Community-driven reporting: three examples

Last week I explained how it’ll work when we share editorial control with San Francisco’s Tenderloin, the audience of our forthcoming newsroom.

If you live or work in the neighborhood, then you might want to know more about how to get us to cover something you care about. Would we need you to understand how story pitching works, or have other special training? To be an avid news consumer already? Do we expect your story idea to have a particular perspective or bias? Or a lack of bias?

No.

As a baseline, our process requires that you tell us what you think and feel about your neighborhood, your city. And maybe about yourself, if you want.

We’ll take it from there.

Another way to think about it:

• You are the expert on what’s important and needs coverage, so we’ll follow your lead there.
• We are the experts on reporting and storytelling, so we’ll ask you to trust our sense for how to carry that out. We’ll be happy to explain our approach and reasoning, and we’ll be open to changing our minds in response to feedback.

To help you wrap your arms around this, below I present you with three community members, the issues that matter to them, and how my recent conversations with them are affecting how we envision our initial coverage.

Cheryl Shanks: A need for more comprehensive mental health treatment

Life was not always good to Cheryl Shanks. The owner of Soul Station — the Tenderloin’s forthcoming soul food restaurant, rentable commercial kitchen, and community space — once lived on the streets.

Those were dark days, and they changed her. Even after she moved in with her mom, she struggled to sleep indoors.

“She’d see me leave in the evening, and say, ‘What’s going on?’” Cheryl told me. “I’d say, ‘Don’t worry, I’ll be back soon.’” Then she’d find someplace relatively peaceful outside, maybe next to someone’s tent so she wouldn’t be alone. And then she could rest.

Knowing the toll that homelessness can take on the psyche, Cheryl is concerned that the city’s approach to helping people isn’t comprehensive enough. “They need long-term mental health treatment or else they will fail,” she said. I’ve heard similar, including from experts who warn that people can cycle between the streets, hospitals, and housing when their mental health treatment ends too soon or doesn’t scale up or down with their needs.

I can take the things that animate Cheryl and turn them into reporting. I can look into Tenderloin housing programs. How many of them pair with mental health services? How should the programs change, according to participants? What percentage of people who fall out of city-subsidized housing were receiving services at the time?

There. See? Cheryl didn’t exactly tell me what to do — though I would have heard her out, if she had — but she directly influenced me.

The resulting stories might spark a public conversation about what’s working, and what isn’t, and how we could shift city resources to make things better.

Curtis Bradford: The Tenderloin’s history of political organizing

Did you know that political organizers in the Tenderloin were a major, and perhaps the main, force behind the creation of a program that benefits customers at farmers’ markets throughout California?

Years ago, the state was considering a program that would give shoppers matching funds for fresh produce when they spent from their government-issued EBT cards at farmers’ markets. It had supporters, but it wasn’t quite gaining political traction — until people in the Tenderloin joined the push to approve it, said Curtis Bradford, longtime Tenderloin resident and community organizer. They went to Sacramento and advocated for it. They prevailed. Now the Tenderloin’s Heart of the City farmers’ market is one of more than 50 markets statewide that use the program, known as Market Match. 

That’s just one political win. Tenderloin residents and organizers have been instrumental in many others — and someone should tell those stories, Curtis told me.

As a journalist, I can work with that. I can report on the neighborhood’s victories over the years, acknowledge the hard work that neighbors and advocates put in, and unpack what worked. What about the near-wins? What did those organizers learn, and how did they regroup later? What are today’s brewing political battles, and who in the neighborhood is getting ready to fight them?

Crucially, I can run these ideas by Curtis to see which speak most to his passions. There’s no shortage of fierce, heartfelt organizers here, so I might get second and third opinions from others, to figure out which stories to prioritize.

Leonard: A shift in public safety

I recently asked Leonard, a Tenderloin resident, what issues mattered most to him.

He told me about how unsafe it is, right outside his building. As long as he’s lived there, people have been openly selling and using drugs. That’s 15 years.

He said he’s told the cops and elected officials about it many times. Yet the drugs and the people are still there, and over time they’ve come around the corner so that now Leonard must walk through them when he enters or leaves his building. Some nights, from his apartment, he hears screams. And gunshots.

He feels so threatened that he worried about what could happen to him if somehow the drug dealers came across this newsletter and read it. So I agreed not to publish his identity; “Leonard” is a fake name.

He hates the situation, and wants the dealers gone. And he wants the news to be talking about why that isn’t happening, and who’s to blame, in hopes of prompting change.

What he feels is real and valid and relatable. I can build a coverage strategy that factors it in.

Some key questions to answer in a slew of stories:

Who are the people outside Leonard’s building, and why are they on that corner specifically? How have police and officials’ plans to stop the dealing and drug-use there played out so far? If there are no such plans, why not? In any plan, where would the drug dealers and users end up? Is jail or perhaps an addiction treatment program the likelier destination for most? In either case, what happens when their time in that facility ends?

Other themes we’re encountering

These were some of the stand-out topics that Cheryl, Curtis, and Leonard told me they’d like us to cover — but all three had plenty else that interested them. Other people have put forward ideas too.

Some want to hear about the good work that local service providers are doing to help people who lack adequate access to resources.

Meanwhile, there are those who feel wronged by or suspicious of the local institutions, including service providers and the government, that are in a position to make conditions better in the Tenderloin. They want to see better and more results.

I’ve also fielded requests to showcase the Tenderloin’s artists. Stories might focus on the art itself, or the people making it. This visibility could help new or relatively unknown artists sell their work or get it into galleries.

Some people want stories that help them understand and relate to their neighbors who speak different languages and have different cultural backgrounds.

Maybe the most common request is for a calendar of neighborhood events.

My colleagues and I are eager to get started on these topics.