By McSweeney’s San Francisco Panorama Newspaper Project [Note from Spot.Us: We don't play often in the breaking news space - we focus on long form reporting, which the bridge obviously deserves, but we did produce a roundup of newsworthy links related to the Bay Bridge. Check out our tasty-hyperlinks]
We at SF Public Press have been stunned by the stream of contributions to this pitch over the past two days. THANK YOU, everyone, for supporting our Bay Bridge investigative reporting team.
When we joined with McSweeney's and Spot.us to investigate cost overruns on Bay Bridge construction and retrofitting, we felt confident that we were dedicating our reporters to a vitally important project. Tuesday's unfortunate accident — in which recently installed bridge components broke and fell onto traffic, leading to full bridge closure — validated that assumption and unexpectedly nudged our investigation into the spotlight.
This recent development has reinforced our determination to pursue this investigation as planned. This new attention affirms what we believed all along: that people in the Bay Area are concerned about this major infrastructure project, both in terms of cost and safety, and want more information about how it will affect their lives financially, politically, physically and civically. We will do our best to bring this complex, costly, drawn out construction project into tight focus by providing relevant history, context and analysis.
Many of the people supporting this investigation learned about it from SFist.com, Scott Rosenberg's Wordyard and BayNewser. Probably many more through Twitter. We very much appreciate spreading the word.
Those posts drew readers, some of whom turned into donors. You can read down the right-hand column to see how many have contributed — well past 70 at my last count with individual donations ranging from $2 to $102. This kind of broad base public support is what makes Spot.us work; it's also what we're trying to cultivate through our Public Press membership program, which will be key to our long-term survival as a nonprofit news organization.
A few people have posted comments about the investigation here and on other sites. Our reporters are reading all of these comments and, when possible, incorporating responses into their reports. If you have any questions pertaining to this project or suggestions for the reporters, please post them here.
Again, thank you for helping us build public media institutions directly supported by grassroots fundraising within the communities they serve.
Thanks for your support!
