Mission Local
| Type | Local Online News Site and Semiannual Newspaper |
|---|---|
| Founder(s) | Lydia Chavez |
| Publisher | Lydia Chavez |
| Editor | Laura Wenus |
| Language | English and Spanish |
| Headquarters | 2301 Mission Street, Suite 104 San Francisco, California, 94110 U.S. |
| Circulation | 10,000 Semiannually |
| Website | missionlocal.org |
Mission Local is a bilingual local independent online news site that also publishes a semiannual printed paper that covers the Mission District of San Francisco.
The Mission Local began as a hyperlocal project of UC Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism, focusing on San Francisco's Mission District. As some of the mainstream newspapers in San Francisco were shrinking and downsizing, it was believed that local media sites might fill some of the holes in reporting that were being left. The new media site was in fact also a new experiment in hyperlocal journalism. With funding from the Ford Foundation, it was launched in 2008, purposely aimed at covering the underserved neighborhood of the Mission. Berkeley Professor Lydia Chavez was its founder. It is one of the few university projects that has been turned into a fully functioning community news site. Many young journalists have worked and trained at this media news site. And in 2009 it began translating all of its contents also into Spanish.
The Mission Local covers all of the news from the Mission District, trying to provide context to a story so a reader can get a full understanding of an issue or situation. And it has covered many stories on how gentrification is affecting the Latino community in the Mission, And it has even made attempts to lower the walls that often divide the Latino and tech community. It writes stories that are in-depth, multi-faceted, and often issue-oriented. And it has done investigative pieces, one that led to a change in citywide restaurant policy. It is grassroots oriented in its daily news writing and covering of feature stories. And the news site has connected itself to social media, having a Facebook page, A Twitter account, and is on Instagram. The news site also updates its news stories, often several times a day.
In February 2014, it was announced by Edward Wasserman, the Dean of Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism, that U.C. Berkeley would be disconnecting itself from Mission Local, seeing it now more as a business and "...something other than journalism education." Mission Local re-launched itself as a for-profit and independent local media site in the summer of 2014 under the executive editorship of Lydia Chavez. The online news site continues to experiment in trying to find a workable and sustainable model that can be financially sound while also producing quality local journalism.
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