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Local news in America is in trouble. Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, which tracks the industry’s health every year, just reported that 170 U.S. newspapers closed in the past year. That’s more than three a week. Even the rebirth of local news through nonprofit and digital startups is concentrated almost entirely in big cities, leaving smaller communities further behind.
Against that backdrop, the accomplishments of our small but mighty East Bay team are worth noticing.
The Pleasanton Weekly, Livermore Vine and DanvilleSanRamon.com won 10 first-place prizes in the most recent California Journalism Awards. That included a General Excellence award for the Pleasanton Weekly, the first in the paper’s history, for work that ranged from an eight-part series walking Main Streets from Livermore to Danville, to a 13-month fight for public records that revealed the reason for a local school principal’s removal.
That’s not journalism produced from a distance. Our little newsroom is doing the job that’s disappearing in so many other places.
This week, I joined that team as CEO of the Embarcadero Media Foundation, the nonprofit organization behind those East Bay publications and our sister publications in Palo Alto, Menlo Park, Mountain View and Redwood City.
The Bay Area has been part of my personal story for the past three decades. I graduated from Stanford University, and had my first journalism internship in Palo Alto. I later returned to Stanford as a John S. Knight journalism fellow, and then worked at university’s business school. I have taught journalism at San Jose State University and served as editor-in-chief of the San Francisco Standard.
As a somewhat-introverted college intern, I found confidence with my press pass — it was permission to approach people, enter unfamiliar worlds and ask questions that I would otherwise never have the courage to pose.
I joined the Washington Post after college, and went on to work for the L.A. Times and International New York Times. I served as top editor at The Desert Sun in Palm Springs and, more recently, The Standard — two newsrooms, two very different communities, but the same lesson both times: Local journalism offers an extraordinary opportunity to make a tangible difference in people’s lives.
Community news helps us understand decisions about our schools, neighborhoods and public money. It introduces us to people we might otherwise never meet. It can expose wrongdoing, celebrate achievement and help neighbors find common ground.
That work depends on our relationship with you, which is why I’m starting by listening rather than announcing big plans. I’m asking our employees what we do well, what gets in their way and where we have opportunities to improve.
I want to ask our readers similar questions.
What do you turn to us for? What are we missing? Whose experiences deserve more attention? Are our websites, newsletters and newspapers easy to use and useful in your daily life? What would make you recommend us to a neighbor? And if you’ve stopped reading regularly, I’d especially like to understand why.
The communities we serve are changing, as are the ways people find and share information. We need to be willing to experiment, improve our products and reach people who don’t yet see us as part of their lives.
But the foundation of our work remains human: showing up, talking to people, checking facts, pursuing questions and being accountable for what we publish.
Election season brings that responsibility into sharp focus. Heading toward Election Day, we’ve dropped the paywall on our online election coverage so everyone can access the information they need to make informed choices. Please read it, use it and share it with friends and neighbors.
Producing that coverage freely requires real work — interviewing candidates, examining records, following campaigns, hosting in-person forums and explaining the decisions facing voters. An hour of reporting time costs us around $30. If you value our election-related information, I hope you’ll support us with a tax-deductible donation here. If you’re already contributing, thank you — you’re helping make reliable local information available to our whole community.
Our newsroom is not part of a hedge-fund-owned corporate newspaper conglomerate based out of state. Nor are we the pet project of a billionaire with unlimited resources. We are local, nonpartisan, and nonprofit, rooted here for more than 25 years. Our 501(c)3 model gives us an opportunity to build a future in which strong local journalism is sustained by the people it serves.
I’m grateful to Embarcadero Media founder Bill Johnson, my predecessor Adam Dawes, our board and our staff for the work that has brought us to this point.
Now I want to hear from you. My email is jmakinen@embarcaderomedia.org, and my phone number is 650-233-6588. I look forward to your ideas, constructive complaints, questions and suggestions.
