As the San Francisco Public Press nears its 10-year anniversary next year, leaders have bold plans to expand the newsroom's reach and further its mission. In an effort to connect with broader local audiences and better inform and engage with them in civic issues, the organization's leadership is exploring the creation of a terrestrial low-power FM radio station called KSFP-LP. Audio news and feature programming are in development in anticipation of the radio launch scheduled for summer 2019.
This is just one aspect of many that makes INN member, the San Francisco Public Press, unique.
This spring, the newsroom's leadership took a leading role in a collaboration with more than a dozen other news organizations in partnership with the Bay Area Media Collaborative, a group convened by Renaissance Journalism. Leaders of the group pledged to do joint in-depth reporting on the region’s housing crisis. The initiative will help journalists from competing newsrooms spend more time together to share their collective knowledge of housing affordability gained from reporting, data, sources and media files.
Along with producing award-winning in-depth investigative and explanatory reports on local policy issues, the Public Press promotes civic engagement by facilitating face-to-face community conversations on public policy. Its community engagement program, Public Press Live, began in 2016 as a small event series engaging with groups of 10 to 30 people to explore important local issues. The program has evolved to focus on bringing its reporting and analysis to life by convening policy experts, city officials, nonprofit service providers, activists, business leaders and everyday citizens to listen, learn and collaborate on ways to address problems and improve their communities.
REPORTING AND PUBLISHING
The San Francisco Public Press, a member of INN since 2011, investigates social, economic and environmental problems, and works with the community in seeking solutions.
The organization publishes online at sfpublicpress.org and in a quarterly print newspaper, engages readers on social media, and partners with public media organizations, including local public broadcasters, magazines and neighborhood publications. The San Francisco Public Press is also one of the few INN members who are still publishing a newspaper product.
The San Francisco Public Press maintains a particular focus on groups whose interests and needs are neglected in mainstream news coverage.
Its quarterly reporting projects go in-depth on a number of topics that have a strong accountability angle. Recent investigations have examined mismanagement of public programs to make housing more affordable and aid the homeless, growing racial and ethnic segregation in public schools, the lack of local regulation of waterfront development in an era of accelerating sea level rise, corporate funding of misleading advertising in elections and more.
The San Francisco Public Press also recently won two Society of Professional Journalists awards:
- COMMUNITY JOURNALISM (print/online – single subject): “Solving Homelessness,” a project exploring several ways for getting more people into housing, including an analysis of city data on empty rooms in residential hotels.
- DESIGN (print): Reid M. Brown, HyunJu Chappell and Noah Arroyo of the San Francisco Public Press for the print layout, graphics and design for “Solving Homelessness.”