UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism

10/19/2026

🍿 The video for Professor Ken Light's Soul City: Oakland, USA book launch event September 24th is now available to watch on our YouTube channel!

Between 1973 and 1975, Light captured over 9,000 photographs documenting everyday life, labor, faith, and resilience in West Oakland—an archive that remained largely unpublished for fifty years.

Ken reflects on his early career and presents stunning photos from the book, followed by a panel discussion exploring the neighborhood’s history of urban renewal, redlining, displacement, and modern community-led revitalization with cultural anthropologist Noni Session and Professor Bill Drummond and moderated by Dean Michael Bolden.

At UC Berkeley’s School of Journalism, Dean Michael D. Bolden moder...

10/19/2026

🔥 Two episodes from UC Berkeley Journalism’s flagship student publication North Gate Radio on KALX have won College Broadcasters 2026 National Student Production Awards!

“Death, Doulas, and Digital Afterlives,” hosted by Haydee Barahona (’26) and Gabriel Lopez (’27) with reporters Minahil Arif (’26), Sophia Cutino (’26) and Daniela X. Sandoval (’26), won the Best Documentary category.

“Just Transition: The Bay’s Next Chapter?,” hosted by Lenéa Sims (’27) and reporters Caly Plowman (’27), Patricio Provencio (’27), Steffi Puerto (’27), Lizzy Rager (’27) and Zoe Meyer (’27), won 3rd Place in the Best Special Broadcast category.

Go audio Bears and Professor Shereen Marisol Meraji!

https://askcbi.org/2026-nsmc-production-awards/

10/13/2026

🎉 Five UC Berkeley Journalism alums have won 2026 national Edward R. Murrow Awards, among the most prestigious in broadcast and digital news!

The winners were celebrated in NYC last night.

📸 From top left: Sachi Kitajima Mulkey (‘24), Brian Howey (’22), Rafael Roy (’18), Coral Murphy Marcos (’24) and Steven Rascón (’22).

https://journalism.berkeley.edu/2026-edward-r-murrow-awards/

RTDNA UC Berkeley

10/08/2026

HomeRise, one of San Francisco’s largest housing nonprofits, decided last week to dissolve.

The move came amid a San Francisco Chronicle series that got its start at UC Berkeley Journalism. Beginning two years ago, in David Barstow’s Blockbuster Investigations class, Matthew Mitchell (’25) dug into HomeRise under the guidance of Garrett Therolf, Senior Reporter and Contributing Editor at the school’s Investigative Reporting Program.

Earlier this year, the Chronicle’s storied investigations unit, led by editor Ryan Gabrielson, took the story on in partnership with the program. Mitchell and fellow alum Susie Neilson (’19) carried it to the finish line.

Their reporting documented widespread neglect that contributed to resident deaths, alleged sexual assaults by staff and rampant financial mismanagement at an organization that received almost a quarter billion dollars in public funds over a recent four-year period.

City officials must now find new providers for operations and supportive services at 17 complexes that are home to more than 1,500 people.

10/07/2026

🇺🇸 Forbidden Stories Lab at UC Berkeley Journalism: join us for the launch!

🎙️ On October 9, Forbidden Stories and Berkeley Journalism will officially launch the Forbidden Stories Lab at UC Berkeley with a conversation around the and the power of collaborative journalism in protecting stories that matter.

The event will bring together Richard, Founder and Executive Director of Forbidden Stories; Barstow, Chair in Investigative Journalism at UC Berkeley Journalism; Taub Gordon, Climate Researcher and Supervising Attorney at UC Berkeley’s Human Rights Center; and Harrop, journalist and Knight-Wallace Fellow.

The conversation will follow opening remarks by D. Bolden, Dean of UC Berkeley Journalism, and will be moderated by Clemetson, Director of Wallace House Center for Journalists at the University of Michigan.

📅 October 9 | 4–5:15 PM (PDT)
📍 UC Berkeley, North Gate Hall
💻 Or tune in on Zoom

RSVP here: https://journalism.berkeley.edu/event/homecoming-forbidden-stories/

👉 This event marks the launch of a new collaboration between Forbidden Stories and UC Berkeley Journalism: the Forbidden Stories Lab.

This new cross-border investigative hub will coordinate large-scale investigations into sensitive stories facing threats or attempts to silence them, mobilizing newsrooms in the U.S. and internationally to pursue and amplify their reporting.

Working closely with Berkeley Journalism’s Investigative Reporting Program, the Lab will combine UC Berkeley’s expertise with Forbidden Stories’ global network of 300+ journalists and 130 media partners.

👉 Want to help make the Lab’s future investigations possible? Support our mission by making a donation: https://forbiddenstories.org/donate/



Rights Center

09/29/2026

09/23/2026

What happens when a journalist and a teacher take an irreverent dive into landmark civil rights cases? It’s not boring.

If anyone can turn dark assaults on civil rights and dry legalese into accessible, irreverent and inspiring romps through landmark legal cases, it’s audio journalist and Berkeley Journalism Associate Professor Shereen Marisol Meraji and podcast partner, schoolteacher and YouTube creator Matthew Beat. The pair are the hosts of the just-launched American Civil Liberties Union podcast “Let the Record Show,” which explores the defining legal moments for rights and freedoms in the United States. On the country’s 250th anniversary and at a time of sobering threats to civil rights and civil liberties, “Let the Record Show” brings listeners to the people and particulars behind legal battles and big court wins — from Marbury v. Madison to United States v. Wong Kim Ark — that enabled many of the freedoms Americans enjoy today.

Read our interview with Marisol Meraji: https://journalism.berkeley.edu/qa-marisol-meraji-let-the-record-show/

09/17/2026

Don't miss alum Andrew Gilbert's (’98) rave review of Professor Ken Light's new book Soul City: Oakland, U.S.A. and exhibit, in KQED Arts!
..Ken Light knew that his photos capturing the spirit of West Oakland’s Black community would find an audience one day. He just didn’t realize how long it would take.

With more than a dozen books to his credit and a shelf full of awards, Light is one of California’s most eminent photojournalists. But it’s taken half a century for his first Bay Area project to come fully and gloriously to light with the Sept. 22 release of Soul City: Oakland, U.S.A. through Berkeley’s Heyday Books.

The exhibit runs through January 8th in the Reva and David Logan galleries in the hallways of North Gate Hall.

https://www.kqed.org/arts/13993845/ken-lights-intimate-portrait-of-west-oakland-in-the-1970s

UC Berkeley

‘Soul City: Oakland U.S.A.’ captures the spirit of a neighborhood’s Black community in the Watergate era.

09/09/2026

Sam Green's (’93) new film, The Oldest Person in the World, which was a hit at Sundance and has been screening at festivals ever since, is opening in movie theaters: NYC on Sept 10th, at several Laemmle theaters in LA Sept 16th, and all around San Francisco on Sept 19th.

Log-line: A decade-long global odyssey chronicles the ever-changing record holders of the title of oldest person alive. What begins as a portrait of longevity becomes a poignant meditation on the passage of time, the randomness of fate and the joy and profound human experience of being alive.

The reviews are already coming in strong:

"Delightfully insightful...Sneakily profound and unexpectedly personal...Open-hearted without tipping into sentimentality...The best kind of cinematic experience: an entertaining and enlightening 'meaning of life' movie...Green has given his subjects an incredible gift: the kind of immortality only cinema can provide.” – Peter Debruge, Variety

*Find screening dates and info: https://www.theoldestperson.com/screenings

07/20/2026

🎉 Zane Karram and Kelsey Oliver's thesis film "Strangers on Our Land" won best documentary at the Student BAFTA Awards!

The documentary investigates the killing of Raymond Mattia, a member of the Tohono O’odham Nation, by U.S. Border Patrol outside his home in May 2023.

This year’s BAFTA Student Awards had submissions from more than 600 universities globally in the film, games and immersive categories.

“Zane and Kelsey’s commitment to this documentary was inspiring to witness,” said filmmaker and Professor Jennifer Redfearn, director of the documentary program. “The subject matter was sensitive, as was navigating access to the body camera footage. But they directed and produced the film with such thoughtfulness and a strong eye for craft. I could not be more proud of them both, and of the nonfiction filmmaking legacy we’ve built at the school.”

We could not be prouder.

Read our June write-up here: https://lnkd.in/gGdSEkey

BAFTA