Celebration of life for San Diego philanthropist

Good Morning, I’m Emilyn Mohebbi in for Debbie Cruz. It’s Tuesday, May 14th.

Local leaders pay their respects to one of San Diego’s leading philanthropists. More on that next. But first, let’s do the headlines.

San Diego’s next chief of police will officially take over June 7th.

Scott Wahl received final approval from the city council yesterday.

He was chosen by San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria to be promoted to the chief position after current chief David Neisleit announced his retirement.

Wahl has been with the department for decades and currently holds the position of Assistant Chief.

San Diego County leaders will spend this week talking about how to spend billions of taxpayer dollars.

This morning begins two days of budget presentations from departments like maintenance, roads, sanitation, flood control and fire protection.

County budgets for the next two fiscal years are expected to be in excess of 8-billion dollars.

These meetings will help determine how to share that money among the various agencies and departments.

Today’s meeting begins at 10 a-m.

Another session will be held Thursday and these meetings are open to the public.

A prominent figure in San Diego sports during the 2000s has died.

A-J Smith was 75.

His family says he spent the past several years in a battle with prostate cancer.

Smith was the San Diego Chargers general manager from 2003-to-2012 – a period that featured stars like LaDainian Tomlinson, Philip Rivers and Antonio Gates.

Smith’s teams won 98 games over 10 seasons… along with five A-F-C West division titles.

From KPBS, you’re listening to San Diego News Now.Stay with me for more of the local news you need.

A celebration of life was held for the late Joan Jacobs yesterday.Reporter Melissa Mae brings us the remembrances.

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MM: Joan Jacobs was a champion for the Rady Shell at Jacobs Park. Just a day after Mother’s Day the venue welcomed hundreds of community members to her celebration of life. Jacobs died on May 6th at the age of 91.

MM: San Diego Padres Executive Vice President Tom Seidler says the Padres are fortunate to partner with the Jacobs family. 

TS “They just set a high bar for how to lead in San Diego and give back to the community and so we’ve been fortunate to try to follow their lead and help make San Diego the best version of itself.”   

MM: Along with the Rady Shell, the Jacobs family has donated millions of dollars to the the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, the La Jolla Playhouse and San Diego Symphony… Who is dedicating their 2024-25 opening season of Jacobs Music Center to Joan Jacobs. Melissa Mae KPBS News. 

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The Jacobs family are also major donors to us here at KPBS.

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If you’ve walked along the beach lately, you may have noticed clear, oval shapes dotting the shore.

Reporter Katie Anastas (a-NASS-tis) says they’re washing up all along the west coast.

The round, translucent shapes have rings and a thin sail running down the middle. While they might look like plastic, they’re actually a kind of zooplankton [ZOH-plankton] called velella velella, or by-the-wind sailors.

Anya Stajner [sch-TY-ner] studies zooplankton at U-C-S-D’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography. 

Because of that sail they often get blown ashore in times of high shoreward winds and currents. 

Out on the ocean’s surface, velella have a bright blue ring around their edge. Their color fades away once they wash up on shore.

If you’re out there swimming or surfing you should keep your eye out. You can surf right alongside those little sailors. 

Velella catch their prey with tiny tentacles dangling from their bodies. Their stings aren’t usually harmful to humans, but scientists recommend avoiding touching your eyes or mouth after handling them.

Katie Anastas, KPBS News.

In the meat industry, pink slime is known as pieces of cow steamed with ammonia and used as beef filler.

In media circles, pink slime is a term for websites that pose as unbiased local news providers but actually have a political agenda.

Investigative reporter Amita Sharma says two of these sites are in San Diego.

“I know you want to Hildy, but you can’t quit the newspaper business. Oh? Why not? I know you Hildy and I know what quitting would mean to you. And what would it mean? It would kill you.” 

More than eight decades after that scene from the comedy His Girl Friday, the American public has largely quit newspapers. As a result, thousands of newsrooms have gone dark in the past two decades. Today, there are only about 1,200 daily newspapers left in the United States.

Experts say this is bad enough…making matters worse, there is now an equal number of so-called pink slime sites.

“A pink slime site is a news outlet that is presenting itself as a traditionally local-focused news publication, free of bias and free of political ties with human journalists on their team.”

But NewsGuard’s McKenzie Sadeghi says that’s not the full story.

“They also mix in some very partisan content that promotes certain candidates or ideologies that favor the goals of their political founders or backers.”

There are two such websites in San Diego County: San Diego City Wire and sister outlet East San Diego News. At first glance, they look like a traditional newspaper site…with sections for local government, politics, business and sports. But look closer and there are striking differences. There are no human bylines. And a  lot of the articles are actually press releases or content generated by AI.

“They use software that analyzes large sets of data. For example, campaign finance records or unemployment data and turn it into a report, making it specific and tailored to that specific county

San Diego City Wire recently ran stories about the number of local FDA inspections and political committee contributions…Then there are other stories … that reveal a political agenda…like pieces referring to undocumented migrants as “illegal aliens” or disclosing how many teachers in a district pledged to teach critical race theory. 

These are right-leaning news sites.”

The San Diego websites have no phone numbers for their leadership, only a single email address. Emails KPBS sent seeking interviews bounced back. 

Longtime news analyst Ken Doctor, runs a Pulitzer-Prize winning digital news website called Lookout Santa Cruz. He says the ongoing decline of local newspapers has paved the way for pink slime.

“I fear we’re entering a Blade Runner era of the news business, given what artificial intelligence can do in the wrong hands. That is part of what is going to make this pink slime problem far worse very quickly.”

Especially in an election year.

“I fear we’re headed toward a dumpster fire.”

Tim Franklin is a dean at the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University. He says these are  treacherous times.

We have a hyper-partisan environment that we’re all living in. We have hotly contested elections coming up. We have growing news deserts and frankly we need reliable, accurate information to make informed decisions as voters. Pink slime is only gonna muddy the situation.”

Franklin says the antidote to pink slime is a national media literacy campaign to help people distinguish between news AND information designed to mislead.

Amita Sharma, KPBS News.

Mexico’s presidential election is less than a month away and KPBS wants to include our audience in our coverage.

We will hold a virtual conversation later this month, answering your questions in English and Spanish.

To participate, go to KPBS-dot-org and look for the banner at the top of the homepage to click through and submit your question or topic.

Then be sure to join us on the evening of Wednesday, May 29th at 5-30 on YouTube or Facebook for the virtual event.

That’s it for the podcast today.

As always you can find more San Diego news online at KPBS dot org.

Tomorrow on the podcast a Mindfulness Expert will join me for a discussion on mental health as we mark Mental Health Awareness Month.

I’m Emilyn Mohebbi. Thanks for listening and have a great Tuesday.