Oakland Jazz Scene Game
in 2007, Paul Grabowicz
Re-creating Oakland’s once vibrant jazz and blues club scene as an online video game and virtual world. The game will allow players to experience the club scene as it was in its heyday in the 1940s and 1950s, before it fell victim to redevelopment schemes and urban decay.
Amount:
$ 60,000
Location:
Berkeley, Calif.
Organization:
University of California - Berkeley
Winner:
Paul Grabowicz
Bio:
Paul Grabowicz is Assistant Dean, Adjunct Professor and Director of the New Media Program at the University of California-Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism where he teaches classes in multimedia reporting, new media publishing, computer assisted reporting and video game storytelling. He is co-author of “California Inc.,” a book about how the entrepreneurial spirit shaped the politics, culture and economy of California. He spent most of his career as the investigative reporter at The Oakland Tribune, where he also served as night city editor and acting city editor and developed an early prototype of a web site for the paper. (It was rejected). He began his journalism career in 1973 working for local papers in the San Francisco Bay Area, including the Bay Guardian and has written for publications such as The Washington Post, Esquire magazine, The Village Voice and Newsday.