Today on AirTalk, we speak with Carol Folt, former chancellor of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, who will become USC's 12th president and the first permanent female president in school history. We also look into the health of local news; examine California’s affordable housing crisis; and more.
Interview with new USC president elect Carol Folt
The University of Southern California on Wednesday announced a new school president to usher "a new era" following a series of high-profile scandals that culminated last week with a massive college admissions bribery case.
Carol Folt, former chancellor of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, will become USC's 12th president and the first permanent female president in school history - an announcement that came a week after news of the bribery scandal broke.
Folt will take over USC from interim President Wanda Austin, who stepped in after former President C.L. Max Nikias resigned last summer amid two major controversies: reports that the school ignored complaints of widespread sexual misconduct by a longtime campus gynecologist and an investigation into a medical school dean accused of smoking methamphetamine with a woman who overdosed.
Rick Caruso, chairman of the USC board of trustees, said a lengthy search for a new president led a 23-member committee to unanimously recommend Folt.
With files from the Associated Press
Guest:
Carol Folt, president elect of University of Southern California
Trump’s new executive order has to do with free speech rights on campus -- so why are some 1st Amendment advocates worried?
President Donald Trump is expected to order U.S. colleges to protect free speech on their campuses or risk losing federal funding.
White House officials say Trump on Thursday will sign an executive order requiring colleges to certify that their policies support free speech as a condition of receiving federal research grants.
Trump initially proposed the idea during a March 2 speech to conservative activists. The Republican president highlighted the case of activist Hayden Williams, who was punched in the face while recruiting at the University of California, Berkeley.
Berkeley and other colleges have countered that they already have policies protecting free speech and don't need an executive order.
The new order will not jeopardize schools' access to student financial aid that covers tuition.
Officials say implementation details will be worked out in the coming months.
With files from the Associated Press.
Guests:
Rick Hess, director of education policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative not-for-profit institution dedicated to research and education on issues of government, politics, economics and social welfare
Alexander Volokh, associate professor of law at Emory and chair of the school’s Committee for Open Expression, an on-campus free speech organization
A bellwether? In some areas, there’s not enough local news for Facebook to aggregate
Last year, in an effort to provide its users more local news, Facebook launched Today In, a local news aggregator. The only issue? In many regions, there simply isn’t enough local news to aggregate.
According the Wall Street Journal, the bar to get the aggregator to a city is at least five articles pertaining to that city per day. While that might not seem like a hard ask, Today In has not reached many cities, including high-density areas, which may be a worrisome signifier about the health of local news.
The Wall Street Journal cites research that says one in five papers have closed in the last fifteen years -- and online publications haven’t quite filled the void.
Why is local news on the decline? If the ad revenue model is no longer profitable, what other models have been tried and have been successful?
Guests:
Jane Kirtley, professor of media ethics and law at the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Minnesota
Ken Doctor, media analyst who focuses on the transformation of consumer media in the digital age; author of “Newsonomics: Twelve New Trends That Will Shape the News You Get” (St. Martin’s Press, 2010)
From the Golden State to the Lone Star State: California’s affordable housing crisis and its effect on the job market
California’s economy may be booming, but if it doesn’t solve its affordable housing crisis soon, some employers could leave the state altogether.
According to a recent article in the Wall Street Journal, businesses in industries such as as finance, manufacturing, biotech, and food and beverage are leaving California for states like Texas due to lower taxes and lighter regulation.
Companies are struggling to recruit or promote employees to stay in California due to increasing home prices and rents which are higher on average than anywhere else in the country.
Can California solve the affordable housing crisis? What can California do to keep companies in the state? Give us a call at 866-893-5722.
Guest:
Nour Malas, national correspondent for the Wall Street Journal, where she focuses on economic issues on the West Coast; she tweets
The first-ever California Michelin Guide is coming this summer, and the state tourism board is helping to pay for it
The world’s best-known guide to fine dining, the Michelin Guide, is returning to Los Angeles and expanding statewide this summer, and with a healthy cash infusion from California’s tourism board.
Michelin and Visit California announced the collaboration earlier this month which will expand the Guide’s reach outside of the Bay Area to cover more of California’s diverse food landscape, including restaurants in counties like Monterey, Orange, Sacramento, San Diego, Santa Barbara and yes, Los Angeles too. Visit California will pay $600,000 to Michelin for the expansion, which its president and CEO Caroline Beteta told the restaurant newsletter Family Meal would “underwrite the hard costs of expanding the presence of Michelin inspectors throughout the state,” though she did not elaborate on exactly what the money would fund. There are no other American cities or states whose tourism boards give money to Michelin, though South Korea and Thailand both pay annual fees to create each year’s guide.
L.A.’s history with the guide is fraught, to say the least. Michelin began publishing the guide for L.A. in 2007 only to stop two years later amidst the backdrop of the Great Recession when most Americans cut back on eating out. The late L.A. Times food critic Jonathan Gold, who made a name for himself by focusing on lesser-known, immigrant-owned restaurants instead of the fancier, white tablecloth places one might associate with Michelin stars, slammed the Guide in a 2008 article in L.A. Weekly, calling it “appalling, ignorant of the way Angelenos eat, reading as if it was put together by a team too timid to venture further than a few minutes from their Beverly Hills hotel.” In a 2010 interview with Esquire Magazine, then-Michelin Guide director Jean-Luc Naret only added fuel to the fire when he said “"the people in Los Angeles are not real foodies. They are not too interested in eating well but just in who goes to which restaurant and where they sit."
Are you looking forward to the Michelin Guide’s return to Los Angeles and expansion statewide? Does it matter to you whether the tourism board is paying Michelin for the expansion? If you are a restaurant owner or manager, how much importance do you attribute to Michelin stars? As a diner, are you more likely to eat at a restaurant with a Michelin star? How do you think the Michelin Guide will fit in a city like Los Angeles with a complex food landscape that is home to more hole-in-the-wall, mom-and-pop joints than it is to world-renowned fine dining establishments?
We reached out to Michelin Guides international director Gwendal Poullennec as well as Visit California president and CEO Caroline Beteta to join us, but neither were available to join us at the time we requested.
Guests:
Janelle Bitker, food enterprise reporter for The San Francisco Chronicle; she tweets
Elina Shatkin, food editor at KPCC and the LAist; she tweets
Zot Zot! The big team repping California in this year in the NCAA tournament? The UC Irvine Anteaters
UC Irvine is the only team from Southern California competing in the big dance this year, and only the second time the school has ever appeared at the NCAA tournament.
This comes after Irvine went 30-5 and won 16 consecutive games, claiming victory on more games than any other Division 1 California college basketball team. The 13 seed Anteaters will be competing against 4 seed Kansas State.
Out of the 68 teams going dancing this year, Duke is the number 1 overall seed. The other number 1 seeds include Virginia, Gonzaga and North Carolina. Last year was the first time in NCAA tournament history that a 1 seed, Virginia, was defeated by 16 seed, UNBC. Now, people are wondering if this could happen again.
So how will march madness play out this year? And could UCI be a Cinderella? We’ll find out what the chances are tomorrow morning as UCI and Kansas State face off in San Jose at 11am PST.
Guest:
Adam Grosbard, staff writer for Orange County Register who’s been following the Anteaters and March Madness; he tweets