Thursday media experiences & tours

Thursday media tours are educational experiences available for students to visit San Francisco landmarks and learn about the city from a media perspective.

Online registration is first come, first served. 

Transportation to media tours, provided by JEA and NSPA, is included in the price. 

Please check in at the media tour desk 30 minutes in advance of your tour and allow up to 60 minutes of travel time to and from the tour.

 

Bilingual journalism at San Francisco State University
10:15 a.m.- 1:30 p.m. Thursday, April 20
$10 / Limit 20

San Francisco State University’s urban campus, in the southwestern part of the city,  is less than two miles from the Pacific coast. Part of the largest highest education system in the country, the California State University system, SFSU focuses on equipping students to thrive in a global society through supporting the diverse community it serves and advancing social justice.Tour attendees will begin with a mini-tour of the campus, listen in on a journalism class, visit the student newsroom and journalism lab, and hear from Professor Lourdes Cardenas about SFSU’s new B.A. in Bilingual Journalism, which prepares students to cover news in Spanish and English, as well as understand the diverse and complex Latino/Latina community. 

 

Chinatown media
9:45 a.m.- 1 p.m. Thursday, April 20
$10 / Limit 20

To dig into the role journalism has played in San Francisco’s Chinese language community, we’ll make our way to the Chinese Historical Society of America Museum before starting our guided tour of the maze of streets and alleys that make up the oldest Chinatown in the United States. Topics addressed include: immigration policies, the 1906 earthquake, the rebuilding of Chinatown and its architecture, and community activism — and coverage of it all by local media. Then we’ll sit for a Q&A with veteran journalist Portia Li, who after three decades with the Chinese-language World Journal two years ago started the Wind, an English and Chinese bilingual weekly newspaper and website serving the Bay Area. Li is known for a 2001 expose of a Chinatown extortion ring, coverage of the 2002 SARS (bird flu) crisis and the 2015 Ellen Pao gender discrimination lawsuit.

 

GLBT Museum
1-3 p.m. Thursday, April 20
$15 / Limit 20
Proof of COVID-19 vaccination required

Local and national press have been witness to key events in the gay rights movement, many of which took place in San Francisco. Our window into that history comes through the GLBT History Museum (in the city’s Castro District), the only full-scale, stand-alone museum of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender media history and culture in the United States. Our docent-led tour focuses on GLBT media history and will also include a chance to look at the current exhibits. GLBT Museum requires proof of COVID-19 vaccination. Transportation: Streetcar

 

KPIX
12:30 p.m. Thursday, April 20
$10 / Limit 15

When it signed on in 1948, KPIX became the first television station in Northern California and the 49th in the country. In addition to its CBS-affiliated content, it broadcasts 35 hours of news each week. In the early 2000s, the station also helped Mike Rowe of “Dirty Jobs” fame get his feet wet in the broadcasting industry as he co-hosted the “CBS Evening News” program. Attendees will tour the broadcast studio as well as have a conversation with reporter David Fehely.

 

KQED
10 a.m.-1 p.m. Thursday, April 20
$10 / Limit 15

KQED Inc., which serves the people of Northern California with a community-supported alternative to commercial media, includes an NPR-member radio station, two PBS member TV outlets, and more. Our 90-minute tour — led by Rik Panganiban, KQED Teach online learning manager — will include a visit to the newsroom, TV studio, radio/podcast recording suites, and public events spaces, and an informal chat with a video editor/producer from the station’s “Above the Noise” video series. Transportation: MUNI bus

 

 

Mission Local
10:45 a.m.- 1:30 p.m. Thursday, April 20
$10 / Limit 15

Originally a project of UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism, Mission Local is an independent news site based in the city’s oldest (and, many say, best) neighborhood: the Mission. Our tour takes us via public transit to Mission Dolores Park, the murals of Clarion Alley and then a neighborhood taqueria, where we’ll chat with Mission Local staff about how they focus on high-impact, enterprise reporting on everything from police reform to corruption at City Hall, housing, and the gig economy. Bonus: Time for individuals to buy lunch in the Mission. Transportation: City MUNI bus and walking 1 mile.

 

Northwestern University’s Medill Campus in the San Francisco clouds
1:15 p.m. Thursday, April 20
$10 / Limit 25
Photo identification required

High up in a San Francisco financial district skyscraper, Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, Media and Integrated Marketing Communication is exploring storytelling at the intersection of media and technology. The Medill satellite campus includes space for the “Bay Area Immersion Experience,” a quarter-long program that gives undergraduates the opportunity to learn from and contribute to San Francisco’s booming entrepreneurial scene. Our visit will include a tour of the facility, a short activity with Medill staff, and a Q&A about a program that focuses on experiential learning areas, such as design innovation, digital communication, technology and culture.

 

Oracle Park
8 a.m.-noon Thursday, April 20
$28 / Limit 70

The San Francisco Giants baseball team, one of the nation’s oldest, has won the most games of any team in the history of American baseball, including the 2010, 2012 and 2014 World Series. This tour takes you behind the scenes, including to the press box and interview room at the heart of the Giants’ home stadium. Transportation: Streetcar.

 

Paly MAC/Stanford d.School
(or “Silicon Valley Design Thinking”)
8 a.m.-3 p.m. Thursday, April 20
$25 / Limit 25

This session will focus on two lighthouse media facilities — one at Palo Alto High School and one at Stanford University. Once dubbed a “temple for the media arts,” Paly’s 22,000-square-foot Media Arts Center, the MAC, opened to fanfare in 2014 as one of the nation’s premier facilities for scholastic journalism programs. Built to promote innovation, collaboration, community, and multi-platform publishing, the building serves more than 500 students daily in (print, broadcast, and digital) journalism, photography, graphic design, and video production. After a talk with Paly MAC faculty and a student-led tour, we’ll stop to buy lunch at the shopping center across the street before grabbing the shuttle to the center of the Stanford campus. A short walk will bring us by the Stanford Daily and to a self-guided tour of the d.School, a leading teaching institute for design and experiential learning that helped inspire the Silicon Valley ethos that pervades the Paly MAC. Our transit-heavy day will start and return with an SF MUNI railway trip and Caltrain ride, and considerable walking. 

 

San Francisco Chronicle
9:30 a.m.-noon Thursday, April 20
$10 / Limit 15

Founded in 1865 by Charles and Michael de Young, and acquired by the Hearst Corp. in 2000, the San Francisco Chronicle is the largest newspaper in Northern California and the second largest on the West Coast. Combined, the Chronicle and its partner website, SFGATE, reach more than 30 million users each month. The Chronicle has been awarded six Pulitzer Prizes for journalistic excellence. Participants will tour the historic Chronicle building — a short walk from the convention hotel — sit in on an editorial meeting and then a Q&A with staff members from various areas of the newsroom.

 

UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism
Noon – 4:00 p.m. Thursday, April 20
$25 / Limit 20

Nestled in the East Bay hills across the water from San Francisco and the Golden Gate Bridge, UC-Berkeley is one of the world’s top public universities and home to a vibrant journalism program with roots deep in the Free Speech Movement. The J-school in Northgate Hall offers a hands-on minor with real world experience in attracting and engaging audiences, core techniques of reporting and writing, specialized reporting skills, video, still photography, audio, social media, and the creation of online multimedia packages. Tour attendees will explore the larger Cal campus and attend a J-school tour and Q & A with the minor program’s director.

 

YouTube
1:30 p.m. Thursday, April 20
$25 / Limit 15

Since it first launched in 2005, YouTube has grown to more than 2 billion monthly users and attracts a generation that has grown up watching what they want, when they want, on any screen. Participants will tour YouTube HQ in San Bruno and participate in a Q&A with YouTube team members involved with content partnership and audience development. Along the way, participants will learn how YouTube supports news organizations and independent journalists.