Coming soon: A newsroom that empowers its audience

Hi! It’s so good to have you. I’d grab you a chair if I could.

This is the first edition of our newsletter, which will chronicle wins, losses, and what we learn as we conduct a novel experiment in journalism. If you want to learn along with us, or just hear the latest updates, go ahead and subscribe.

First, introductions. My name is Noah Arroyo, a long-time local news reporter and editor. And we are News Relay Network, a plucky crew that’s gearing up to create a newsroom in San Francisco.

Right. Yes. I know. This city is hardly a news desert. Why does it need one more outlet?

Because we think we can bring something different. Something that could change this city for the better.

It’s this: High-quality news coverage driven directly by the audience. In other words, rather than staff having full editorial control — that’s the norm — we’ll collaborate with the community on an ongoing basis, empowering them to determine what we report on. 

We plan to convene our first formal, public community listening session in September, before we start publishing. What people tell us there will help shape our initial coverage.

By always leading with listening, our unorthodox approach to journalism will do more than inform. It will respect and elevate community members’ expertise, including about their information needs, and welcome them to take the lead. And we think it will support them to achieve their goals, whether that means building political power, correcting long-standing inequities, or helping all members thrive.

Community feels alienated

This is generally not how things are done in the news industry. In fact, we’ll be breaking some rules. News reporters and editors aren’t allowed to work with their sources or audience members, or advocate for them. And the audience has no control over what’s published. 

Why does conventional journalism have these rules? In large part, so that readers can trust it; they’ll know politically powerful sources have not influenced how reporters characterize them or how important issues are framed. In many contexts this works out fine. In others — especially in historically marginalized communities — people can find it distant and alienating, and some say it doesn’t serve them.

One community where people have long felt ill-served is the Tenderloin neighborhood in San Francisco.

People who live and work here will tell you many things, if you ask. Some call the Tenderloin a harsh environment, and threatening, with visible poverty and crime on many street corners. They can’t wait to leave. Others are not just happy but proud to live here, and wouldn’t decamp if you paid them. But there are some things these disparate camps tend to agree on:

• The stories told about them are wrong.
• Sometimes they feel demonized.
• They feel like the rest of the city doesn’t care about them and what they need.
• People here are resilient and work to make life better.

This is what my team and I have been hearing from members of this community.

How our work will serve our audience

For months, we’ve been meeting with locals and figuring out whether, and how, a new type of newsroom could be a positive force in the Tenderloin.

Many people are telling us they want stories about the goodness and beauty to be found in the Tenderloin. The people providing services want to see major, lasting improvements in their clients’ lives. Political organizing is alive and well here. So is a sense of belonging, even (or especially) for people who can otherwise have trouble finding acceptance. 

Our work might seek answers to the community’s questions — say, about where certain deep-seated problems come from or the feasibility of various potential solutions. We might spread the word about positive local efforts already in motion. If good ideas aren’t getting political traction, then we’ll report on why that is. And our work will return again and again to those unsolved problems, so that people in power feel compelled to do something about them.

We’ll also welcome community members to produce content themselves — and we’re trying to raise money so that we can pay them well for it. Whether they want to share a personal story, art, opinion, or even do their own reporting, we’ll help them find their voice and sharpen their ideas.

Of course, this approach could shift as we better understand the Tenderloin’s wants and needs. 

We think our model will help the neighborhood tell its truth to the rest of San Francisco and the nation, countering distortions from Fox and others that make the area’s denizens feel pathologized and condescended to. Dismantling those kinds of narratives will make it that much harder to disregard or dismiss demands from the community. 

Just as important, we’d like to help people in the neighborhood better communicate with each other, to better understand one another. The Tenderloin is actually composed of many sub-communities, some of which don’t always talk or agree. We hope this will strengthen social cohesion and help people spot opportunities to make life better for everyone.

Next steps

But back to the present. What happens now?

For one thing, we’ll keep publishing this newsletter so you can see what we’re up to — we’re all about transparency, even at this early stage. We have so many questions to grapple with in future posts. For example, how can we effectively listen, and speak, to an area that’s home to many different cultures and languages? How can journalists do a better job of covering perennial issues that we’ve all normalized? What are other newsrooms learning as they try to change their relationships with their own audiences?

We’ll also keep talking with the community, with the goal of infusing our newsroom’s mechanics with what we learn. Some of you have heard from us, and others will soon. Even after we wrap up our initial listening sessions, we’ll keep seeking audience feedback and using it to course-correct coverage in perpetuity, ensuring that our journalism stays relevant.

This will let us produce stories unlike what you’ve seen before.

Don’t hesitate to reach out! We want to hear from you. Email hello@newsrelaynetwork.org.

We're excited! And we hope you are too.

Thank you.

News Relay Network aims to launch a newsroom in San Francisco’s Tenderloin neighborhood in 2025. We are now meeting with people and groups in the area to learn their information needs, and will hold larger, public listening sessions soon.

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