would continue elsewhere, it would just be fragmented, (minus the je ne sais quoi). If Joe Eskenazi died tomorrow there would be still be a political reporter at SF Weekly. And the Diaries/Eater/Curbed stuff fulfills a niche, but it's not Must Read.

But if Melissa gets hit by a bus, that's the whole ballgame. Does any other major city have a reporter with a law degree? The argument in favor of Melissa is a claim to uniqueness. I can see around corners if I read Sweet Melissa, and it's obvious in conversations when others haven't. (Fucking Matier & Ross aren't gonna dig though that 30 page PDF of Gawdknowshat.) I can tell what's going to happen instead of what just happened because I know the policy. And that's priceless. And since everyone at City Hall (and some in Congress) read SM (holla Jackie!) then the level of discussion is elevated across the board. I have a hard time explaining it, but it feels like the difference between yesterday's news and tomorrow's news.

And is it just me, or is that list of nominees overly broad? What do they mean by "king or queen of SF new media". There's "New Media that happens to be based in San Francisco" and there's "New Media for San Franciscans" and they seem like really different and sometimes non-overlapping categories. Digg/Boing Boing are fun, but they're a galaxy away from Mother Jones/Daily Kos. They have little in common other than a zip area code.

[Brock Keeling]

woo hoo! we rock. hard.

[Matt Stewart]

By the way, Melissa, though I'm happy to vote for you, there is one major knock I have against you. I've already brought this up before but since it's apropos, I might as well bring it up again: though it helps that you are sweet-natured (thus, the name), I find that by generally concealing you personal opinions, what you do write comes across as a bit impersonal and, therefore, less interesting. One could say this is just a shallow observation but I don't think so. Lord knows we need more mainstream left-leaning columnists -- not just at the Examiner but everywhere. Just throwing an idea: why not have a monthly liberal/conservative point-counterpoint with Ken Garcia on the topic du jour? Do you think he has the balls to do it?

Of course, there are advantages to sticking with the facts in a lawyerly manner. If you did start to give your opinions, you would probably find that some of your connections would turn against you and you would have fewer scoops. But I think it's well worth it.

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