Last night, Berkeleyside reporter Emilie Raguso spent ten hours on the ground reporting minute-to-minute on the riots that consumed downtown Berkeley. She didn’t stop to eat or take a bathroom break. She was swatted at with a baton by a police officer, nearly hit by flying glass bottles, and was threatened by rioting activists.
The Berkeleyside team also live-blogged last night’s protests until the early hours, just as we did the previous night. More than 80,000 people turned to Berkeleyside.com to find out what was happening. Our Facebook posts reached 52,900 people, and there are more than 650 comments on our two protest stories — and counting.
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On Monday morning, Raguso was interviewed by Michael Krasny on KQED Forum, and local and national media, including CNN and Reuters, came calling asking for interviews and to reproduce our photos and videos.
At Berkeleyside, we care little about the media around the country that want to pick off our reporting. We do care deeply about providing timely and accurate information to the Berkeley community. There are more protests slated for tonight and Tuesday night. And we’ll be on the case. And we’ll continue to be on the case long after national interest has moved to other stories.
But, especially at times like this, we feel very stretched. We have just one full-time reporter and the three other members of the editorial team who report stories are also handling everything else that is involved with running an independent news operation for a fair size city that punches its above its weight for news.
If you spent time following our (free) coverage over the past two days and you are not a Berkeleyside member, please consider becoming one. A regular monthly payment of whatever you think Berkeleyside is worth to you will go a long way.
We need your help to be able to grow so we do an even better job.
Last week we put out a call to try to reach a goal of 500 current members. We were successful in pulling in 65 members which means we now stand at 447. Can we find 53 more who want to help Berkeleyside continue? Can you help us reach 500?
We thank you.
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