A ranked list of news articles with titles and authors, mentioning various topics related to San Francisco, including elections, housing, and transportation.
Top stories of 2024

We’ve had a good year, with some 2.44 million unique visitors coming to the site and 4.89 million page views. The November 2024 election returns page topped the list.

A remarkable number of the stories broke news, such as Abigail Vân Neely’s article on Harley-Davidson closing in San Francisco, Eleni Balakrishnan’s story on squatters in Potrero Hill getting evicted, and Joe Eskenazi’s scoop on the list of San Francisco Unified School District campuses proposed for closure. 

Some of the most popular were just slices of life that readers seemed to enjoy, including Neely’s People We Meet on a woman who has been solo camping on Angel Island for more than 30 years. Or those — like BigMoneySF by Will Jarrett — that asked readers to explore dozens of connections among all the new money in San Francisco politics.

Enjoy all for another read! And here’s to 2025.

  1. Election 2024: See results across San Francisco, Nov. 5, by Kelly Waldron
  2. Sandy Tong: S.F.’s first Asian fire chief — and first without firefighting background, Sept. 3, by Yujie Zhou and Joe Eskenazi
  3. Homeless people often chose the street over a bed, Sept. 18, by Abigail Vân Neely
  4. Auto Towing owners accused of buying Lamborghini while on welfare, Feb. 6, by Joe Eskenazi and Gilare Zada
  5. Waymo rolls toward San Francisco Airport. A showdown is brewing, Dec. 23, by Joe Eskenazi
  6. San Francisco Harley-Davidson closes abruptly after 110 years, June 28, by Abigail Vân Neely
  7. San Francisco quietly lowered standards of program busing homeless out of town, Aug. 12, by Joe Eskenazi
  8. Squatters evicted after years in vacant public housing units on SF’s Potrero Hill, Aug. 22, by Eleni Balakrishnan
  9. Election 2024: Results are in — see votes across San Francisco, March 9, by Joe Eskenazi and Mission Local staff
  10. Garry Tan, tech CEO & campaign donor, wishes death upon San Francisco politicians, Jan. 27, 2024 by Joe Rivano Barros
  11. Mission Local obtains list of SFUSD schools to potentially merge/close, Oct. 8, by Joe Eskenazi
  12. Fabric Outlet to close in November after nearly 30 years, Sept. 27, by Junyao Yang
  13. Cal Academy cuts youth program after teens show solidarity with union, Nov. 21, by Yujie Zhou
  14. Lowriders to cruise through Mission in Selena tribute, April 18, by Xueer Lu
  15. Tiny ‘Mission Cabins’ for homeless residents open today at 16th St. BART Plaza, April 15, by Xueer Lu
  16. Maire Farrington has been solo camping on Angel Island for 31 years, Nov. 30, by Abigail Vân Neely
  17. ‘Stupid,’ ‘shameful:’ Tech workers on Y Combinator CEO Garry Tan’s rant, Jan 31, by Joe Rivano Barros and Yujie Zhou
  18. Video: SFPD officers tackle, handcuff female hot dog vendor, Sept 8, by Eleni Balakrishnan
  19.  SF mourns Mission family killed in West Portal by wrong-way SUV driver, March 18, by Eleni Balakrishnan
  20.  Man in his 20s shot dead and killed on his first day of work, Aug. 5, by Junyao Yang
  21.  BigMoneySF: Explore the major players paying out to remake San Francisco, Feb. 12, by Will Jarrett
  22. SF worker charged with selling tech bought with quake relief money, Jan. 25, by Joe Eskenazi
  23. San Francisco warns Dolores Park hill bomb skaters: Stay away — or face arrest, June 26, by Joe Rivano Barros
  24. El Faro’s owner to sell taqueria after 3rd consecutive break-in, Oct. 17, by Oscar Palma
  25. Photos: Thousands attend Hunky Jesus contest in Dolores Park, March 31, by Aaron Levy-Wollins

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Founder/Executive Editor. 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.

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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2 Comments

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  2. -> “Right now I’m trying to figure out how you make that long-held interest in local news sustainable. The answer continues to elude me.”

    I would disagree.

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