“Mobile Drug Clinic for Hill Rejected,” “Assault Wave Hits Elders,” “Community Tree Planting Gets Underway.” These headlines, published in The Potrero View’s August 1970 inaugural issue, aren’t so different from what might be presented in the paper today. And while the media – newspapers in particular – has changed mightily in the 54 years since, the characteristics of community-based journalism have remained largely the same. Few other outlets cover neighborhood news and goings-on and doing so doesn’t pay well. Or at all.
San Franciscans have solid access to local and regional news, especially compared to the rest of the country. For $90 a year, the digital-only San Francisco Standard offers often well-written coverage of local politics, governance, and the economy, as well as the entertainment, restaurant and bar scenes, top of mind for most residents. The San Francisco Examiner provides somewhat least robust news reporting for free. The San Francisco Chronicle is available for those who care to pay $200 a year for an annual digital subscription; much more for print.
Yet, while 10 years ago there were upwards of 20 neighborhood newspapers in the City, now there are fewer than half that number. One of them, the digital-only Mission Local, aspires to be more akin to a metropolitan paper, essential a competitor, or complement, to the Standard. Another two, El Tecolote and Bay View, cater to specific demographics; communities to be sure, but mostly neighborhood news adjacent.
The View is almost entirely reliant on print advertising and low paid writers for its continuing survival. Despite its readers’ palpable love for the newspaper – “better than the Chronicle!” yelped one long-time reader, at an event in Dogpatch at which the paper distributed logoed slime to kids – there’s almost no chance that it will ever thrive. There’s no money in local journalism, unless a well-heeled philanthropist takes an interest, or somehow readers are “monetized” beyond low-paid subscriptions and modest donations. The business model is poorly paid quasi-volunteers who, against all odds and contrary to the present zeitgeist, believe that local news – that isn’t delivered haphazardly and in untrustworthy ways via social media – is essential to democracy, community, and cohesiveness. Plus, are nosey about other people’s situations.
In this sense local news may be more akin to a religion than a business, passing the hat to collect enough nickels and dimes to put out that next issue. What it lacks is organization. The View might benefit from becoming a part of a national news network, supported by a community congregation – readers – but subsidized by a larger entity dedicated to the church of accurate, entertaining, enlightening, and occasionally useful articles. Journalism students could be taught the necessary liturgy – who, what, where, why and how – learn both sides of the confession booth and swear to a life dedicated to honest attempts at adult education. Plus, near-poverty, or finding a partner or side-gig to supplement their meager writing wages.
America, however defined in the present period, needs well-trained eyes and ears on the ground to report meaningful stories, or to give stories meaning. Social media has shown its fangs. Artificial intelligence is the opposite of the answer. The remedy to alienation and despair caused by a daily onslaught of doom, danger, and divisiveness is a drawing by a neighborhood kid, printed in a neighborhood newspaper, for which the child receives a $20 check from the View as the winner of the youth creative contest in which every contestant wins. News goes down better with community. And coffee, brewed by a local loyal advertiser, Farley’s.
Donations are always welcome, made through www.potreroview.net, or, to be tax deductible, posted to SF Community Power, 296 Liberty Street, San Francisco, 94114.