Joe Eskenazi on the job
Joe Eskenazi interviewing Aaron Peskin in 2010.

Photo by Steve Rhodes

Exciting news at Mission Local! Joe Eskenazi, who has been writing a column and occasional news pieces here, will become Mission Local’s Managing Editor, starting June 4.

I’ve followed Joe’s career closely since I launched Mission Local in 2008. Back then, he was working at SF Weekly and I checked the website multiple times a day to read his latest posts. From there, Joe went to San Francisco Magazine, where again he was responsible for the most insightful political reporting around.

Oddly, we had never met, so last summer I reached out to him. As luck would have it, he was free and looking for new outlets. I promptly signed him up.

Joe’s byline quickly became one to watch  His years of political reporting paid off in his coverage of Ed Lee’s legacy, London Breed’s ouster as interim mayor, and the funneling of heaps of tech and real-estate dollars into the firefighter union’s political action committee. Other memorable pieces: Paul Pelosi’s involvement in a Single Room Occupancy Hotel, and the eviction of four generations of a Latino family from the oldest house in the city on Hampshire Street.

Joe will give our site direction and energy. In addition to overseeing coverage, he’ll be critical to meeting some of our other key objectives — training the next generation of reporters, experimenting with style and doing more investigative work.

I will remain to help edit, raise money and to establish our fiscal sponsorship so that donors who want to support our mission can do so and get a tax break.

Stay tuned and thank you to all of the residents and businesses who have supported us over the years. 

Lydia

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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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  3. Awesome news, would love to see his local beat stories in the excelsior and downtown development issues….

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  4. And his great stories about idling MUNI buses! Glad to hear Joe E. is on board in a big way. Thanks to the entire hard-working staff at Mission Local and to Lydia C. for keeping it all together.

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