Journalists need (and deserve) all the support they can get right now.
Journalists are awesome people doing important work: digging up the truth, holding power to account, and serving as part of the backbone of our democracy.
But they also face lots of challenges, which have only ratcheted up in the past year. So we decided to throw a party for journalists in our area (Northern California) to give them a chance to unwind, mingle, have some fun, and feel appreciated. And it worked!
The event was on a Sunday afternoon last month, and was a big success. We had an ice cream truck, pizza, beer, and over 250 attendees from the following news organizations:
ABC7 News, Advance Local, Ag Alert, Alta Journal, Axios, BBC News, Bay Area News Group, Bay City News, Bay Nature Magazine, BenitoLink, Berkeleyside, Black Catholic Messenger, Bloomberg, CNBC, Cal Matters, California Magazine, Canary Media, Capradio, Center For Investigative Reporting, Cityside, Coyote Media Collective, East Bay Times, East Bay Yesterday, EdSource, El Timpano, Financial Times, Forbes, Frontline PBS, Gazetteer SF, Grist, Jewish News of Northern California, KCBS, KFF Health News, KQED, KRON/KALW, KTVU, LA Times, Law 360, Legion Magazine, Marin Living, Mendo Local, MindSite News, Mission Local, Monterey County Weekly, MuckRock, NBC Bay Area, NPR, Napa Valley Register, Northern California Public Media, Oakland North, Oaklandside, Open Vallejo, Patch, ProPublica, Reuters, Richmond Confidential, Richmondside, Rolling Stone, SF Business Times, SF Public Press, SOMA Magazine, San Francisco Chronicle, San Francisco Examiner, San Francisco Standard, Santa Cruz Local, Santa Rosa Press Democrat, Sonoma Index-Tribune, The Alameda Post, The Associated Press, The Berkeley Scanner, The California Newsroom, The Daily Californian, The E’ville Eye, The Frisc, The Guardian, The Modesto Bee, The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Sacramento Bee, UC Berkeley J-School, WIRED, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post and more.
Thanks to my co-organizer Emilie Raguso (The Berkeley Scanner) and our co-hosts Joe Eskenazi (Mission Local), Marcia Parker (New York Times), Monica Lam (Daily Californian), Frances Dinkelspiel (Mission Local board; Berkeleyside co-founder), Kat Rowlands (Bay City News Foundation), and Neil Chase (CalMatters) for making it happen.
Wherever you live, if you want to support journalists and journalism, I strongly encourage you to consider doing something like this. There are plenty of other ways to support journalism, but there’s nothing like helping people get together to make the community stronger. It was lots of fun, it felt great, and we got tons of appreciation and thanks for doing it.
