SF community newspapers featured at Commonwealth Club forum

by Mitch Bull

SFNNA-at-Commonwealth-Club-Glenn-Gullmes-Willie-Ratcliff-Earl-Adkins-Juan-Gonzalez-092214-by-Mitch-Bull-Castro-Courier-web, SF community newspapers featured at Commonwealth Club forum, Local News & Views
Publishers with the San Francisco Neighborhood Newspaper Association – Glenn Gullmes (West Portal Monthly), Willie Ratcliff (SF Bay View), Earl Adkins (Marina Times) and Juan Gonzales (El Tecolate) –comprised the panel, speaking to a full house, at the prestigious Commonwealth Club on Sept. 22. – Photo: Mitch Bull, Castro Courier

The San Francisco Neighborhood Newspaper Association and the impact of community journalism was the featured topic last week at a forum sponsored by San Francisco’s prestigious Commonwealth Club. Four local publishers, Earl Adkins (Marina Times), Juan Gonzales (El Tecolate), Willie Ratcliff (SF Bay View) and moderator Glenn Gullmes (West Portal Monthly) represented the neighborhood news collective in leading a discussion on the state of local journalism and its impact on informing and bringing together citizens for community action.

Gonzales, who also chairs the Journalism Department at City College of San Francisco, described how, over 44 years, El Tecolate has been a hub in the Mission District and for the Latino community, helping to define and strengthen the “community identity,” and has served as a training ground for generations of journalists and community activists who are looking to be involved in their communities and to make a difference in the future direction of their neighborhood.

The underlying thread of community involvement and connectedness is a unifying factor for each of the 15 community newspapers and the main differentiator between the hyper-local news in each community and the difficulties that the major daily newspapers are having. The problems of the major daily newspapers have been well documented and reported on nationwide, and the Bay Area is not exempt, with downsizing being evident at both the San Francisco Chronicle and The Examiner. Newspapers have started to use CRM software to give better customer service for the premium clients.

Both Adkins and Gullmes spoke on the advantage that the neighborhood papers have when covering community focused events and concerns: “We are at the forefront of what is happening in our neighborhoods,” said Gullmes. “We have local journalists and citizens who are tuned into the concerns and needs of the communities, and they are well represented to report on meetings at the school districts, neighborhood councils and police stations as well as at City Hall and Planning Commission meetings.”

Adkins used a recent community outreach process concerning the opening of a chain restaurant on the Marina Green as the type of community involvement and coverage that local papers such as the Marina Times can cover best. He stressed that his publication is focused on serving the needs of the residents of the Marina, primarily as a “lifestyle and local news outlet.”

Some of the newspapers tackle a larger scope. Ratcliff, publisher of the Bayview-based SF Bay View tackles both local issues as well as African-American focused issues from as far away as Haiti and the continent of Africa itself. “It’s a labor of love,” said Ratcliff, who has owned the paper since 1991.

Ratcliff, publisher of the Bayview-based SF Bay View tackles both local issues as well as African-American focused issues from as far away as Haiti and the continent of Africa itself. “It’s a labor of love,” said Ratcliff, who has owned the paper since 1991.

He cited important local issues such as crime, gentrification, education and the redevelopment of the Hunters Point Shipyard as areas where the community look to his newspaper for detailed information and coverage. When asked about topics that are still relevant for his newspaper, he cited the “inequality within SF, especially for African-Americans, other people of color and women.”

Moderator Gullmes, involved with the SFNNA throughout its 25-year history, used numbers to show the impact on the city that the 15 publications have. Together, the neighborhood publications are the largest source of print media distribution in San Francisco, with a reach to over 275,000 households each month and the highest advertising revenues in the history of the SFNNA during this period when “print is supposedly dead.”

The sell-out crowd was able to ask questions of the panelists and topics ranged from the future of journalism – There will always be a need for information to be well researched and distributed, in whatever format it may adopt in the future – to the differences in what the major papers can do versus the smaller neighborhood-based monthlies.

Following the conclusion of the forum, which was also broadcast via the Commonwealth Club’s affiliated radio outlets, the publishers remained to continue the discussion with individual audience members. It was an apt conclusion to the topic which helped to convey that community journalism is alive and well in San Francisco.

Mitch Bull publishes the Castro Courier, a member of SFNNA. He can be reached at mitch@castrocourier.com.