San Joaquin County Art, Culture & Media Digest

More than half of the U.S. House supports a bill to extend the funds, but it can’t get out of committee.

The Lodi Grape Festival will be the location of the Lodi Comic Con on Saturday, May 11.

An exploration of the evolving mission of school libraries in the Manteca Unified School District.

I thought my journalism and others’ could change policy, perhaps even inspire a New Deal-style response equal to the challenge. Such was my naiveté.

It quickly became clear that Elon Musk’s SpaceX was responsible for the show. The lights were a Falcon 9 rocket carrying 22 new Starlink satellites into orbit. The rocket blasted off from Vandenberg Space Force Base at 7:30 p.m., and it’s trail was visible from Los Angeles to Joshua Tree National Park.

Located at Yosemite and Fremont Avenues in Manteca, the two-story 8,000 square foot building is being renovated to as a meeting and connection space for local teens and is expected to open with limited services summer of 2024.

The March 11 edition of the Los Angeles Times print edition will be its last at the Los Angeles Times Olympic printing plant in Los Angeles.

Capital Public Radio’s Board of Directors elected nine new members, four months after a majority of the board resigned in the wake of a scathing financial audit of the Sacramento-based NPR member station.

Tom Karlo has resigned his position as CapRadio’s interim president and general manager, but will remain on as a “special consultant,” the station’s board of directors announced after an emergency closed session meeting.

Journalism and democracy are undeniably intertwined. As the late media critic James Carey put it, “No journalism, no democracy; but, equally, no democracy, no journalism.”

UC Merced will be highlighted on an Amazon Prime show that showcases universities around the world.

The Grateful Dead have broken the record for the most Top 40 albums to chart on the Billboard 200.

She toured the world wowing audiences, and she captured the public’s imagination for decades. No, not Taylor Swift; Ellen Beach Yaw, also known as Lark Ellen.

James Dean’s last stop before he died in a car crash was at Blackwell’s Corner, a gas station in rural Kern County. His memory isn’t the draw it once was.

A shrink-wrapped Endeavour was hoisted and then carefully placed in its final location at the still-under-construction Samuel Oschin Air and Space Center.

The proposal aims to help working artists become arts teachers in elementary schools.

A combination of tax credits, revenue sharing and coupons could bring stability, writes Steven Waldman, president of Rebuild Local News.

Pasadena is the only California city named a travel destination for 2024 by The New York Times. This comes despite the Los Angeles-area city being just the 45th-largest city in the state.

Philadelphia-based Audacy, which has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy with $1.9 billion in debts, owns six radio stations in the Bay Area. These include 95.7 The Game, KCBS and 102.1 Jams.

Under new state laws, five cities will test cameras to catch speeding drivers and cruising bans will be lifted statewide. The first is supposed to improve road safety, but critics of the second say it will endanger the public.

State audits of the University of California and the California State University found both systems have failed to comply with decades-old state and federal laws mandating the return of Native ancestral remains and cultural artifacts. Only UCLA and Cal State Long Beach have returned a majority of their collections.

It has been an unprecedented year at CapRadio. And one of extreme hardship. 
This summer, CapRadio laid off 12% of its staff. And that was just the start of its financial challenges.

In conversations about the history and present of Sacramento’s LGBTQ+ communities, the Lavender Heights district in Midtown is often the first area to come to mind.

The Tracy Arts Commission has opened a recruitment to fill two openings on the board. The application window will close on Dec. 14.

Tracy Unified School District has officially renamed the Kimball High theater, with TUSD superintendent Rob Pecot bestowing the new name of the Geri Neylan Performing Arts Theatre.

With its hilly terrain, parts of Los Angeles aren’t always the easiest to build in. But that didn’t stop an architect from building a unique structure in Silver Lake.

Hmong people from around the area gathered with their families at the San Joaquin County Fairgrounds recently to celebrate the New Year and Hmong culture with food, dance competitions, volleyball and more.

The San Diego Union-Tribune, which has operated for 154 years, sold to controversial Alden Global Capital last year. It’s not looking great for the paper’s future.

Robert Irwin, an artist and MacArthur genius grant recipient, died in San Diego at 95 on Oct. 25. Michael Govan, who heads the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, offers a colorful retrospective on Irwin's work.

A video released by comic Hasan Minhaj, who grew up in Davis, tackles elements of a critical article that left the impression he had made up or exaggerated racism in his life.

Through this new program, artists, culture bearers, and California Native American tribes will be eligible to receive funding to create artwork throughout state and local parks.

After 18 years of operations, Stockton Arena has a new name. The facility, opened in 2005, was officially named Adventist Health Arena during a ceremony in front of the brand-new 360-degree LED center-hung display board.