Journalism 101B: Dan Noyes, Bloodhound

Dan Noyes had a national journalist's career with CNN and ABC, among other networks, for thirteen years before settling down in the early 1990s at San Francisco's Channel 7 affiliate as their investigative reporter with a group called the I-Team, "I" standing for investigation.



The I-Team has its own blog, and when asked if he actually writes it himself, Dan replied that he did. "You're a very good writer," I told him, because it was true and for proof, click here to check it out.



Compared to some of the San Francisco Chronicle writers who have been dragooned into blogging, and who are genuinely terrible writers without serious editors, Mr. Noyes stands out for his fairness, clarity, decent English, and an investigative doggedness that's rather like a bloodhound.



I don't watch television news unless there's a good local weather disaster, so I'd never seen Dan Noyes until a year ago. A fellow supernumerary at the opera sent out an email that he had been interviewed by Noyes for an I-Team piece about the plague of car break-ins that had become commonplace in the Civic Center neighborhood around the opera house. I saw a clip of the piece on YouTube, and as a resident of the neighborhood, I found the piece fair, honest and totally damning of both the police status quo and the mayor's spokespersons who acted peeved that they should have to deal with this reporter.



The Mayor's Office, in fact, has all but blacklisted Dan from any interviews with Newsom and done everything they can in every possible forum, including the internet, to paint Mr. Noyes as a reporter who has a personal problem with the mayor, when in truth it's the other way around.



The intransigence and sheer thuggishness of the Mayor and His Coterie towards Noyes has only spurred the reporter on to see what they are spending so much energy trying to cover up. This is not to mention the joy of reporting the absurdity of a 1,200 page report on the "insensitive video" which had just been released by the San Francisco Police Department after a year-and-a-half investigation which probably cost a small fortune.



Nobody trusts the mainstream media anymore, especially after their enabling of the Iraq Invasion and the corporate takeover of the world, but there are still a few good journalists out there and Mr. Noyes happens to be one of them, though unfortunately the same cannot be said about the majority of his on-air colleagues.



Most people who photograph spectacularly well look much plainer in real life, but Mr. Noyes happens to be one of the rare exceptions who is actually better looking. He's also one of the underrated journalistic treasures of the Bay Area and if I were Gavin's handlers, I'd stop attacking now. It just gets the bloodhound excited.