About:
Berkeleyside is Berkeley, California’s independently owned local news site. We report on the extraordinary diversity of people, issues, events, food and environment in our city on the Bay.
Launched in 2009, Berkeleyside was founded and is produced by three veteran journalists – Lance Knobel, Tracey Taylor and Frances Dinkelspiel – along with a team of community contributors.
Our strength is our community and the engaged – and always fascinating – citizens of Berkeley.
Read our stories, follow us on Twitter and become a fan on Facebook.
Partners:
Berkeleyside is proud to have editorial partnerships with:
Contact Us:
If you want to contribute to Berkeleyside, have a tip, some ideas you want to share, or would like to report an error, please email us at:
Or you can email the three Berkeleyside founders individually:
Lance Knobel: lknobel@gmail.com
Tracey Taylor: traceyktaylor@gmail.com
Frances Dinkelspiel: fdinkelspiel@gmail.com
Founders:
Lance Knobel (co-founder) is an international consultant and professional writer. In 1999-2000 he was Director of the Programme of the Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos. He was also Editor-in-Chief and Managing Director of World Link, the magazine of the World Economic Forum. He was an Adviser in Prime Minister Tony Blair’s Strategy Unit in London. His journalism credentials include being Editor-in-Chief of Management Today, the leading business magazine in Britain and founder and Editor of Designers’ Journal in Britain. He has published four books on architecture and design. His blog, Davos Newbies, has been running since 1999. lknobel@gmail.com
Frances Dinkelspiel (co-founder) is a professional journalist and author. Her book, Towers of Gold: How One Jewish Immigrant Named Isaias Hellman Created California, published in November 2008, is a San Francisco Chronicle bestseller. Frances spent more than 20 years in the newspaper business, working as a reporter for the Syracuse Newspapers and the San Jose Mercury News among others. Her freelance work has appeared in the New York Times, People Magazine, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Miami Herald, the Detroit Free Press and San Francisco Magazine. Her blog, Ghost Word, covers books and literary events in the Bay Area, and she writes a City Brights blog for the San Francisco Chronicle. fdinkelspiel@gmail.com
Tracey Taylor (co-founder) is a professional freelance writer and editor.
Her writing has been published in The New York Times, the Financial Times and the San Francisco Chronicle. Her articles include business stories, features on food, homes and architecture, as well as profiles and interviews. Tracey has worked as an editor for various business-to-business magazines and at the Financial Times, as well as for private clients, including non-profits and authors. She has edited two books — and worked as a professional blogger.
traceyktaylor@gmail.com
Contributors:
Sarah Henry is a professional freelance writer with two decades worth of journalism experience. Sarah worked for the Center for Investigative Reporting and at Health-Hippocrates magazines. She is also a former senior editor at Caring.com. Her freelance stories have appeared in the Los Angeles Times Magazine, The Washington Post and San Francisco Magazine. She muses about good food matters on her blog Lettuce Eat Kale. Sarah is a contributor to Civil Eats and KQED Bay Area Bites.
In 2011 Sarah won the Karola Saekel Craib Excellence in Food Journalism award, in part for her fine writing and reporting on Berkeleyside.
John Seal A movie connoisseur with a penchant for natty hats who lives in Oakland, writes a weekly film recommendation column at Box Office Prophets, as well as a column in The Phantom of the Movie’s Videoscope, an old-fashioned paper magazine, published quarterly. He also writes regular film reviews for IMDB which can be read here.
Andrew Gilbert, who was born and raised in Los Angeles, covers a wide range of musical cultures, from Brazil and Mali to India and Ireland. A Berkeley-based freelancer, he contributes features on jazz and international music to numerous publications, including the San Jose Mercury News, Boston Globe, San Francisco Chronicle, Seattle Times and Los Angeles Times.
His column covering the Bay Area dance scene, Dance Card, runs monthly in the Contra Costa Times. And his CD reviews air regularly on KQED’s “California Report”.
Nancy Rubin is a long-time Berkeley area resident who moved here from her native Los Angeles to attend UC Berkeley, a family tradition begun in 1929. She taught for 25 years at Berkeley High School, then worked at Drake High in Marin County. Nancy authored the book Ask Me If I Care: Voices from an American High School.
Since retiring in 2002, Nancy has travelled extensively, honing her photography skills. She specializes in candid shots, capturing people being themselves and the emotions of the moment.
We want Berkeleyside to reflect the passionate, diverse voices of Berkeley, but we also want it to remain a place of civility and respect for other people. Guidelines for comments are simple: be brief, be relevant, be informed, be polite. We screen comments from first-time users before they are published. We will delete or censor any comment that:
- is abusive
- is off-topic
- contains ad-hominem attacks
- promotes hate of any kind
- uses excessively foul language
- is blatantly spam
Repeat offenders will be banned from commenting on the site.
Notes for Contributors:
Berkeleyside thrives through its vigorous community of readers and contributors. Many of our readers are also contributors: offering comments, sending in pictures, writing posts for the site. At this early stage in the site’s development, we are going to be rather deliberate about bringing on new writers.
If you’re interested in doing more than commenting, we expect our posts to adhere to the same standards we demand of our comments. Here are some other guidelines that should be helpful.
We love people that want to specialize. If you, for example, want to attend all of the meetings of the Berkeley school board and report on them, that would be hugely valuable for Berkeleyside. If you want to take photos of the best front gardens in Berkeley and post them to our site, we’d love it.
We want you to be transparent. If you have a financial interest or a friendship or an enmity that is spurring you to write something, you should tell the readers.
Strive for accuracy. Try to get your facts right. If something is wrong, we want to correct it as soon and as visibly as we can.
Contributors retain the copyright to their material unless otherwise specified.
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