Committee recommends San Francisco Examiner as official newspaper and awards neighborhood outreach periodicals

Will Alderman and OCA staff presented the annual solicitation and recommendations May 8 for the city's official advertising and outreach periodicals for fiscal year 2024-25, required under Proposition J and Administrative Code sections 2.8-2.81.

OCA said two proposals were received for the official newspaper (San Francisco Examiner and San Francisco Chronicle) but the Chronicle was nonresponsive because it does not print locally; OCA therefore recommended the San Francisco Examiner as the official newspaper. OCA also reviewed 18 responsive outreach proposals and recommended a set of community and neighborhood publications to provide outreach advertising coverage across the city's defined communities and neighborhoods.

During public comment, Maya Chupkov of California Common Cause urged the city to think more expansively about discretionary advertising to sustain ethnic and local media and to ensure outreach reaches marginalized communities. Committee members thanked the public commenter and discussed potential future digital outreach options while noting the administrative-code requirement for local print publication.

The committee voted 3-0 to forward the designations to the full Board with a positive recommendation.