Joseph Natividad

I’m attending a luncheon for all the awardees of the Asian American Journalism Association’s 2007 scholarship this Saturday afternoon. The Bay Area chapter of the AAJA is holding the event at the Maharani Restaurant in downtown San Francisco at 1PM. Tickets are available online for $15 to AAJA members and $20 to the general public.

Phil Bronstein, executive vice president and editor of the San Francisco Chronicle, will be the event’s keynote speaker. He will discuss the future of the news industry and the current state that it is in.

This past March, it has been reported that Bronstein called an emergency staff meeting and said that the news business “is broken, and no one knows how to fix it.” I’m curious as to what he has to say about blogging and the Internet’s takeover of the reading audience once devoted to print journalism.

This is quite odd, but I actually know Bronstein best for getting bitten by a Komodo Dragon at the SF Zoo a few years ago. My parents were freaking out when they heard that this had happened to him, which is because they idolize him for his award-winning coverage of the Philippines during the 1980s.

I have to admit — I’m getting quite excited for this weekend. It’s not often that I attend an event honoring teen writers like myself while having the chance of meeting a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist.

I was awarded $3000 by the AAJA based on their criteria of a commitment to journalism, journalistic ability, financial need and scholastic achievement. A sensitivity of Asian American issues was also an important factor to the judges who interviewed me.

In high school, journalism and community service were two of my main activities on the weekends or after school. If you were ever looking to find me once the afternoon bell rang and I wasn’t in the library or in my car on the way home, you could’ve guessed that I was probably stuck editing articles and the layouts of The Peraltan’s latest issue. I was also heavily involved with Building with Books, an organization dedicated to empowering America’s youth through various community service opportunities locally and abroad.