Founded in 1996 by the nonprofit Pacific News Service, NAM was headquartered in San Francisco, with offices in Los Angeles, New York and Washington, D.C. New America Media ceased operations in 2017.
PNS was created by historian Franz Schurmann and journalist Orville Schell as an alternative news source on the United States’ role in Indochina during the Vietnam War.
The Beat provides a weekly writing and discussion program in Bay Area juvenile detention centers, and from those programs, compiles material into a weekly magazine of written and visual work by incarcerated youth.
The Beat model has expanded into over 40 Bay Area juvenile halls, with pilot programs in several other regions including Washington, D.C.
The James Irvine Foundation has called NAM “...the most diverse media organization in the country”,[4] and Sandy Close has been honored with a 1995 MacArthur Fellowship,[5] a 2008 Ashoka Senior Fellowship,[6] the 2010 career award from the George Polk Awards,[7] and the 2012 I. F. Stone Medal from the Nieman Foundation for Journalism.