Growing pains and community service: Richmonders’ first impressions of Richmondside

Zelon Harrison, a parent in West Contra Costa County, said she is accustomed to mainstream news outlets reporting poorly on the local school district. 

Harrison said they frequently present unchallenged views of district policies and undertakings, while rarely taking the time to reach out to Richmond community members for their input. 

The approach, she said, allowed the West Contra Costa County Unified School District (WCCUSD) to operate without much public oversight.

“They just took the press releases and took parts out of it, and they weren’t really authentic about it and didn’t stop to listen to the parents,” Harrison, also the chair of WCCUSD’s African American Site Advisory Team, said. 

But Harrison said Richmondside, an independent nonprofit newsroom that launched this June, is different. It’s the third outlet published by nonprofit Bay Area publisher Cityside. 

“Compared to the others that reported on us, they were the only ones that came from the parents’ point of view,” she said. “Other articles were more on the side of the teachers in the school district.”

So when the WCCUSD school board was blocked from approving its budget in June amid reports of unaddressed grievances that the district was not adequately caring for vulnerable student populations, Harrison saw it as a victory for parent advocacy in the community.

Before Richmondside, the local community had a handful of sources for news reflecting their lives. But NPR identified Richmond’s “primary local news source” as The Richmond Standard. The publication, which calls itself “the number one source for local, community-driven news about Richmond,” disclaims on its website that it is funded by Chevron. The oil and gas company is also Richmond’s largest employer.

According to the Nieman Journalism Lab, local news often suffers when big companies control a publication’s coverage. In an analysis of more than 30 corporate-owned newspapers cited by the lab, researchers determined that papers acquired by large companies frequently pull back from investing in coverage of local communities and ultimately “can’t be relied on as a… stewardship for local news.”

Lifelong Richmond resident Sandy Saeteurn, who is the Contra Costa political director for the Asian Pacific Environmental Network (APEN), told The Objective that Richmond’s emergence portends a breath of fresh air for the curious public.

“For too long, residents haven’t had an impartial local newsroom dedicated to and focusing on matters that impact the community — without the Chevron spin,” Saeteurn said. “Richmond deserves balanced reporting on the refinery disasters and flares that fill our air with chemicals, the diesel spills in the bay, and the outcomes of local elections. We’re glad that Richmondside has started reporting here in town — and that Chevron, Richmond’s biggest polluter, isn’t the only one printing the local news.”

Community listening an essential part of establishing the newsroom

Richmondside’s expressed goal is to offer content and resources that “enable Richmonders to better engage with and enjoy their community.”

The publication’s editor-in-chief, Kari Hulac, said that when Richmondside first began publishing, it was equipped with about two years worth of interviews and surveys from those who live in Richmond. Those were used to inform reporters on what stories community members were most interested in reading.

The approach, according to Hulac and the Richmondside site, is partially derived from its publisher Cityside’s model for journalism, which extols reporting that accurately represents communities, encourages engagement from readers, helps residents enjoy their cities and provides a venue for local voices to be heard.

According to Poynter, approaches like those employed by Richmondside serve to engender a sense of loyalty in audience members, who frequently develop trust toward publications and media providers who make concerted efforts to develop relationships with those they purport to serve.

Hulac, a journalist with more than a dozen years of experience covering California’s Bay Area, added that her publication accomplishes its mission by taking the pulse of its community and gauging its members’ news appetite.

“When we launched … we were able to be very intentional in what we decided to cover,” Hulac said, adding she personally read through dozens if not hundreds of community surveys. “You’ll see that reflected every day on the site.”

Besides the Standard, there have been a few local news outlets covering Richmond. Richmond Confidential — an independent news site that serves as a news lab for student reporters at the University of California, Berkeley, Graduate School of Journalism — has been in publication since 2009. And in fall 2022, The Grandview Independent launched as a news publication “produced by Richmond journalists for Richmond people.”

But community feedback, Hulac said, indicated residents often felt overlooked by mainstream media outlets, which frequently cover Richmond in the context of industrial accidents and pollution concerns revolving around the city’s Chevron Refinery.

“The community that lives here has had to deal with outside media coming in and only covering those headlines, so Richmondside made sure to listen to the readers before we even launched,” Hulac said.

Harrison said the publication’s emphasis on community outreach and attendance at public events and meetings set Richmondside apart as an operation with a deliberate, tangible presence in the surrounding community — which she said resulted in reporting that illuminated decision makers’ actions and brought district officials to the table for discussions with concerned parents.

“They definitely showed up like they’ve been around, they definitely showed up like they were here for the community,” Harrison said. “What they did was bring out the decision-makers and publicly hold them accountable.”

Natalie Hanson, a freelance reporter in the Bay Area who has provided extensive coverage of the WCCUSD and other subjects for Richmondside, said community engagement was emphasized at the publication long before stories first began appearing on the website.

“Before opening, Richmondside had a variety of events to engage people and ask, ‘How have you been ignored?” and ‘How has the media not done its job?” Hanson said.

Hulac and Hanson both said the Standard’s prominence in the city engendered worry among community members that some stories in Richmond could go untold or overlooked.

“There’s been a big lack of transparency that people are really concerned about,” Hanson said. 

Hanson said Richmondside’s dedication to illuminating untold stories and engaging with residents in the city to glean an understanding of what interests the community drew her to the publication.

“The wording, the language, everything about the mission has been focused on what the city needs, what residents really want to see out of local journalists.”

That dedication has paid off, according to Harrison.

“Richmondside gave us an opportunity to be seen on a particular issue, and even if it was reported on by others, I feel they didn’t see us,” Harrison said. “[Richmondside] gave the local voice a chance to document our work for a moment in time.”

Publication growing pains 

Despite the positive impression Richmondside has made among advocates in the city, the publication has also faced criticism from other members of the community.

Doria Robinson, Richmond City Councilmember and executive director of the nonprofit food justice organization Urban Tilth, told The Objective she was frustrated by Richmondside’s initial errors in what she viewed as unfair coverage in an article concerning a reported burglary at a bike co-op that received fiscal sponsorship from Robinson’s organization.

The article focuses on police claims of a possible business dispute involving Najari Smith, co-founder of Rich City Rides Cooperative, Inc. and Robinson’s romantic partner. The first iteration of the story included inaccurate information regarding the cooperative’s founding members, the date the nonprofit came under Urban Tilth’s sponsorship, and how many properties the Rich City Rides Cooperative purchased in 2023.

“We had to call them and say, ‘You got the date wrong, you have this number of properties wrong, you have a number of factual things wrong,’” Robinson said. “You can disagree with our perspective on something and you can present both sides of the story, but to actually not get the facts right is the problem.”

The inaccuracies in the Richmondside article were corrected the day after its initial publication, and the current iteration of the article on the news site includes a note acknowledging the previous mistakes. 

Despite her misgivings given the factual dispute with the publication, Robinson said she has noticed Richmondside striving to establish a presence in the community by assigning reporters to attend events such as commission and city council meetings.

“They’re on the ground, they can hear all the different voices, that’s great,” she said. “But when they wade into the things that are more challenging, I’d like for them to make sure they’re accurate first and foremost. Don’t say things that are inaccurate.”

However, Robinson added that her grievances with Richmondside reflect an early critique of the publication, and she remains open-minded about the future.

“My thoughts are not set in stone,” she said. “I don’t hold grudges forever, and my hope is the people at Richmondside are what they say they are.”

Hulac acknowledged her newsroom has faced hurdles in the short time it has been publishing. She said Richmondside, which is leanly staffed by two full-time reporters and two interns, has struggled to adequately cover sectors such as business and policy in Richmond, meaning the publication frequently works with freelancers to address gaps in coverage.

Despite the difficulties, Hulac said she is confident Richmondside’s capabilities will grow as the publication garners more support from the community. She also reaffirmed Richmondside’s commitment to providing a voice and an ear to the city and its residents as the publication evolves.

“Listening is very important to us and will continue to be important to us,” Hulac said. “We will keep listening, moving forward, and keep hearing the community.”

And even though Richmondside has experienced struggles in its early days, the team behind the masthead has given the community a product that belies the publication’s young age.

“They were concerned about our point of view,” Harrison, the WCCUSD parent, says of coverage so far. “They were following up. Based on how they showed up and their delivery, I wouldn’t have ever known that they were a new paper.”

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Andrew Fortin-Caldera is a journalist based in California’s East Bay who has covered entertainment, infrastructure, and breaking news. He has also served as a journalism coach as part of the Daily Bruin Alumni Network and the JCal program.

This piece was edited by James Salanga. Copy edits by Gabe Schneider.