Hana El-Samad: ‘A Star in Her Field’: UCSF, March 26, 2013

Hana El-Samad: ‘A Star in Her Field’ To explain her research into the workings of cells, UCSF scientist Hana El-Samad offers an analogy from the world of machines. “Imagine a telephone or Internet network,” she says. “Despite their staggering complexity, packets of information find their destination on these networks and are interpreted correctly.” Cells work […]

Opening Day in Oakland, With Prospects of Doubleheader of Anguish for A’s Fans: New York Times, April 6, 2012

Opening Day in Oakland, With Prospects of Doubleheader of Anguish for A’s Fans As the A’s take the field for their home opener Friday against the Seattle Mariners, the team’s overachieving glory days depicted in last year’s “Moneyball” starring Brad Pitt as General Manager Billy Beane are a warm, if distant glimmer. While Opening Day […]

Baseball’s Greatest Attractions: CNBC.com, April 4, 2012

Happy Opening Day! I really enjoyed assembling this slide show of small baseball-oriented businesses for CNBC.com’s Small Business site, in time for the start of another baseball season.The slide show received wide pickup on the Internet, including on Yahoo Sports, and received excellent traffic. Baseball’s Greatest Attractions The Greatest Experiences in Baseball As the major […]

From Bowling to Bars: Urban Baseball Parks Boost Business: CNBC.com, April 2, 2012

From Bowling to Bars: Urban Baseball Parks Boost Business Twenty years ago, the Baltimore Orioles did something that at the time ran counter to every trend in stadium construction: They built their new ballpark right in the heart of downtown Baltimore. That not only proved beneficial to the Orioles, who continue to draw crowds to […]

Merger With Investigative Unit Likely to Mean Major Shift in Bay Citizen Coverage: New York Times, March 29, 2012

Once a media reporter, always a media reporter. Although I had not written my media column in the San Francisco Chronicle for several years (I left the paper in 2007, but Media Bytes had ended well before that), The Bay Citizen assigned me the story of their own merger; because of  an arrangement they had […]