\n
So, in an effort to demonstrate that journalists are also functioning members of society, I\u2019m going to provide an update on the Pacific Coast Business Times and some of its civic efforts.<\/p>\n
On June 1, Publisher Linda le Brock joined the Ventura County Community Foundation\u2019s annual scholarship awards program, where families and scholarship winners celebrated the first time that VCCF\u2019s grants topped the $1 million mark.<\/p>\n
A small but very satisfying part of the program was the $1,000 Pacific Coast Business Times scholarship given to Thousand Oaks High School senior April Sanchez.<\/p>\n
Sanchez, who was selected by the VCCF Scholarship Selection Committee, is a top scholar who is pursuing a career in business. We will be profiling her in our Latino Business Awards special report on June 23 and you\u2019ll get to meet her at our awards reception on July 20 at the Crowne Plaza Ventura Beach.<\/p>\n
The Business Times created the scholarship fund five years ago through the donation of $1,000 in ticket receipts from our inaugural Latino Business Awards reception. With additional fundraising, we\u2019ve put together about $15,000 in our fund and we\u2019ll be able to provide $1,000 scholarships for many years to come.<\/p>\n
Civic journalism is not easy. We had to balance reporting tough stories with the desire to see our fledgling scholarship effort succeed when the VCCF went through a major restructuring and a review by the state Attorney General.<\/p>\n
But we\u2019re thrilled to see our program launched and VCCF undertaking its biggest scholarship awards day. And our Latino Business Awards this year will honor a number of education leaders from the Tri-Counties, including our \u201cLatino Leadership\u201d honoree, Art Hernandez, vice chair of the Ventura County Community College District.<\/p>\n
In just a couple of weeks at a June 22 luncheon at the Topa Tower Club, we\u2019ll be presenting a keynote address by Eduardo Cetlin, CEO of the Amgen Foundation. He\u2019ll be talking about the foundation and its effort to support science, technology, engineering and math education in Ventura County. Cetlin\u2019s keynote will be just one of the highlights of our annual \u201cChampions in Health Care\u201d program. I can\u2019t give all the details but he\u2019ll be talking about the VC Bio Initiative that\u2019s being put together with CSU Channel Islands and other organizations.<\/p>\n
Finally, the Business Times has been talking to several organizations about ways to improve the visibility of arts and culture organizations in Ventura, Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo counties.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve been encouraged by Business Times Hall of Fame member Sara Miller McCune, and others, to see if there are ways to get area corporations and foundations to support arts and for culture groups to get their message out.<\/p>\n
One way for them to provide funding for these organizations is to participate in our annual Giving Guide alongside health care and human services organizations. We\u2019re also looking at ways for our editorial department to quantify the growing role that arts and culture groups play in the regional economy and talk to experts about what that means.<\/p>\n
The bottom line is that journalism doesn\u2019t take place in a vacuum, it takes place in the context of a community. In an era of heightened hostility between the press and the public, that\u2019s something that should not get lost or overlooked.<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u2022 Reach Editor Henry Dubroff at hdubroff@pacbiztimes.com.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":14546,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"give_campaign_id":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1748","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-latest-coverage"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vccf.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1748","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vccf.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vccf.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vccf.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vccf.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1748"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/vccf.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1748\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vccf.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14546"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vccf.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1748"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vccf.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1748"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vccf.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1748"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}