Hoodline covers San Fran neighbourhoods

For months, the fate of the beloved bakery chain La Boulange has captivated San Franciscans. Starbucks bought the chain in 2012 and, in June, announced that it was closing all of La Boulange’s stores, most of which were located in the Bay Area.
Outrage over the closures slowly turned to hope as rumors percolated all summer that La Boulange’s founder, Pascal Rigo, was planning to re-open some of the cafes.
Then, on September 22, Rose Garrett, the managing editor of Hoodline, a hyperlocal site covering 24 San Francisco neighborhoods, landed a scoop: A business named La Boulangerie de San Francisco had filed papers with the city to open in La Boulange’s original location.
While the La Boulange saga received outsized attention, neighborhood stories like this are the core of Hoodline’s reporting. The topics it covers — an increase in rat sightings in parks in Embarcadero; how bus-only lanes have affected traffic in the Lower Haight — are typical of any hyperlocal outlet. They tend to be too small for most local media organizations to cover, but are of great importance to people who live in those specific neighborhoods.
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