Most of the time journalists go around looking for trouble. Lately, we haven’t had to look very hard. Our reporting has focused on the viral pandemic, the wildfires, the drought, climate change, civil unrest, constitutional insurrection and attacks of “fake news” against our very being and profession. It’s never been more challenging to seek out troubles and alert our public about problems that need solutions. We watchdog our government leaders to uphold our public trust, our laws and our democracy. We sit through endless school board meetings and local government sessions looking for anything that might smell fishy. We count on you, our readers, to act on your civic duties as voters, taxpayers and independent voices. We can’t force you to read our news or speak up, but we will never tire of imploring you to raise your voices to power and to defend our fragile democracy.
After saying all of that, we will now take the next 400 words to give praise and thanks for allowing us to continue to make “good trouble” as we did during all of 2021 and are set to continue in this new year of 2022.
First, we must express our most humble gratitude to the few thousand local newsreaders who have contributed many thousands of dollars this past year to SoCoNews.org and our local journalism mission. The list is available at socolocalnews.org. It’s never too late to add your own name. On that page you will also see our great local news leadership team embodied by our nonprofit’s board of directors and diverse advisory board. While our local journalists keep looking for trouble, our board, led by president Nancy Dobbs, Mary Fricker and Dick Bugarske keep watching our backs (and our future.) Our other board members include Ricardo Ibarra, Susanne Esquival, Greg Jacobs and Nancy Dougherty. Our advisory board includes Sarah Bradbury, Sara Peyton, Bleys Rose, Ray Holley, Jim Shelton, Chris Dawson, John Grech, Lowell Bergman, Marie Gewirtz and Mary Luttrell Cuoio.
Local journalism needs both devoted heroes and a legion of local readers. It takes an entire community to preserve its local news institution. Where local news dies, bad troubles go uncovered. Last year, without SoCoNews, reliable COVID-19 testing and vaccination information would have gone unreported. Local taxpayers would not have learned how their tax money was being spent or whether local law enforcement officials were enforcing our laws while also protecting individual civil rights and privacy. Serious accusations of sexual misconduct may have stayed hidden in the shadows of rumor and gossip without the daylight of news headlines and fact-checked reporting.
Last year, at SoCoNews we added high school student journalists to our team and our first bilingual reporter. We benefitted from the leadership of our new managing editor, Zoë Strickland who continues to inspire and direct our news team that includes Katherine Minkiewicz-Martine, Camille Escovedo, Brandon McCapes, Greg Clementi and Elsa Cavazos, plus our interns at various points of the year, Grace Carroll, Elina Sadeghian, Susanna Conway, Luci Hagen and Elise Thompson.
Heading in to 2022, SoCoNews is strengthening its leadership with the promotion of Teresa Elward Magiapani to general manager and COO. Mangiapani has been with us since 2018 and her new assignment will allow us to better benefit from her past decades of executive leadership of nonprofits, marketing organizations and community institutions. Her operations team will consist of Jamie Harrington, Laura Tew, Rachel Genthe and Katharine Cameron.
The year ahead promises continued business challenges for local news organizations like SoCoNews.org. We have made an amazing transformation over the past two years from a private, for-profit corporation (Sonoma West Publishers) to a community-based nonprofit (501c3) corporation (Sonoma County Local News Initiative.) At the same time, our future challenges are not lessening. We need lots more good news and increased support to be able to report to all of you at the end of this coming year that we found lots of trouble and that we all benefitted from the telling of it.
