For the first time since he acquired a majority stake in Lee, Hoffmann spoke on an earnings call Thursday, sharing that the company is undergoing a "decisive transformation." Along with a change in top leadership, the company has started to invest more resources in local coverage and is eyeing opportunities for expansion - a reversal from the past several years, which have been marked by local cuts.
“This fellowship is about investing in the future of local journalism right here in our community,” Ramona Giwargis, co-founder of San José Spotlight, said. “We're creating real opportunities for emerging reporters to do meaningful work, tell important stories and build careers in the Bay Area.”
The company was recognized as the top news group in New York state, and beat its closest rival by more than 400 points in this year's contest.
For the first day, I was the first person on the scene, and then my phone died. So, I went home and was reporting from there as the information was coming out, and I was getting more and more media requests. I started saying yes, not because I thought I had the right to tell this story, but mostly because I knew that reporters-or let's say some reporters-have a tendency to not be sensitive in these situations.
To contribute, send in a headline and a snap to info@missionlocal.com. I'm a copy editor and a Bay Area native who's lived in San Francisco since 2004. I've written for local publications like the SF Weekly, San Francisco Examiner, San Francisco Chronicle and San Francisco magazine, as well as the New Yorker, the Guardian, Wired, Mother Jones and others. My favorite tacos and alambres come from El Farolito.
The biggest tech story dominating Washington right now is, incidentally, a media story. Last week, shortly after The Washington Post laid off 400 staffers and closed many of its desks, and before its absentee CEO Will Lewis got summarily shoved out, I wrote a column trying to figure out whether there was even a cynical, self-interested reason that Amazon founder Jeff Bezos continued to own the Post: Was it to support journalism, make money, or suck up to Donald Trump?
The latest: The Washington Post is laying off hundreds of journalists in an effort to "restructure" the newsroom and cut costs. In 2024, the company began prioritizing subscriptions over digital advertising, raising the yearly fee to access content. The big picture: While major media companies and news organizations tinker with delivery methods, tiered subscriptions and bundles that include non-news packages, including crossword puzzles and games, local news is still operating standard paywalls, relying on subscription-based revenue instead of digital advertising.
We've had political assassinations. We had a multi-fatality school shooting, and now the largest immigration crackdown in American history has all happened in Minneapolis in the last eight months,
The Minnesota Star Tribune is the state's biggest newspaper, and has been doing an excellent job of covering every angle of "Operation Metro Surge" - the federal government's mass deportation effort that started in December. But it is also competing in a real-time news environment where everyone is a reporter, and cellphone videos and social media posts are widely distributed.
I've been a Mission resident since 1998 and a professor emeritus at Berkeley's J-school since 2019. I got my start in newspapers at the Albuquerque Tribune in the city where I was born and raised. Like many local news outlets, The Tribune no longer exists. I left daily newspapers after working at The New York Times for the business, foreign and city desks. Lucky for all of us, it is still here.
He's headed to villages where, owing to increasing exposure to Russian fire, only a fraction of residents remain. The war has cut them off from regular services. They no longer receive mail, and Russian transmitters often overpower or interfere with their Ukrainian mobile-phone signals. Before large-scale signal jamming was introduced to counter drones, Russian television and radio channels were accessible on televisions and radios in border-area communities.
Founder/Executive Editor. I've been a Mission resident since 1998 and a professor emeritus at Berkeley's J-school since 2019. I got my start in newspapers at the Albuquerque Tribune in the city where I was born and raised. Like many local news outlets, The Tribune no longer exists. I left daily newspapers after working at The New York Times for the business, foreign and city desks. Lucky for all of us, it is still here.
It sounds a little trite. But it's true. True whether we're putting a spotlight on a massive new xAI data center in Memphis or digging into the potential state takeover of our largest public school system or highlighting new restaurants and chefs doing amazing things or telling the stories of immigrants of all backgrounds who've made Memphis their home. It's true in the enterprise reporting we do.
If you're reading this, you probably know the value of the Mercury's news reporting, arts and culture coverage, event calendar, and the bevy of events we host throughout the year. The work we do helps our city shine, but we can't do it without your support. If you believe Portland benefits from smart, local journalism and arts coverage, please consider making a small monthly contribution, because without you, there is no us. Thanks for your support!
I've spent a fair amount of 2025 toggling between my parents' MyChart accounts. From scheduling appointments to reviewing test results, I - and their doctors - have a one-stop shop for managing their various healthcare needs. A hematologist can request lab work, and a gastroenterologist can review the data before recommending a medication or procedure. Everyone is working from the same information. It's time-stamped, efficient, and verifiable.
Forty years of toxic media policy, the libertarian ethos of big tech, the collapse of the 20th-century business model, the paranoia and extremism of online life, the rise of the far right: when stirred together, these nutrients do not constitute the soil for a healthy free press. This is certainly not the first time people have found themselves with a dearth of formal news structures. Besides most of human history, one could point to present-day Hungary or Turkey or Saudi Arabia.
'They're like an invasive species,' one source said. 'They overpower all the resources and make the businesses in those neighborhoods vulnerable. That's where dollar stores can thrive. No matter what community, the cause of food deserts stem from one route, and that's economic disinvestment in vulnerable communities.' Wright's work, which , shows the approach of the nonprofit, Black-led national newsroom with local newsrooms in Atlanta and Gary, Indiana.
