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The Oaklandside is a nonprofit local journalism outlet for Oakland. We launched in June 2020 to amplify community voices, share information resources, and investigate systems, not just symptoms. In our first year of operation, we’ve blown past all of the traffic, audience engagement, and revenue goals we developed in consultation with industry experts in local news startups. Our seed funding came from a $1.5 million grant from the Google News Initiative, and we’re supported by a healthy mix of reader donations, foundation grants, and underwriting.
We built this newsroom after conducting an in-depth listening tour across Oakland to develop our founding values, and we are piloting an innovative program to work with community members to hold ourselves accountable to our mission. Within a year of our launch, the Society of Professional Journalists awarded us the honor of best community journalism among print and online outlets across Northern California. We’re currently a small but mighty team of eight—three editors, four reporters, and one photojournalist—and we partner with other local media organizations to expand the reach of our reporting.
We’re powered by the Cityside Journalism Initiative, a mission-driven nonprofit organization with core funding from the American Journalism Project whose goal is to pioneer new forms of civic journalism, launch news platforms in communities underserved by local journalism, and offer hope and optimism for the future of local news.