An oil firm has owned Richmond’s most prominent news outlet for the past 10 years. That, however, is about to alter.
In June, the hyperlocal, independent news site Richmondside came online, focusing on the city’s predominantly working-class population. Cityside, a nonprofit newsgroup that already runs the Oakland side and Berkeleyside, has launched a third news site. The site has gained more than 100 members in the short time it has been live.
For editor-in-chief Kari Hulac, “as a journalist and a resident of the town, it’s a cool reversal of a lot of years of news organizations pulling out of towns in the Bay Area,” she said in an interview with SFGATE.
Richmond was chosen after extensive scouting of potential expansion towns in the East Bay, according to Tasneem Raja, chief strategy officer and editor-in-chief of the Oaklandside and Cityside, in an interview with KQED. She mentioned that “Where can we sustain the journalism that we’re trying to do?” was one of the guiding questions. Is there anything we can give that isn’t already available?
The state of newsrooms, particularly those at the municipal level, is well-known. More than half of all US counties have no access to local news at all or only extremely limited access in 2023, and more than two local newsrooms were lost per week in the US. Richmond is where this problem is most noticeable. An oil business has primarily controlled the city’s news environment since 2014, despite the presence of various small-scale news sites, such as Grandview Independent and Richmond Confidential.
The Richmond Standard is a community news website that receives funding from Chevron, the owner and operator of the refinery that employs the most people in Richmond. Despite its skewed portrayal of Chevron’s role in the city, the Standard—which began publishing ten years ago—is widely acknowledged as the primary news source in the community, according to March reports from NPR and Floodlight.
As stated in the website’s footer, “to provide a voice for Chevron Products Company on civic issues” is part of the Standard’s self-declared objective. Researchers have demonstrated that the refinery’s flares pose serious health dangers, and the Richmond Standard is known to frequently downplay allegations of oil leaks (as reported by NPR and Floodlight).
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News regarding the refinery only constitutes a tiny fraction of Richmondside’s coverage, as Chevron represents but one element of Richmond’s life. Hulac stressed that the intricacy of Richmond is what makes it an exceptionally significant location to cover; the site’s news is mostly focused on the details of civic and cultural life.
She described it as “basically just a special place to be serving” in her role as a journalist. “For all of it — the good, the bad, the beautiful, and the difficult.”
Richmond is home to a large Tibetan population and about half of the city’s residents are Hispanic or Latino, making it unusually diverse for a Bay Area city. Though it is home to several sections of the regional coastline, it has a history of chemical dumping. It has an outstanding food scene, says Hulac and others.
According to Hulac, Richmondside will cover the ways Chevron impacts city life, even if the crew is too tiny to have a beat writer specifically covering the firm. She explained that when covering the refinery, one must constantly consider how the situation affects the people of Richmond.
A proposed refinery tax was recently covered by Richmondside’s one full-time staff reporter, among other topics including restaurant closures and the city’s open studios. Richmondside intends to release a string of articles concerning the city’s air quality, made possible by a grant from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University.
Asthma affects over 25% of Richmond residents, which is roughly double the state average. There are other major sources of pollution in the region besides the refinery; for example, coal trains contribute significantly to air pollution in the city.
At the moment, four people are working at Richmondside: Hulac, staff reporter Joel Umanzor, two summer fellows from the Graduate School of Journalism at UC Berkeley, and me.
Cityside stands out from the rest of the city’s news outlets thanks to its institutional support. With the help of the group’s audience engagement editor, the site can promote its stories on social media and provide funding to freelancers whose stories appear regularly.
Before launching Richmondside, Cityside polled hundreds of Richmond residents on the street to find out their news site needs. People wanted to learn more about education and homelessness, while many wanted to read more about crime. There was, however, a recurring theme.
Humans adore residing there, according to Hulac. It’s a place of great pride. People are hoping that the media will take note of this and report on it.
