Little as an editor has been more frustrating than watching the slow pace of police reform in San Francisco. And now, those efforts have lost the brilliant and generous John Crew, who spent his legal career advocating and helping to make reforms.
Eleni writes about Crew’s career today.
It is inspiring and his death is a loss for everyone in the city.
Our condolences go out to his daughters and colleagues.
“When an issue came up, you could just see his mind going and pulling out all this information from years back,” said Barbara Attard, an old friend and colleague of Crew’s in police oversight.
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 and an 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.
