The Howl of the COYOTE

Co-launching the Bay Area's first ever worker-owned news outlet

I’m writing to you this afternoon from the torrential downpour of a small mountain city in a volcanic region of southern Mexico. Last year, I decided to leave my hometown region in the San Francisco Bay Area to live in Veracruz with my family — for a variety of complex, interconnected reasons (parenting; affordability; traffic; work-life balance; the toxic state of American discourse and politics, to name a few). But as the son of Mexican immigrants who was born and raised all over the Bay, the region will always remain as a deeply-fused part of my identity , and I will always do my part to make sure that the stories, experiences and struggles/joys of real Bay Area people get told and heard.

Earlier this year, one of my former editors and homies Emma Silvers unexpectedly hit me up. I first worked with her when I was starting out as a freelancer with the San Francisco Chronicle during the pandemic — here’s one of the first stories I ever reported, which she edited, and which is still one of my all-time favorites, about the creative resurgence of a rapper from Richmond, CA. Years later, we again intersected as colleagues at KQED (San Francisco’s NPR and PBS outlet). This time, Emma shared an enticing, somehow never-before-executed concept with me: for a renegade group of Bay Area writers and thinkers like ourselves to launch, and own, our indie media platform.

When I found out who was leading the charge (10 other diversely-skilled, unwavering, non-traditional Bay Area reporters, photographers and savants that I admire), I said yes.

We are now officially going public with it, and we are calling ourselves COYOTE (you can read about why we chose that name and what it means to us in this just-published article from Sarah Hotchkiss). Our goal is to raise enough money to get things off the ground this summer, and in just under a week, we are already approaching our initial goalpost.

We are inspired by the alt weekly era of previous decades, a subgenre of underground, funky, weird, peripheral and meaningful reporting that is harder than ever to find nowadays — as traditional newsrooms are being gutted by capitalistic whims and letting go of their most creative writers. So if you love to support local media, enjoy niche coverage, get a kick out of hearing from independent/non-corporate artists and poets who have a lot to say about where they live (and in some cases grew up), or you are just a down ass person who likes to see the collective Bay Area spirit thriving in a time of national dissolution and communal disenfranchisement, then we might just be for you. And if not, that’s all good, too — but at least you know where to find us.

If you feel able and inspired to contribute to our cause, you can do so here. If you’d like to contact us to learn more about us, or share any dope ideas/input/feedback/suggestions, you can do that here. Until then, enjoy some images our squad put together with the help of our logo designer, Ace. With love.