With 14 public schools, a struggling business district, merging cultures and 80,000-plus residents, San Francisco's Ingleside District generates plenty of news. But those stories rarely get reported.
And when you add in surrounding neighborhoods - the Excelsior, Outer Mission, Ocean View, Ingleside Terrace, Visitation Valley, Bayview, Hunter's Point, etc - you start to realize the media pays almost no attention to the part of the city where most children, most immigrants and most working class people live.
Now reporters from Newswire21.org are fixing that as they cover beats through an innovative community reporting project, in collaboration with a several academic, government and professional groups, including Spot.Us. Our reporters are working on stories about the schools, health, transportation, culture, the local economy, criminal justice, politics, the environment and housing.
Our reporters include students, interns, veteran jouranlists and ordinary citizens who are all volunteering to try to bring overlooked stories into the spotlight. We're not imposing our impressions on the neighborhoods, we're empowering residents to tell their own stories from their perspectives. And we've offered these stories for free with neighborhood media like the Ingleside Light, Public Press, KALW and The Bay Citizen so that more citizens can see them.
We've already published more than two dozen stories in four months on topics like the ones below Many of those stories have been posted here as blog updates. More stories will follow as citizen reporters take over more of the beats. (Check back often for more stories):
- Elders in Polluted Neighborhood Face the Biggest Health Risks (3 part series)
- School Cutbacks Will Hit the Poorest Schools the Hardest
- New Foreclosure Law to Limit Evictions in Ingleside
- High Muni Fares Ease Taboo on Sneaking Aboard
- Teen Center Now Serves Hot Meals to Seniors
- Truck Fumes Endanger Health in Southeast SF
- CCSF Played Key Role in Capitol Budget Protest
- Quake Study Projects Damage to Ingleside Home
- Parents Fume Over Cutbacks in Ingleside Schools
- Ingleside Wary of Huge Balboa Park Redevelopment Project
- Artists Being Priced Out of Southern SF Neighborhoods
- School Assignment Plan Changes Worry Ingleside Parents
- Gaps Seen as SF Restarts Emergency Training in Ingleside
- SFUSD Scuttles 'Protest' Field Trip by Ingleside School
- Debate Runs High in Ingleside Over State Pot Measure
