The Listen Local crew in action.

In this week’s episode of Listen Local, we discuss an ongoing homicide case and ongoing media meltdown.

New evidence has surfaced in the investigation into the early September murder of 14-year-old Rashawn Williams. Focus has shifted from the original suspect, another 14-year-old, to his companion, whose age has not been released. But there’s also the question of charging minors as adults for particularly heinous crimes like murder. Williams’ family has been circulating a petition to do exactly that — raising complicated legal and ethical questions as new facts come to light.

This week also marked the rollout of Mission Local’s winter print edition, which you can pick up for free in coffee shops, hair salons, and shops around the Mission. At the same time, a century old print magazine called The New Republic has lost a huge portion of its staff after new management (a Facebook co-founder) has tried to steer the paper into a more business and new/digital media oriented direction. What’s the future of news look like when the only money around is tech money?

Listen here:

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Daniel Hirsch is a freelance writer who has been living in the Mission since 2009. When he's not contributing to Mission Local, he's writing plays, working as an extra for HBO, and/or walking to the top of Bernal Hill.

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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