The answer is three. At 9:40 p.m. on Wednesday, a 21-year-old man was walking on Mission Street near 25th Street when he noticed three men — also in their early 20s — following him.
The victim went into a store to avoid them, but when he left the store, they surrounded him, went through his pockets, took his cell phone and wallet and fled on foot, according to the police report.
No arrests have been made.
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.
More by Lydia Chávez3 Comments
When reporting a serious crime, a headline that seems to intend a joke or humor strikes me as disrespectful to the victim and inappropriate for journalism. Or is Mission Local going for entertainment?
It’s also disrespectful to provide more description of the victim than of the suspects. Is nothing else known about the perpetrators, other than they were men in their early 20s?
Yes I can see how you would read the headline in that way. It was a headline written in frustration at guys who feel like it is okay to gang up on someone. It wasn’t meant to be funny because it is not.