Coyote Media Collective includes an impressive team of worker-owners whose bylines are frequently found on prestigious outlets like The New York Times, ProPublica, NPR, and more
Big money and private equity have raided San Francisco’s media climate. Several local independently-owned publications have either been absorbed by large corporate conglomerates or outright dissolved over the past decade — a direct result of dwindling ad revenues met in tandem with increased operational costs.
The nothingness birthed by this indie media drain threatens ethical journalism; made a landscape rife with political push-pieces funded by billionaires; hollowed an echo chamber that sees funded moderatism, rage pieces, and maligned hot takes bounce off one another like goldfish in a wine barrel.
In a time when media illiteracy and misinformation run rampant, an actionable panacea for these problems is straightforward: build more independent media outlets. Alas, this is easier said than done — but COYOTE Media Collective, a newly announced SF-based news outlet that’s entirely independent and helmed by a group of award-winning journalists, is already off to a running start.
“We hit our initial $80K goal in just one week,” reads a recent Instagram post by the collective after achieving a massive fundraising milestone. The fundraising campaign on GiveButter ensures early donors all monies raised will go toward getting the company off the ground; predicted expenses like future freelancing budgets, website hosting costs, etc. all add up, and COYOTE aims to cover these without any commercial capital support — “building a publication without gobs of starting capital is a team effort—thank you all so, SO much.”
Started by a team of well-known writers, novelists, and other media creatives — “Amir Aziz, Nuala Bishari, Alan Chazaro, Reo Eveleth, Estefany Gonzalez, Rahawa Haile, Soleil Ho, Daniel Lavery, Cecilia Lei, Emma Silvers, and Supriya Yelimel” are listed worker-owners of COYOTE Media Collective — the group seeks to disrupt traditional norms common in mediascapes awash with corporate oversight and dedicated funding. Coyote’s regional coverage will wrap the entire Bay Area, include “experimental” pieces that include multimedia formats, span all matter of content length and subject matter (think extensive thought pieces, arts and culture deep dives, etc.), and emphasize curating IRL events and meetups aimed at “[getting] you out of your apartment and meeting new folks.”
Now with its skeletal funding goal raised, COYOTE hopes to raise an additional $70,000, delivering the collective “more breathing room” throughout this calendar year; the pooled $150,000 would secure COYOTE’s ability to pair fairer wages for it’s eleven worker-owners and partnered freelancer, as well as increase its publishing frequency.
Reading COYOTE stores will be an unpaywalled experience — financial accessibility is essential toward fostering media literacy and combating legitimate fake news, which, unlike honest reporting, remains largely free to access without an online subscription — though individual donors will ensure its ability to exist outside the cannon of capital funding; COYOTE hints that some goodies will only be available to supports who will have “unfettered access to all of COYOTE’s upcoming content.”
COYOTE is expected to launch later this summer, keen on reinjecting the pleasure and delight “corporate newsrooms” have sapped out of media consumption. “Time to build something different [—] with actual independence and FUN,” continues a post on Instagram, announcing the project.
Best believe we’ll be *howling* (with joy! with excitement! with giddiness!) when COYOTE officially debuts, joining the likes of us cool lil’ indie pubs taking on the corporate big bois.
// COYOTE is offering annual memberships along with some fun donation perks until it launches; multiple donation tiers are currently offered on givebutter.com/coyotemedia; follow the collective on Instagram [at]coyotemediacollective and subscribe to its email list to stay up to date on future announcements.
