Richmondside

Richmond, California, USA · Founded 2024 · Independent nonprofit local journalism

Overview

Richmondside is a free nonprofit digital news publication serving Richmond, California. It was launched by Cityside Journalism Initiative in June 2024 as the organization's third city-focused newsroom, following Berkeleyside and The Oaklandside. Richmondside describes itself as news that is “about, for and with Richmond”: reporting intended not only to monitor government and other powerful institutions but also to provide practical information, connect residents with one another and help people participate more effectively in civic life.

The newsroom is small by metropolitan-news standards, but it operates inside a larger shared nonprofit infrastructure. Cityside supplies fundraising, membership, sponsorship, product, technology, audience development, community engagement, events, finance and administrative support. Richmondside's editors and reporters retain responsibility for local editorial decisions. The model allows a compact city newsroom to publish every weekday, maintain newsletters and texting products, hold public events and undertake sustained accountability work without building every business function independently.

Richmondside is not a separate corporation and does not publish standalone audited financial statements or a separate Form 990. Its legal parent and financial reporting entity is Cityside Journalism Initiative. The distinction matters: Richmondside has a distinct name, audience, editorial staff and local mission, while its assets, liabilities, employment relationships, fundraising systems and governing board sit at the Cityside level.

Why Richmond Needed a New Newsroom

Richmond is an industrial waterfront city of more than 115,000 people with an unusually consequential mix of public institutions, environmental risks, transportation infrastructure, housing pressures and corporate power. The city contains the Chevron Richmond refinery, a major port, BART and Amtrak connections, extensive shoreline, large immigrant communities and the West Contra Costa Unified School District. Yet the decline of local newspapers left residents without a consistently staffed daily newsroom devoted solely to Richmond.

The information gap was especially sensitive because Chevron had long financed Richmond Standard, a publication that presented itself in the form of a local news site while being owned and operated as corporate communications. National and regional reporting described this arrangement as a “news mirage”: regular-looking local content produced by a company whose refinery and political influence were themselves among the city's most important subjects. Richmond also retained valuable reporting from regional outlets, community publishers, Richmond Confidential and individual journalists, but none supplied the daily, independent, Richmond-centered coverage that Cityside believed the city required.

Richmondside was therefore conceived as civic infrastructure rather than simply another website. Its purpose was to rebuild a dependable flow of verified local information: city budgets and council decisions, schools, policing, environmental health, development, small business, transportation, culture, neighborhood events and ordinary service questions. The publication's test would be whether residents regarded it as useful enough to read, share, correct, tip, attend and eventually support financially.

Community Listening Before Launch

Cityside did not begin by assuming that the Berkeleyside or Oaklandside model could simply be copied into Richmond. Starting more than a year before publication, its staff and local consultants conducted interviews, surveys, workshops and face-to-face outreach at farmers markets and other community locations. Roughly 400 people contributed more than 1,000 comments and suggestions about missing information, existing media, local assets and the subjects they wanted covered.

The listening process identified a strong demand for consistent coverage of city government and public decisions, but residents also asked for journalism that would counter one-dimensional portrayals of Richmond. They wanted reporting that reflected the city's racial and cultural diversity, connected neighborhoods, showed progress as well as problems, and helped people find events, services and ways to participate. Richmondside translated the findings into five founding values: maintain editorial independence; report courageously and without favor; provide information that connects communities; highlight progress rather than covering only dysfunction; and reflect the diversity of Richmond's people.

This process shaped both editorial priorities and the newsroom's self-conception. Community input informs the questions Richmondside asks and the information products it builds, but the publication states that residents, donors, advertisers and Cityside board members do not determine coverage decisions. Editors and journalists retain final authority. That division between listening and editorial control is central to Richmondside's model: engagement is a source of knowledge and accountability, not a substitute for independent judgment.

Launch and Early Growth

Richmondside began publishing on June 25, 2024 with Kari Hulac as editor-in-chief and Joel Umanzor as its first full-time reporter. Hulac brought more than two decades of Bay Area editing experience, including leadership roles at The Hayward Daily Review, The Oakland Tribune, Patch and Bay City News. Umanzor grew up in Richmond and had reported for the San Francisco Standard, San Francisco Chronicle and Houston Chronicle. The founding staff was intentionally kept small while Cityside tested audience demand and raised sustained support.

By its first anniversary, Richmondside reported that it had published approximately 660 stories totaling more than 400,000 words and had assembled an archive of 2,968 photographs of Richmond and surrounding communities. About 20,000 people visited the site in an average month, nearly 5,000 subscribed to the email newsletter, social accounts had drawn about 6,000 followers and 270 people had committed to recurring membership support. Its most-read work ranged from breaking business closures and redevelopment plans to investigations, environmental reporting, history, animals and profiles of local entrepreneurs.

The newsroom expanded in May 2025 by hiring Jana Kadah as its first education reporter. Kadah's remit includes West Contra Costa Unified School District policy, classroom conditions, school governance and the practical information families need. By October 2025 Richmondside said the newsletter had passed 5,100 subscribers and the newsroom had two full-time reporters. The Richmondside Report, previously weekly, became a weekday-morning product on October 20, 2025.

Principal Coverage and Information Products

Richmondside combines traditional accountability beats with service journalism and community connection. Its principal editorial areas include the following:

ACCOUNTABILITY

City Government

City Council, budgets, staffing, ballot measures, development decisions, public records and the operation of municipal departments.

EDUCATION

Schools and WCCUSD

District governance, classrooms, labor, facilities, family information and the TEXTbook school-news texting service.

ENVIRONMENT

Refinery, Air and Water

Chevron, industrial emissions, pollution exposure, climate and shoreline issues, informed partly by targeted resident surveys.

PUBLIC SAFETY

Police, Fire and Emergencies

Policing, emergency response, fire and paramedic capacity, courts, violence and practical preparedness information.

COMMUNITY

People, Culture and History

Neighborhood lives, arts, migration, local history, community organizations and stories that complicate negative stereotypes.

LOCAL ECONOMY

Business, Housing and Development

Commercial corridors, major projects, housing, property, closures, openings and the conditions facing small businesses.

UTILITY

Events and Service Journalism

Weekly things-to-do guides, public meetings, transportation changes, deadlines, explainers and searchable community events.

REGIONAL DESK

Nosh Food Coverage

Restaurant openings and closures, chefs, markets and food businesses supplied through Cityside's regional Nosh desk.

The categories overlap. A story about refinery emissions may be environmental, health, labor, regulatory and city-government reporting at once. A restaurant closure may reveal rent pressure, neighborhood change or the experience of an immigrant family. Richmondside's strongest work treats local beats as connected systems rather than isolated sections.

Environmental and Industrial Reporting

Environmental reporting has particular civic weight in Richmond because residents live alongside a large refinery, freeways, rail lines, port activity and other industrial sources. Richmondside has reported on air monitoring, refinery emissions, carbon capture and waste-pipeline proposals, water contamination, illegal dumping and the political decisions that determine exposure and enforcement. The newsroom's approach combines government documents and scientific evidence with direct accounts from neighborhoods that have historically been underserved or misrepresented.

In 2025 Richmondside hired and trained community members to survey residents about pollution. The team canvassed commercial corridors, visited schools and community centers, worked through personal networks and offered paper as well as digital surveys. The first published analysis drew on 119 in-depth responses; 82 percent of respondents identified as non-white and 48 percent came from Spanish-speaking or multilingual households. The project did not claim that the sample represented the entire city statistically. Its value was to identify lived experiences, unanswered questions and reporting leads that conventional meeting-based journalism might miss.

This work illustrates the newsroom's broader method. Listening is used as reporting infrastructure: it expands the source base, reveals where official datasets may be incomplete, and helps define which public records or scientific claims need scrutiny. Richmondside then applies ordinary journalistic standards—verification, context, source comparison and editorial review—to what it hears.

Newsletters, Texting and Audience Access

The website is only one distribution channel. The Richmondside Report is a free weekday-morning newsletter carrying original reporting, headlines, local events and planning information. Richmondside moved the product from weekly to daily delivery in October 2025 after readers asked for more frequent updates and subscriptions passed 5,100. The organization says it may include clearly marked sponsored messages and fundraising appeals but does not sell or share subscriber email addresses.

Richmondside also distributes news and accepts input through Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, WhatsApp, SMS and a voice-message line. In 2026 it introduced TEXTbook, a texting service focused on West Contra Costa Unified School District news. These channels are significant in a diverse city where residents do not all begin their news routines on a publication homepage. Text and social distribution can lower the threshold for asking a question, sending a photo or receiving a time-sensitive school or city update.

The approach also creates editorial obligations. Off-platform distribution can fragment the audience, expose users to commercial-platform rules and make it harder to maintain a complete public archive. Richmondside's website and newsletter therefore remain its institutional core, while social and messaging services function as access points, feedback channels and reminders.

Staff and Newsroom Structure

Richmondside's current core team identified on its official About page consists of Editor-in-Chief Kari Hulac, city reporter Joel Umanzor and education reporter Jana Kadah. The publication also uses freelance writers, photographers, interns and contributors. Cityside staff provide additional expertise in audience engagement, community outreach, product, technology, events and revenue. Audience Engagement Editor Alejandra Armstrong has been publicly credited with work on Richmondside's headlines, newsletters, social distribution and events.

The small-team model produces both focus and vulnerability. Reporters develop deep local knowledge and can respond directly to reader questions, but absences or turnover can leave whole beats uncovered. Freelancers widen subject expertise but require editing resources and dependable compensation. Richmondside's contributor guidelines state that pitches must be closely tied to Richmond and publish specific fee ranges, including $150 for brief assignments and $250 for many single-event, review or short reported pieces.

Cityside's first collective-bargaining agreement, ratified in 2024 with the Cityside Pacific Media Workers Guild, applies at the parent-organization level. That labor framework is relevant to Richmondside because staff employment, pay standards and workplace policies are shared across the organization rather than set by an independent Richmondside corporation.

Revenue, Funders and Financial Structure

Richmondside is free to read and relies on a mixed nonprofit revenue model. Its stated sources are membership contributions, major individual donors, institutional philanthropy, sponsorship and advertising. The publication names Google News Initiative, American Journalism Project, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, Chamberlin Education Foundation, Hellman Foundation, Dean & Margaret Lesher Foundation and Y & H Soda Foundation among its supporters, alongside individual readers.

In August 2024 Cityside announced a two-year, $600,000 Knight Foundation grant specifically intended to support Richmondside's growth. The money was directed toward community engagement and audience roles designed to make the newsroom's work accessible across more sectors of Richmond. This is a strategically important kind of grant: it finances not only reporting output but also the relationships and distribution systems required for the reporting to reach residents.

Richmondside does not disclose a separate annual budget because revenue and expenses are accounted for by Cityside. The parent organization publishes Form 990 filings and audited statements, lists major supporters, and states that access to local news should not depend on ability to pay. For assessing Richmondside's sustainability, the most useful publication-level indicators are therefore staff growth, recurring members, newsletter subscriptions, audience use, local sponsorship and the degree to which time-limited launch grants are replaced by durable reader and regional philanthropic support.

Editorial Independence and Transparency

Richmondside says editorial independence is central to its survival and ability to earn trust. It subscribes to the Institute for Nonprofit News standards of editorial independence and states that editors and journalists alone decide what to cover. Cityside's board governs the nonprofit but has no role in Richmondside's story selection or editing. Donors, sponsors and advertisers receive no right to assign, review or alter coverage.

The funding policy identifies four revenue streams and describes a firewall between those sources and editorial decisions. Cityside publicly lists one-time donations of $1,000 or more, declines charitable donations from government entities, political parties, elected officials and candidates, and says it will reject support that creates a conflict or compromises independence. Topic-specific grants may be accepted only if the newsroom retains editorial control.

These protections are especially important in Richmond, where corporate, governmental and philanthropic power are often subjects of coverage. A formal policy cannot by itself eliminate subtle influence, dependence or source pressure. The practical safeguards are disclosure, diversified revenue, visible corrections, independent editors, an accessible tips process and a record of publishing stories that may be unwelcome to institutions capable of supplying money or access.

Relationship to Cityside, Berkeleyside, The Oaklandside and Nosh

Richmondside is the newest city newsroom in Cityside's East Bay network. Berkeleyside, founded in 2009, supplied the original intensely local digital model. The Oaklandside, launched in 2020 after extensive community listening, developed Cityside's more explicit community-engagement and service-journalism practice. Richmondside applies lessons from both while serving a city with a different political economy, industrial history, demographic composition and media environment.

The network offers economies that a single small newsroom would struggle to achieve. Product development, fundraising systems, ad sales, membership technology, legal and financial administration, hiring, events and audience expertise can be shared. Journalists can collaborate on regional institutions and exchange specialized knowledge. Nosh supplies East Bay food-and-drink coverage across all three city sites, reducing duplication while allowing Richmond restaurants and entrepreneurs to appear in a broader regional publication.

The risk of a network structure is centralization: a shared organization may unintentionally standardize editorial priorities or direct resources toward the largest or wealthiest audience. Richmondside's community-based legitimacy therefore depends on preserving local decision-making, hiring people with Richmond knowledge, maintaining direct resident contact and disclosing how shared funds and services support the newsroom.

Current Strategic Position

Richmondside moved quickly from launch experiment to recognizable civic institution. Within eighteen months it had expanded its reporting staff, made its primary newsletter daily, built a membership base, established school-news and environmental-listening products and accumulated a substantial local photo and story archive. Its growth demonstrates that a city left without a conventional daily newspaper can still support frequent, professional local journalism when the newsroom begins with information needs rather than a legacy print product.

The next challenge is durability. The publication must convert early philanthropic investment and launch attention into recurring local revenue without narrowing access or compromising editorial independence. It must retain reporters, deepen Spanish-language and multilingual reach, cover city government and schools consistently while leaving room for enterprise work, and prove that community listening can remain substantive after the launch period. Its audience metrics show demand, but a newsroom serving more than 115,000 residents remains thinly staffed.

For Newsjunkie's purposes, Richmondside is a strong case study in rebuilding local information infrastructure through a hub-and-newsroom nonprofit model. It combines a distinct local editorial identity with shared regional operations; it treats distribution and listening as part of journalism rather than as marketing afterthoughts; and it emerged in a city where the absence of independent daily reporting had allowed corporate communications to occupy the visual space of news. Its long-term importance will depend not only on survival, but on whether Richmond residents come to regard it as an ordinary, trusted part of how the city understands itself.

Richmondside
Independent nonprofit news for Richmond, California
Published by Cityside Journalism Initiative · richmondside.org

Editor-in-Chief: Kari Hulac · kari@richmondside.org

General newsroom / corrections: hello@richmondside.org

Member questions: members@richmondside.org

Voice message: 510-239-7413 · Text: “Richmondside” to 510-781-9051

Newsletter: Richmondside Report · weekday mornings

Tips: richmondside.org/tips

Parent organization: Cityside Journalism Initiative · PO Box 70004, Oakland, CA 94612