San Francisco: Tell Us Your Thoughts About Local News

(SAN FRANCISCO) Local news across the country has been in decline.

More than 2,000 local newspapers have closed in the past two decades, leaving many communities without a reliable source of local reporting. Many of those that remain have only a fraction of the staff they had before and are owned by hedge funds like Alden Global Capital, putting their long term future in doubt.

Here in San Francisco, we’ve seen our own losses – the San Francisco Bay Guardian and SF Weekly among them.

But we’ve also seen perseverance among our local outlets, like the Bay Area Reporter which has served the LGBTQ community since 1971.

New outlets have emerged, too, like the nonprofit San Francisco Public Press and the locally owned Wind Newspaper, launched in 2020 to serve the Asian American community in both English and Chinese.

We know local news – truly local and community-driven news – is vital to the health of our local communities and our democracy. And we believe there are things we can do together to protect and transform it.

That’s why California Common Cause is hosting listening sessions with communities in San Francisco about how people get local news and information and how we can make our local news ecosystem stronger.

We invite you, our Common Cause members in San Francisco, to join an online focus group this October and be part of this work with us.

Participants will receive a $50 gift card or digital payment. We’re offering sessions on the following dates:

Thursday, Oct. 19 in the morning, 8:30-10:00 am

Thursday, Oct. 26 in the evening, 6:30-8:00 pm

Friday, Oct. 27 at lunch time, 11:30 am-1:00 pm

Saturday, Oct. 28 in late morning, 10:00-11:30 am

Click the following link: https://airtable.com/app7LiY3J6vJr5fCE/shrO8chynwKcnnMi3 to learn more and sign up. And share with friends and neighbors in San Francisco, too.

We want to hear from as many communities within our city as possible. While these focus groups will be in English, we’ll also be hosting events in Spanish, Cantonese, and possibly other languages, both in-person and online.

If you’d like to work with us on a listening session in your community, let us know on the online form or email Maya Chupkov, Media & Democracy Program Manager, at mchupkov@commoncause.org.

Note: Since 1970, Common Cause has been working to hold power accountable through lobbying, litigation, and grassroots organizing. Its non-partisan, pro-democracy work has helped pass hundreds of reforms at the federal, state, and local levels. More than 1 million members and more than 30 state organizations around the country work to strengthen the democracy by empowering the voices of everyday Americans in government. Common Cause has members and supporters in every state and each of the 435 congressional districts. Wind Newspaper is a member of the media group formed by Common Cause to advocate and strengthen reporting for local news.