Reflections on rocket surgery

Hi friends! I am poking my head in briefly from our prelaunch hiatus with a few updates. 

First: I’m very pleased to announce that we are now working at our office. That’s right. If you want to come say hi, you can find us at The Workspace on Eddy, operated by the New Community Leadership Foundation at 233 Eddy St. We’re deeply grateful to NCLF for the opportunity to set up shop in the heart of the Tenderloin. 

We’re there most weekdays, but don’t have a regular schedule. If you want to check that we’re in before stopping by, email us at hello@newsrelaynetwork.org.

Second: Look, ma, our paper’s in the paper! Diane Sylvester wrote this lovely profile of News Relay Network and the forthcoming Tenderloin Voice for Editor & Publisher Magazine. 

In full transparency, it’s taken us longer than we expected to start the countdown to newsroom launch, and I confess I’ve been a bit impatient with that. For most of my career, I’ve been a simple creature as reporters go; I attend the hearing, I do the interviews, I put together the story. Publish, rinse, and repeat. It’s not rocket surgery. So I was uncomfortable as I found myself, over the last few weeks, in many big conversations about donation processing platforms, the structure of our organization (what it means for News Relay Network to publish the Tenderloin Voice), and how to shape our agreements with community writers. 

And I have learned a lot about how critical it is to get these things right. Because we’re not just building a new model, we are building relationships with the people who will read us, direct us, produce content with us, and support us. 

Our first edition will feature several pieces by community contributors. They have been a joy to work with. Our team is learning, through this process, how to be good stewards of such contributions. We know how to apply our journalistic and writing expertise, but bringing a person’s story or perspective to the page takes more than that. It takes careful listening to grasp what they mean, not just the specific arguments laid out or events described. We need to respect that meaning, because it is precious. And we need to preserve their literary voice.

Respecting our contributors also requires that we draw up written agreements with them, formalizing these relationships. We’re pouring a lot of attention into that at the moment. Very smart lawyers and journalists have created airtight freelance contracts to govern such arrangements — so airtight that they can feel suffocating to the layperson. We need agreements that do not intimidate, because our newsroom aims to share power with our audience, some of whom are our writers. We also need contracts that are straightforward, so contributors understand their rights and responsibilities, as well as ours.

For example, unlike many publishers, we want our writers to be able to take a piece they worked on with us and, down the line, publish it with another outlet that could offer them more money or a wider reach. 

At times, I’ve worried that we’re being overly cautious. That a publication like ours — which is not going to come roaring onto the scene with explosive investigations — doesn’t need to have every aspect of the operation locked down right from the start. But that’s a mindset that applies better to traditional publications, which we are not. We are trying to build relationships that are mutually beneficial, and to cultivate trusting relationships. That is a subtle and complex task. It is rocket surgery. And we must be sure our ship will fly before we invite people on board. 

It’s also something we believe in deeply and find extremely worthwhile. 

If you share this belief, we invite you to support this work and propel us into 2026.