Alexandra Garretón

Yes, reporting takes concentration, a lot of footwork and funds. Democracy’s cheap, but not free.

If our loyal readers contributed just $10 a month or $120 a year, Mission Local would be completely self-supporting. Make a tax-deductible donation by clicking  here, or by writing a check to “UC Regents” with a memo “for Mission Local” and send to 2588 Mission Street, 212, SF, CA, 94110.

Yes, we’re a UC project, but we’ve always seen this as a collaboration between UC and the community where we train graduate students and anyone from the community who knocks on our door.

The university paid the startup costs and continues to fund the professor who teaches and edits the site.

Money for rent, a translator, extra reporters over the summer and holiday breaks, and the print edition has been raised independently.

Want to know more about what we do in the community? We also teach hands-on video workshops and we train journalism interns and contributors in our newsroom.

The extras add up to $50,000 to $75,000 a year — a sum we believe the community can muster pretty easily. It’s just one click away.

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I’ve been a Mission resident since 1998 and a professor emeritus at Berkeley’s J-school since 2019. I got my start in newspapers at the Albuquerque Tribune in the city where I was born and raised. Like many local news outlets, The Tribune no longer exists. I left daily newspapers after working at The New York Times for the business, foreign and city desks. Lucky for all of us, it is still here.

As an old friend once pointed out, local has long been in my bones. My Master’s Project at Columbia, later published in New York Magazine, was on New York City’s experiment in community boards.

As founder/executive editor at ML, I've been trying to figure out how to make my interest in local news sustainable. If Mission Local is a model, the answer might be that you - the readers - reward steady and smart content. As a thank you for that support we work every day to make our content even better.

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