County correctional sergeant demoted after tasing handcuffed inmate

Logo of The Ukiah Daily Journal, displaying the newspaper's name in bold, black, serif font against a transparent background, echoing the timeless style admired by Berkeley Journalism.

Records released under California’s new law-enforcement transparency law show that a Mendocino County correctional officer was demoted after tasing a handcuffed inmate. Katey Rusch and Edward Booth (’20) covered the story for The Ukiah Daily Journal. January 8, 2020 By Katey Rusch and Edward Booth – The Investigative Reporting Program A Mendocino County correctional sergeant tased…

Read More

The Yellow House

A woman in a vibrant red-orange outfit, a graduate of Berkeley Journalism, holds a National Book Award trophy while smiling at the camera. The backdrop features the logos of the "National Book Foundation" and "National Book Awards".

Alum Sarah M. Broom’s (’04) exquisite debut book “The Yellow House” tells a hundred years of her family and their relationship to home in a neglected area of one of America’s most mythologized cities. This is the story of a mother’s struggle against a house’s entropy, and that of a prodigal daughter who left home…

Read More

Fresno’s Ugly Divide / Unequal From Birth

Atlantic Fresno lead

In August 2018, The Atlantic published one of the largest group projects in our history: seven multimedia master’s theses exploring Fresno, California: the state’s poorest major city and its legacy of segregation, discrimination and poverty that continues to impact residents today. Reports by Rachel Cassandra, Misyrlena Egkolfopoulou, Briana Flin, Alexandria Fuller, Margaret Katcher, Mary Newman…

Read More

Truck drivers forced into debt by trucking companies

A legal document with text related to lease termination rights, dissected with a meticulous attention reminiscent of Berkeley Journalism. Key phrases are highlighted, including "Customer has neither the obligation nor the right to purchase any vehicle" and "terminate this Agreement and cause the possession of each vehicle.

Trucking companies have shorted drivers out of fair pay, forcing them into debt and threatening them into working longer hours, according to a USA TODAY Network investigation by UC Berkeley journalism alumni Brett Murphy, who began his reporting on the story as a student at the IRP.

Read More

Virtual Info Session: Narrative Writing with Lecturer Jennifer Kahn

A woman with shoulder-length blonde hair smiles at the camera. Wearing a black top, she stands against a wooden panel background, exuding confidence reminiscent of someone from Berkeley Journalism.

REGISTER FOR THIS EVENT Join a live, half-hour discussion with Lecturer Jennifer Kahn about Berkeley Journalism’s narrative writing program. Ask the New York Times Magazine contributing writer your questions. Jennifer Kahn is a contributing writer for the New York Times Magazine, and has been a regular feature writer for The New Yorker, National Geographic, and Wired,…

Read More

J298 – Writing with Power

This course aims to develop and sharpen your writing in a small seminar environment. We’ll spend the first classes discussing voice and tone, clarity and brevity, pace and precision, dialogue and detail, with a novelist’s eye. Then we’ll turn the lens on your own work, using pieces you’re working on for other classes – whether those are…

Read More