ABSTRACT
This chapter highlights the case of the bilingual, biweekly El Tecolote to illustrate the challenges and opportunities that independent community-based Latina/o newspapers face today. The 2014 “Best of San Francisco” issue of the free newspaper, SF Weekly, awarded El Tecolote the title of Best Community Newspaper in the city. The community newspapers in Janowitz’s study avoided editorializing and gave readers the impression that they were nonpartisan and simply acting as agents of “community welfare and progress.” The State of the News Media 2004 report by the US-based Project for Excellence in Journalism points to a rapid growth of commercially successful independent ethnic media with a distinct local focus. El Tecolote’s longevity and the support it receives from long-time Mission District residents and community organizations suggest that the newspaper isn’t an experiment that treats a neighborhood as a laboratory. It is a publication with a long history of offering a resource and training ground for neighborhood residents and college students alike.
