SFGATE reposted this
Oh HEY. 👋 According to the NYT, local news is not dying in SF. As the EIC at SFGATE — SF's most visited media site (and the largest free outlet on the ENTIRE West Coast) — just wanted to say it's true, plus update you on how "not dying" (https://lnkd.in/gpD6wM2b) we are 👇 It’s been 5yrs since SFGATE & San Francisco Chronicle became two separate entities w/ our own independent newsrooms. Since then SFGATE has created 34 new #journalismjobs, more than doubling the size of our staff. In 2022, we got our very own newsroom 😊 The investments we've made have been local — we hired SF's first dumpling columnist, its most diehard Giants fan and coolest East Bay resident — but also statewide. We now have journalists living in 21 different cities across the state. Lots of them are doing deep feature journalism in media deserts, while others are covering huge swaths of CA (The entire Central Coast! All of our national parks!) that normally only see formulaic travel coverage from national outlets parachuting in: https://lnkd.in/g27zApiy We also hired a full-time cannabis editor (Lester Black) to cover the state's pot economy and our first CA editor (Tessa McLean) to cover things like what comes next for CA's malls and the death of the state's historic piers: https://lnkd.in/gBa6Mmiw Plus we launched an entire SoCal Bureau featuring the country's best journalist writing about Disney (Julie Tremaine) and — just this February — added four tremendously talented LA journalists (Farley Elliott Paula Mejía Karen Palmer Erin Rode). We also started covering Hawaii earnestly (thanks to the incomparable Christine Hitt) and RIGHT NOW are in the process of hiring a North Coast editor to write about everything between the Bay Area and the CA-Oregon border. During that ENTIRE 5-year span of editorial independence here SFGATE, we haven't had a single layoff. Zero. So yes, we're 'not dying' in SF, but we've also been quietly growing local news coverage in cities across CA. And, as of today, they seem very much alive as well.