New report : Independent community media critical to San Francisco’s democracy, but losing City's investment

(SAN FRANCISCO) It has not been a secret that local newspapers are disappearing across the nation. A new report released by the San Francisco Board of Supervisors Budget and Legislative Analyst's Office indicates that the majority of city departments have reduced their investments in advertising with local media.

The 54-page report which was released on December 19 was requested by Supervisor Matt Dorsey to conduct an independent analysis of community and ethnic media outlets in the City and options for establishing a program to direct more advertising and outreach expenditures to these outlets.

The report focuses on how much the City is spending on its advertising campaigns and where that spending goes, and offers recommendations for how it can improve its reach across different language groups and demographics through advertising in community-specific media.

“Democracy can’t exist without strong independent journalism, and journalism can’t be strong or independent without thriving community- and neighborhood-based news outlets,” said Supervisor Matt Dorsey.

“If San Francisco is to take seriously its commitment to supporting our diverse communities, support for community-based journalism must be an enduring part of that," Dorsey further said. "Today’s Budget and Legislative Analyst’s report is an important first step that’ll help inform needed changes and improvements our City can undertake to ensure that its advertising dollars not only reach their intended audiences, but more equitably support the multitude of diverse perspectives and voices a vibrant Fourth Estate requires."

Local news organizations throughout the country are currently struggling or on the brink of collapse, depriving residents of the critical information they need to stay connected to their communities. Historically, government departments have not prioritized awarding advertising contracts to local and ethnic media outlets, especially smaller independent ones. Data from this report supports this trend, according to Maya Chupkov, Media and Democracy Program Manager at California Common Cause which is in partnership with Dorsey on the research project.

"The collapse of local news threatens the civic health of America's cities and towns," said Rebuild Local News, a non-profit and nonpartisan coalition whose member organizations 3,000+ newsrooms, including family-owned newspapers and online media.

In accordance with the Rebuild Local News, since 2004, as the U.S. population has grown, the number of newsroom employees has dropped by 57%.

One of factors has been contributed by the local governments for lacking support to provide resources to community newspapers, especially the smaller ones.

The report indicates that a total of $1,533,325 was spent by San Francisco city agencies on advertising in 2022-2023. Only $417,448, which represented 27% of the total expenditures, was advertised with print and digital media. While over $1.1 million were spent with advertising or marketing agencies and other services without allocating the resources directly into the local media.

The Budget and Legislative Analyst's Office also studied advertising expenditures among city departments for the past 5 years. The data has clearly shown that the majority of city departments reduced their budget on advertising except the Department of Elections which increased its advertising expenditures from $119,371 in 2018-2019 to $525,048 in 2022-2023.

A large number of city departments allocated zero advertising budget during the past 5 years for local media, including the District Attorney's Office, Assessor-Recorder Office, Department of Environment, Emergency Management, Children, Youth and Families Department, and more.

The Sheriff’s Office did not have any advertising expenditure for years until 2022-2023 with $83,383 in total. However, there were no advertisements seen to be placed in local community newspapers.

Wind Newspaper has been selected by the City as the only official outreach advertising publication for the Chinese community citywide since 2022-2023 based on a transparent scoring system. A number of the city departments have still only advertised in one overseas-owned larger national Chinese-language newspaper instead of the Wind newspaper, which is the only locally-owned English and Chinese bilingual community newspaper in San Francisco.

San Francisco Public Utilities Commission (SFPUC) has been one of those city departments solely advertising in one foreign-owned larger Chinese language newspaper for the past two years on the opening of Southeast Community Center in Bayview neighborhood, water rate, sewage charges, and lately on the laundromat grant program.

Wind Newspaper sent an inquiry to Dennis Herrera, General Manage of SFPUC, and his management team in 2022. No response was received.

Another inquiry was sent to Board of Supervisors President Aaron Peskin, who created the laundromat grant program, about SFPUC's advertising policy in only one Chinese language newspaper. No response was from Peskin either. Since the inquiry was sent, SFPUC added the same advertisement in another foreign-owned Chinese language newspaper other than Wind Newspaper.

The report also studied the advertising efforts by the State of California to make use of community and ethnic media outlets.

In 2022-2023, the State of California spent $60.6 million on marketing and outreach advertising. Among them $31.7 million was spent on the internet, only $1.7 million on newspapers and $1.3 million on digital media.

A total of $14.6 million state fund was distributed to community and ethnic media, according to the report. However, Wind Newspaper has received zero advertising resources from any agencies at the State of California since the weekly paper was launched in 2020.

Covered California has been seen to allocate significant advertising budget every year to Chinese language newspapers and television stations. While Wind Newspaper has received no advertisement from Covered California, other bigger nationally-circulated and overseas-owned Chinese-language newspapers have run its sizable ads several times a week for the on-going 2023-2024 open enrollment period. Covered California’s advertising dollars have never gone to the Wind Newspaper.

Wind Newspaper sent an inquiry to Covered California Executive Director Jessica Altman for comment. No response was received by deadline.

The report recommends the City to hire a full-time liaison to ensure efficiency and streamlining of advertising spending, implement reporting requirements, and develop a directory of community-specific media outlets.

“A weak local and ethnic media ecosystem impacts our democracy and harms communities, leading to more corruption, less citizen participation, more misinformation, and even more alienation,” said Chupkov of California Common Cause.

“In many cases, community-specific media have built up the trust of their communities by covering issues often missed by larger media,” said Chupkov. “Having government departments in San Francisco seriously consider a broad range of local and hyperlocal news publications for their advertising could strengthen such outlets—and, by sustaining local news, also support democracy.”

"Ethnic and community media are essential voices for their readers and communities," said Jesse Garnier, Chair of the San Francisco State University Journalism Department. "Connecting local publishers with fresh revenue streams strengthens our media ecosystem while helping overcome vast disparities in funding and resources that have existed for decades. We are energized to work with the city, ethnic and multilingual media outlets, and local community publishers to carry out recommendations from the report. This should help ensure city messaging on programs reach all residents, in all communities, through known and trusted outlets."