LA Public Press Centers Community Voice in Scrappy Model of Local Journalism
The Scooby Doo meme shows a grotesque witch figure labeled “Prop 39” unmasked as a scowling man. The caption: “Billionaires pushing to make voting more restrictive in CA”
“Don’t be fooled – California’s elections are secure,” the Instagram post says. “You’re more likely to get hit by lightning than do voter fraud. California’s Prop 39 voter ID initiative could make it harder for working class people and voters of color to vote.”
The post is the work of Los Angeles Public Press, an independent nonprofit newsroom that is rapidly claiming a piece of L.A.’s sprawling media landscape by giving voice to overlooked communities and younger Angelenos. Presenting a complicated election issue with a pop culture meme and a distinct point of view on Instagram – drawing more than 2,400 likes in a week – is one of the newsroom’s signature calling cards.
In this highly contested election season, L.A. Public Press also plans other reader-friendly projects. A zine about Proposition 39 in English and Spanish, supported by the California Community Foundation, includes cute bear graphics to appeal to younger people but is also aimed at older ones who miss the feel of a printed publication in their hands. They will be distributed in the community – at car washes, laundromats, taco stands, libraries – and through partners in L.A. County’s working-class neighborhoods.
The newsroom is also enlisting Cal State L.A. journalism students to make election videos. Co-founder and Audience Director Mariah Castañeda recently gave students a workshop on vertical videos about upcoming races and ballot measures that will be posted on the newsroom website and social platforms.
“I think our role is to really hand our communities a microphone…but also highlight the issues that people are experiencing and understanding why they’re happening,” Castañeda said.
The small but energetic staff of 10 – most of whom are reporters of color under age 35 – are testing an emerging model of journalism distinct from many traditional newsrooms. Their irreverent reporting elevates community members as the best experts on issues affecting them – not politicians, policy analysts or other outside voices. They call themselves a “newsroom for action,” striving to empower readers on how to make a difference through stories focused on solutions to problems and community groups organizing for change.
Recent efforts, for instance, include an Instagram carousel and a story on “How to Research the 2026 Election Like a Journalist.”
Access is free, with no paywalls. Stories use plain language. And the journalists don’t hide their points of view. The opening sentence of a story on Prop. 39, for instance, declares: “Proposition 39 is a conservative push to switch California’s elections from some of the most accessible in the country to among the most restrictive,” rather than a more neutral description of the voter ID requirement as the ballot measure’s centerpiece. The story includes reporting to support that statement, however, including data on the lack of driver’s licenses among Californians who are Black, Latino or have disabilities.
Matt Tinoco, L.A. Public Press CEO and co-founder, said his newsroom is grounded in rigorous reporting – and the angles they take are simple truth-telling.
“In an environment where information is tightly guarded and the public’s right-to-know is routinely obstructed, I think it’s integral for news organizations to stand up for the truth,” he said.
Nicholas Minjares, a Cal State LA journalism student working with Castañeda on an election video, said L.A. Public Press is popular with young people like him because it educates, empowers and entertains using humor and memes. “It’s a culture of its own,” he said. “People don’t want to hear bad news in the same way as before. They’re tired of news broadcasts. They don’t read newspapers.”
The targeted approach to younger Angelenos is bearing fruit: readers ages 25 to 44 represent the largest audience share, followed by 18 to 24 and 45 to 54. And the newsroom’s reach has grown tenfold in the last three years, with story reads jumping from 325,000 to 3.3 million between fiscal years 2023-24 and 2025-26, Tinoco said.
The encouraging growth comes amid a catastrophic decline of 80% in the number of local journalists since 2002, according to Matt Pearce of the nonprofit Rebuild Local News. CCF is increasingly supporting local newsrooms to ensure communities have a voice, one of its five funding priorities. L.A. Public Press, along with L.A. Taco, Boyle Heights Beat and Cal Matters, were supported by grants from the CCF Impact Fund. And Gov. Gavin Newsom just signed into law AB 2222, legislation that will give refundable tax credits for California local newsrooms—including qualifying nonprofits—to employ journalists.
L.A. Public Press staff members have broken major stories, including plans for a data center in Monterey Park that helped galvanize city voters to overwhelmingly ban such facilities by a vote of 88%.
Investigations include Lead City, a five-part series examining lead and other heavy-metal contamination across L.A. County, particularly in lower-income communities of color. The project also created an interactive map of more than 600 state-tracked cleanup sites, allowing residents to find out whether they live near one. The project was personal for Castañeda, who used to run near a battery recycling plant in Vernon with her high school cross-country teammates, none of them aware of the widespread lead pollution it generated.
Coverage of federal immigration raids focused on everyday Angelenos leading the resistance; a story about people protesting at hotels housing federal agents went viral – becoming the newsroom’s most-read story. The ICE raids also inspired another service journalism project: a bilingual zine on “How to navigate living in an ICE-occupied neighborhood in L.A. County.”
Other big moments are included in the newsroom’s 2026 Impact Report. CCF supported the newsroom’s Eaton Fire reporting.
“In a news environment where resources are limited, newsrooms face choices: should our reporters cover their third city council or school board meeting of the week or provide a lighter entertainment or sports story to help draw a different audience?” said Julie Patel Liss, Cal State L.A. associate professor who heads the university’s journalism program and has worked with the nonprofit newsroom on investigations with her students. “LA Public Press stands out because of its focus on public issues reporting. It will go for the housing or environment story every time.”
But it hasn’t been easy to launch a journalism start-up in an industry that is shrinking, fracturing and constantly changing – especially in the huge and diverse L.A. region. Two efforts to start a podcast failed. Tinoco, a former reporter at KPCC-LAist, Mother Jones and other outlets with no executive experience, said he struggled with second-guessing and a “steep learning curve” on how to lead his team.
But the newsroom’s founding philanthropist, Isaac Tucker, said he is “delighted” by the work so far and hailed the scrappy identity of “voice and fearlessness” created. He said his family was looking for a way to make a difference grounded in community that could help illuminate the region’s tangled power relationships and policy issues. Journalism, they decided, could be a direct way to do this, reaching people who are traditionally less civically engaged: younger, less affluent, more diverse and – using language only an Angeleno would understand – “located outside the 10, 405, 101 basins.”
In 2022, they committed $3 million over three years to launch the venture. (His mother, Therese Tucker, started the Los Angeles-area software company Blackline that generated the family’s wealth and served as a CCF board member for a decade.) The family intends to continue an annual $1 million contribution – nearly two-thirds of the newsroom’s budget – with potential additional spot funding to help the staff expand. There is a strict firewall between the donors and the editorial team.
“I think fundamentally the mission is about giving people a mouthpiece…and getting engagement where it wasn’t there previously,” he said. “And I think that the mission is about making L.A. a better place,” he said.
Tinoco and Castañeda – both thirty-something, L.A. natives whose families trace their roots to Mexico, Ecuador and Scotland – also say they dream of expanding. Their ambition is to place a reporter in each of L.A. County’s eight geographic service areas, stretching from San Pedro in the south to Antelope Valley in the north. Other goals include more investigations and new ways to directly interact with readers, including chat groups and direct messaging.
All of that will take significant resources and a staff 10 times its current size, Tinoco said. The staff is up for the challenge.
“People are incredibly interested in what’s going on all the time,” Tinoco said. “You just need the media to be accessible.”
– Teresa Watanabe
