Reflections And Closed Sessions

A Quiet Week For City Council

The City Council kept things quiet this week, focusing on the Closed Session instead of having a public meeting on Tuesday. The Closed Session agenda was packed, however, with some items of interest.

New City Manager On The Horizon

The first item on the list is just labeled “City Manager.” For those who need a refresher, the City Manager position has been vacant since May when former City Manager Ana Alvarez was placed on administrative leave. The placement was a result of pushback from City Staff over, among other things, her unpopular Return To Work policy.

Her eventual ousting came less than six months after she was officially hired, and also resulted in a severance package that resulted in her being paid more for her severance than the work she performed for the City. Afterwards, the position was temporarily filled by City Attorney Michael Lawson before being temporarily filled by Library Director Jayanti Addleman.

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According to documents obtained by the Hayward Herald, the application period for City Manager closed on September 14, so it’s possible that the September 16th meeting involved discussing applicants. The previous City Manager, who had no prior experience in that position, earned $380,000 per year for their salary.

The Council had previously expressed interest in filling the City Manager position before the end of the year.

Labor Negotiations During Budget Crisis

During the same meeting, the City Council met with the City’s negotiation team to discuss labor contracts with all bargaining groups. Given the strong warnings from City Councilmembers on September 2nd, the City is likely exploring concessions from labor groups in an effort to help cushion the estimated $20,000,000 deficit the City is facing.

Parcel Group 8 Under Discussion

After the public outcry over the situation at the Bridge Court apartments, located on Parcel Group 8, during an August City Council meeting, at least one member of City Council voted against the plan to eliminate their “zero displacement goal.” Councilmember Andrews voted against the plan, seemingly unmoved by the City’s plan to offer an incentive to those residents who chose to relocate within the next 90 days of the vote.

The Council met with property negotiators in regards to the Parcel Group 8, though it’s impossible to know what the content of the meeting. Included in the meeting are Whittom Consulting, which provides advice and support on public/private real estate agreements, and Goldfarb and Lipman, which is a real estate law firm.

A Time Of Reflection Two Years In

I’m trying to make a habit every Autumn of using a lull in Hayward news to take stock of the Herald and reflect on what’s happened since August 2023, where we’re at now, and where we’re headed going forward. So since Council decided to handle some quiet business this week, let’s pause and take stock of what a few people with a $0 budget have managed to cobble together in the last 24 months or so.

A Lot Of New Things Kicked Off

Since Autumn of 2024, a lot of things have happened—aside from a catastrophically bad national election. We’ve managed to grow our small but might team of volunteers from one person to three, with everyone lending a hand as they’re able in their free time. That’s enabled us to do a lot of things that I couldn’t have managed on my own.

Covering Local Businesses

started interviewing and covering local businesses in Hayward and giving them an outlet to talk about the work they do and tie it into how small businesses interact with the City. She’s also been instrumental in giving advice on administrative things and making sure that things run smoothly.

We’ve built relationships with local businesses and may even manage to start having a budget of some kind in the not-too-distant future. Naomi has also pushed me to do things that I wouldn’t have done on my own—stretching my legs into other areas and thinking of things in practical ways I’m often not inclined to do on my own.

Over The Loudspeaker

Our very own developed and produced Over the Loudspeaker, our mostly-monthly news show/podcast that we host on our YouTube channel. Expanding into video content was something I always knew was important, but also didn’t have the capacity to do on my own. Nestor planned and edited all of the episodes—even filming our amazing intro sequence—and all I had to do was drag him out of the doldrums once or twice.

He’s brought a different energy and vision to the team that’s helped us think creatively and, dare I say, anarchistically about how we approach news and our various media projects.

Hayward Herald Zine

Our first flirtation with print media, the Hayward Herald Zine was published in June. We handed it out during the Hayward Night Market and—aside from the odd disaffected teen—it resonated with a lot of people. The dozens of people who came by expressed surprise that anyone was actually covering news in Hayward, and it got our little outfit on the radar of a bunch of people who wouldn’t have heard of us otherwise.

With a combination of art, news, sweat, and even a small amount of child labor, we created something that is still proving popular with residents months after it was released. We had 50 issues left over after the Night Market, and Books on B was find the rest of them good homes. Renee said that people are always interested when they see it, and they disappeared in a matter of weeks—even getting a little unplanned social media coverage.

Although it was a huge—and expensive—effort, it confirmed what I already believed: that Hayward can and should support a print newspaper. People are hungry for local news in a way that they often aren’t even aware of, and having something they can physically grab on to makes so much sense for something so hyper-local.

Deep Dive Investigation

I took a crack at doing an expansive investigation piece on the Sun Gallery this summer. It sprawled over 3 different posts and involved dozens of hours of work between interviews, research, and writing. I learned a lot about the process of doing actually controversial work that doesn’t involve the City Government—almost all of whom are at least publicly professional.

I learned a lot about how journalistic research and writing is done—I’m still not a journalist, I just do journalistic work no sane person would do—and also confirmed that this kind of work, though painful for a lot of people involved, is necessary. Things in Hayward too often operate in the dark and by rumor. By bringing things to light and avoiding he-said-she-said-they-said, the community can have a shared understanding of what’s going on in our City and make course corrections where possible.

Hayward Voices

We also recently dipped our toes into a live speaker series for the first time. Part fundraiser, part education, and part community-building exercise, the first Hayward Voices event went better than expected. Moderating an hour-long conversation was a great experience—huge shout-out to our guests Councilmember George Syrop and Alejandro Jasso of Bike Hayward—and the audience seemed really engaged.

We learned some things and it wasn’t without issues, but it was a really fun event and something I’d definitely like to do on a regular basis if I’m able to. For those curious, we did record it, but there were some issues—my head was blocked the entire time, for one—but we’ll hopefully release some highlights on our Instagram not too long from now.

Where Are We Now?

Last year we covered the Hayward Herald by the numbers, so let’s see how far we’ve come in the last 12 months or so. The numbers below are from August 2024 to today.

• Email Views: 71,001

  • Users: 40,465

    • People may look at their emails more than once—they’re long reads—and there are some email services that do weird stuff that register as additional views.

• Direct Views: 11,141

  • Users: 4,952

    • This is also where over 150 of our subscribers have come from—finding a direct link to our page.

• Subscribers: 877—last year we were at less than 300!

  • Pledged Users: 28

  • Total Amount Pledged: $1,730/year

    • We don’t actually take in any subscription money right now, but seeing that we have people already willing to pay is a huge showing of support.

• Subscribers in California: 93%

  • Farthest Away Subscriber: Turkey. Of all places!

We’re also on Instagram! The demographics there are likely very much different than our subscribers, but it’s still a growing portion of our community. Unfortunately, most of the information from Instagram only covers the last 30 days. Maybe that means we should look at this more often?

• Followers: 443

• Views: 16,303

  • 57.8% from non-followers

    • Our post with Big Lou Jiminez got an unusual amount of attention on Instagram from people we don’t usually interact with.

• Audience:

  • 25% of our audience comes from Hayward itself.

  • Most of our Instagram audience is between the ages of 25 and 44.

  • And we’re pretty evenly split between men and women—no data on non-binary folks, sorry.

And all of this from absolutely zero paid advertising. I tried to boost an Instagram post once and got denied by Meta because it was political—I even failed the appeal! So the vast majority of our growth has been from our own outreach—Hayward Night Market, Zine, modest flyering—and word-of-mouth.

What’s On The Horizon?

The Hayward Herald is not slowing down or stopping. We’ve got some changes on the horizon that we’re really looking forward to. From more public-facing stuff and partnerships to changes to our entire platform, here’s a sneak peek of what we’re planning this year.

Hayward Herald Zine Issue 2

We’re working on a new zine for the next Hayward Night Market in October. It’s going to look a lot different from the last one, but it’ll still be in print, still be available to people for free, and still have local Hayward news in a beautiful package. We’re hoping to leverage some partnerships we’ve built over the last year, so keep an eye out for that in the coming weeks.

Over The Loudspeaker Will Return

We’ve had a substantial “summer” break for Over the Loudspeaker, and we’re hoping to bring our dry summer spell to an end. Nestor and I both have a lot going on, but we want to jump back in front of the camera and bring you all some Big Ideas, interviews with local movement leaders, and give everyone a month’s worth of headlines in just a few minutes.

I’m also thinking of changing our social media strategy to lean a bit more into video, but in a way that’s sustainable for our small group while still being useful for our audience.

New-ish Herald, Who Dis?

Existing on Substack has both pros and cons—the network effect is really helpful, but I refuse to monetize here so we don’t accidentally fund fascists. It also hurts our search results—for example, when you search “Hayward news” we’re nowhere to be seen! You’re more likely to get The East Bay Echo—which ceased publication over a year ago, sadly—than see us.

Search engines likely suppress Substack subdomains, which makes sense. So moving off of Substack is something I’ve wanted to do for a while. But when we do, we want to do it right. We’ve also got a bit of a rebrand in the works, and both a full rebrand and building a new website with all of our existing content is a lot of work.

I’m hoping to make the transition around the New Year, but I don’t want to set an arbitrary date. When we make the move, you all will be the first to know.

We Need Our Community

In order to keep doing this—and continuing to grow—we can’t stay a team of three people working in their spare time. I’d love to do this as my main job, but between health insurance and a family to support, there’s no way that’s happening without big changes in the world. But if you want to help out—contributing pictures, managing social media, editing video, or especially writing and contributing content—we’d love to talk with you about it.

But even if you can’t contribute your time, if you keep reading then you’re helping us out. If you tell a friend or neighbor, that’d also be huge. And, when the time comes, if you have money to spare to support us, we promise we’ll put it to good use—all of our expenses are public, so you can keep an eye on us.

In the meantime, we’ll keep doing what we’re doing—bringing you Hayward news that you absolutely won’t hear anywhere else. We’re the only ones who’ll look after us, after all.

Have a good weekend, and we’ll catch you here next week.