Our Story

Mission Local began in 2008 inside UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism, part of an experiment to create a neighborhood-based newsroom. Our focus from the start was the Mission District — a vibrant, diverse, and contested neighborhood at the heart of San Francisco.

In 2014, Mission Local became an independent nonprofit newsroom. Since then, we have expanded coverage citywide while staying rooted in the Mission. Our reporters have broken major stories on housing displacement, corruption at City Hall, police accountability, and the pandemic’s impact on vulnerable communities.

Timeline

2025

  • November – Mission Local wins two awards from the Society of Professional Journalists of Northern California: One for Explanatory Journalism profiling San Francisco’s ‘alternative courts by Abigail Van Neely and Ronna Raz; and another for Public Service documenting conditions on the streets in one part of the Mission District to hold City Hall accountable by Lydia Chávez, Abigail Van Neely and Oscar Palma.
  • June – LION Publishers, a nonprofit focused on sustainability with nearly 600 member sites, named Mission Local a finalist in two categories: Business of the Year in the medium/large revenue tier and Public Service in the large revenue tier.
  • May – Mission Local wins 12 prizes from the California News Publishers Association, including two first-place wins for in-depth reporting and informational graphics stemming from last year’s election coverage.
    • We practically swept the informational graphics category, thanks to our outstanding team of data reporters, winning first, third, and fourth-place prizes.

2024

  • December – Mission Local wins six awards from the San Francisco Press Club. Four first-place awards: Joe Eskenazi for column writing, Beth Winegarner for feature writing, Eleni Balakrishnan for best news story and Will Jarrett and Gilare Zada for data work. HR Smith, Joe Rivano Barros, Kelly Waldron, won third place for the series “See How They Run.” And Liliana Michelena won third place for sports writing.
  • November – Mission Local wins two awards from the Society of Professional Journalist of Northern California: One for BigMoneySF under explanatory journalism, and one for our tech coverage.
  • September – Mission Local wins the General Excellence award from the Online News Association.
  • August – Mission Local is a finalist for two awards from the Institute for Nonprofit News, one for BigMoneySF and one for our election coverage.
  • July – Mission Local wins six California Journalism Awards including two first prizes — one for general excellence and one for Joe Eskenazi’s columns.

2023

  • November – Mission Local wins three awards from the Society of Professional Journalists of Northern California. We also win a first-place prize for feature layout from the San Francisco Press Club, and win four second-place prizes.
  • August – LION Publishers names Mission Local a finalist for its Outstanding Coverage Award.
  • August – Mission Local celebrates its quinceañera with a 15-day fundraising drive.
  • August – Will Jarrett’s Killer Robots series wins the Institute for Nonprofit News’ Community Champion Award.

2022

  • December – Mission Local picks up four prizes from the San Francisco Press Club, including two for Managing Editor Joe Eskenazi, one for police reporter Eleni Balakrishnan and one for a project produced by Molly Oleson, Sindya Bhanoo and Hélène Goupil.
  • November – Mission Local’s data reporter Will Jarrett wins the Society of Professional Journalists of Northern California award for data journalism. Andrew Gilbert who contributes culture coverage wins for culture reporting.
  • September – Mission Local wins the Online News Association award for General Excellence for micro newsrooms.
  • September – Mission Local wins the Insight Award from the Institute of Nonprofit News for “Garbage Odyssey” by Lydia Chávez, edited by Joe Eskenazi and Sandra Salmans.
  • August – Mission Local announces an inaugural board of directors to oversee its new nonprofit.

2021

  • July – Mission Local wins an APEX award for the pandemic project, “How Do We Survive,” supported by the Pulitzer Center.
  • May – Julian Mark wins the Social Justice Award from the Ethnic Media Awards contest for his piece, “Maurice Caldwell had his conviction overturned a decade ago: city attorney says he’s a killer.”
  • March – “Testing the Limits,” a series of heavily reported stories spread over the course of months, earned Mission Local a semi-final nod in the Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Journalism.
  • February – Julian Mark wins outstanding emerging journalist from the Society of Professional Journalists of Northern California.

2020

  • October – Mission Local wins Best of the Bay award for best website.
  • March – Mission Local begins a texting service for monolingual Spanish speakers during the pandemic to send real-time news in Spanish.

2019

  • October – Our managing editor Joe Eskenazi is named journalist of the year.

2018

  • Fall – Mission Local celebrates 10 years!
  • October – Mission Local wins three top awards from the Society of Professional Journalists of Northern California.
  • Summer – We’re in the process of becoming a fiscally sponsored, non-profit project.
  • Summer – Joe Eskenazi, formerly with SF Weekly and San Francisco Magazine, becomes managing editor.

2017

  • Fall – Instead of covering crime, we focus on covering the SFPD and how it works.

2016

  • November – In the race for District 9 supervisor, our civic engagement project “43 Questions” runs for 43 weeks and ends in a public forum.

2015

  • 2015/2016 – The community helps photograph every block in the Mission for our “Good Morning Mission” project.
  • October – Daniel Hirsch, Andrea Valencia, Laura Wenus and Lydia Chavez of Mission Local win the Society of Professional Journalists of Northern California award for Community Journalism for “their broad, in-depth coverage of San Francisco’s Mission District, with a strong focus on how housing issues affect residents.”
  • March – Mission Local moves into a new space at 19th and Mission.
  • January – The 108-year-old building where Mission Local’s offices are located is damaged in a fire that leaves one dead and dozens of tenants and businesses homeless. Mission Local produces numerous articles covering the fire including two in-depth investigative pieces on the owner. The staff finds temporary refuge with neighbors Mission Bicycle and the data analysis team Wagon.

2014

  • October – We redesign and add new features. We also start selling business and reader memberships.
  • September – CBS local names Mission local as one of the best local blogs in the Bay Area. We’re pleased, but we’re not a blog!
  • June – We’re officially Mission Local, Inc. We publish a print edition of historical pieces.
  • February – Ed Wasserman, a new dean at Berkeley’s J-school decides that “The curricular value [of Mission Local] to our students is limited or even, at times, non-existent.” He stops funding for the hyperlocals during school breaks or vacations. We disagree about the value, and spin Mission Local off as its own independent, media enterprise.

2013

  • March – Rent increases mean Mission Local moves to 2588 Mission St.

2011

  • Fall – Mission Loc@l becomes Mission Local.
  • September – Streetfight writes about Mission Local as the “Hyperlocal That Gets Its Right”.

2010

  • Fall – Mission Local is a finalist for the Society of Professional Journalists’ National Mark of Excellence Award.
  • May – Mission Local wins first place from the Society of Professional Journalists of Northern California for How Clean Are San Francisco Restaurants? The series changes the citywide restaurant inspection policy.

2009

  • Fall – We begin a collaboration with SFGate, posting our stories on their local blogs with link backs to Mission Local. The concrete sculptures on 20th Street won’t budge from their space so we find new offices on Treat and 17th streets.
  • August – KQED notices our on-the-ground reporting of the changes on Mission Street.
  • June – Mission Local wins a Webby Award for the best student news site in the country.
  • March – Mission Local begins translating all of its content into Spanish.
  • January – We get our first office in the Mission on 20th Street, sharing 600 square feet with some enormous concrete garden sculptures.

2008

  • October – Launched as a project of UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism. Great stories, but no one is reading us.