SF Gate writes about a new start-up in the Mission that lures clients with its journalism.

Take San Francisco startup Priceonomics, which publishes articles on its website on a range of curious topics, from overpriced diamonds to Mission District gentrification. CEO Rohin Dharsays the goal is “to bring new information into the world” – a very media-company response.

Yet his company makes its money building data-crawling software, which it uses to collect information so businesses and hedge funds can make decisions about investments. Readers wouldn’t know it by visiting the Priceonomics website, which looks like a news blog. The only mention of its software is buried at the bottom of the page. READ MORE.

Or be inspired by We Built This City’s photo that I happened to click on right after reading about Priceonomics. 

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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 and an 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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1 Comment

  1. I don’t understand your comment at the end of this posting, Lydia. Is there something wrong with Priceonomics, other than the fact that they are located in the Mission, I presume?

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