Join us for a conversation with veteran journalist Miranda Spivack, who has long written about government secrecy and the harm it inflicts on the nation. 
She will be joined by Kat Rowlands, journalist and publisher of the Bay City News Foundation and Local News Matters, for a discussion about Miranda’s new book, 
Backroom Deals in Our Backyards: How Government Secrecy Harms Our Communities and the Local Heroes Fighting Back
. The book is the winner of The New Press's Studs and Ida Terkel Prize for highlighting issues and communities often overlooked by the mainstream media.
Together, they’ll explore how government secrecy affects communities across the country and how local journalism plays a critical role in uncovering the truth. The book also serves as a practical playbook for aspiring activists ready to push back against government overreach.
Biographies:
Miranda Spivack
State Secrets" series for 
revealnews.org
 forms the basis of her book 
Backroom Deals in Our Backyards
 
about the underreported rise in state and local secrecy, seen through the eyes of five accidental activists who are confronted with barriers to information but find a way to overcome them and bring important change to their communities. The book was published in May by The New Press. The series was a winner of the Society for Professional Journalists' 2017 Sunshine Award.Miranda spent 20 years as an editor and reporter for 
The Washington Post
, where as an editor on the Metro Desk, she designed a groundbreaking plan for local news coverage that resulted in deep coverage of under covered communities in the District, Maryland and Virginia. While at the 
Post,
 Miranda won several journalism awards, including First Place for Local Government Reporting in 2013 from the Maryland, Delaware, DC Press Association. Her stories, which she often finds by showing up, frequently look beyond the headlines to unearth issues that have not been surfaced, or have been overlooked.
A chance meeting at a planning board meeting, where she had shown up to cover a different issue, led to a series of stories in 
The Washington Post
 about special privileges granted to a wealthy landowner who did not want to abide by local water and sewer regulations. Her stories on immigration for 
Reveal
 from The Center for Investigative Reporting exposed a massive backlog in the processing of citizenship applications, just as the Trump administration in 2017 was getting ready to put in place massive restrictions on immigrants, including thousands already in the country legally and holding proper papers. She published the Clean Slate 
series
 in The Sacramento Bee and other McClatchy papers about the risks and rewards of the massive national efforts to seal or expunge criminal records.
Since leaving 
The Washington Post
, she has been a Journalism Fellow at the Brechner Center for Freedom of Information at the University of Florida; a Fulbright Scholar in North Macedonia, where she taught journalism; the Pulliam Distinguished Visiting Professor of Journalism at DePauw University; and an advising editor to the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project in Sarajevo. In 2019, she organized a curriculum and recruited and coached trainers for a project to train prospective journalists in North Macedonia, and worked as a journalism trainer for Internews. She frequently speaks to journalist organizations and other groups about open government issues and challenges. As a member of the DC Open Government Coalition, she is spearheading a training program for residents who are baffled by the complex array of requirements needed to extract information on government actions from their local governments.
Kat Rowlands
Katherine Ann Rowlands is president of Bay City News Service and founder of Bay City News Foundation, which publishes LocalNewsMatters.org. She has worked as a journalist for 40 years, covering news in the Bay Area, Central California and overseas.
After a year as a JSK Journalism Fellow at Stanford University, in 2018 she bought Bay City News, a wire service that since 1979 has been the backbone of local news coverage in the region, and founded an affiliated nonprofit to support public service journalism.
Kat is also a past president of Journalism and Women Symposium and co-founder of WomenDoNews, a project to get better representation of women journalists in Wikipedia. She is president of the board of the First Amendment Coalition. A Berkeley native, she got her start in journalism as an intern for Bay City News. Reach her at 
kat@baycitynews.com
.
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luis@welcometomannys.com
.
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The Fairmont Heritage Place Ghirardelli Square

Near Lombard Street|Fisherman's Wharf, San Francisco

Four Seasons Hotel Embarcadero

Near Union Square|San Francisco Downtown, San Francisco

Fisherman's Wharf

Water Fun Attractions

Night view

ryne.srj

a lot of sea lions! a must see place in san francisco! should get a sea lion plushie as well as a gift!

Alcatraz Island

Historic buildings

一數

Alcatraz Island is a stone island in San Francisco Bay, close to the Golden Gate, facing the old town of San Francisco, the scenery around the island is very beautiful. Because the water around the island is very deep and the water flow is very fast, the island used to be a prison. The island, which held the most famous and dangerous prisoners in the United States in the last century, became famous, and Hollywood made movies, and now it is a San Francisco Bay attraction.

Four Seasons Hotel San Francisco

Near Union Square|South of Market, San Francisco

California Academy of Sciences

Book now for tomorrow

Best Things to Do

Museums

Science & technology museums

mflores

if you love science this is a place to go it was so amazing you can learn a lot of stuff there my kids love it and so do I I&#39;m great customer service

Golden Gate Park

Family-Friendly Attractions

112***09

This is a relatively large park near the Golden Gate Bridge, called Golden Gate Park. Most tourists will not go to this attraction specifically, but since we are traveling independently, we can visit it in a more relaxed manner. The environment design of this park is unparalleled and it is worth checking out.

Lombard Street

泰迪小熊

Came here on September 24, 2017.

This attraction is unique, beautiful and interesting, and is definitely one of the must-see attractions when visiting San Francisco.

Lombard Street is actually a section of Lombard Street, located between Hyde Street and Leavenworth Street. This section of the road is a steep slope, but it is designed into eight hairpin turns, and flowers are planted on both sides of the road.

If you need to take a nine-turn effect, you must stand on Leavenworth Street, which is low in terrain.

Chinese people can drive in the western United States where San Francisco is located with a translated driver&#39;s license. If you can drive in San Francisco, you might as well go and experience the feeling of driving through Lombard Street yourself.

Time:	Jul 15, 2025 (UTC-7) ENDED
Location:	Manny's

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The Fairmont Heritage Place Ghirardelli Square

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Secrets, Lies, and Democracy: Why It’s Time to Take a Stand | Manny's

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Are you interested in Secrets, Lies, and Democracy: Why It’s Time to Take a Stand?

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The Fairmont Heritage Place Ghirardelli Square

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Four Seasons Hotel San Francisco

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