Psst! Wanna a hot tip? Journalism funders, this one’s for you because it is the story of "The Challenge Fund for Journalism," a seven-year effort that helped 53 nonprofit journalism groups learn to adapt to the plunging economy, strengthen their organizations and raise money.
It was 1976, and I was 25 years old and just four years out of journalism school. My boss at the San Diego Union told me to high-tail it out to the San Joaquin Valley to cover the story unfolding in the farm town of Chowchilla.
You’ve heard of biofuels, but how about a newspaper that runs on tofu? That’s the groundbreaking experiment being conducted by the Nichi Bei Weekly, a modest, yet historically significant newspaper that serves the Japanese American community in Northern California.
