A beloved local editor and publisher in San Francisco has entered hospice care. Out of respect for the individual and their family's privacy, we'll keep the details sparse. But we wanted to take a moment to acknowledge what independent local publishing means to a city like ours.

San Francisco has always been a city of voices — loud ones, weird ones, contrarian ones. The people who dedicate their lives to running small, local publications aren't doing it for the money (trust us, we know). They do it because they believe their community deserves something better than press releases repackaged as journalism, or national outlets parachuting in to tell San Franciscans what San Francisco is.

Local editors are the ones who show up to the board of supervisors meetings that nobody else attends. They're the ones who catch the line item in the budget that doesn't add up. They hold the city accountable in ways that matter — not with viral tweets, but with consistent, unglamorous, deeply necessary work.

Whatever your politics, the decline of local journalism is bad for liberty. Fewer eyes on government means more waste, more backroom deals, and less accountability. Every time a local publication folds — or a publisher steps back — there's a gap that algorithms and national coverage simply cannot fill.

To the editor-publisher and their family: we're thinking of you. To everyone else: support your local press. Subscribe to the publications that actually cover your neighborhood. Read the stuff that isn't optimized for clicks. The people behind those mastheads give more to this city than most of us realize — often until it's too late to say thank you.

We're saying it now.