This project is part of the Graduate School of Journalism’s experiment focused on community coverage. The summer apprentices focused on small Latino businesses as well as the tech community in the Mission District. Beyond territorial mapping or common interest mapping, people construct community symbolically, often making it a repository of their own identity. Moreover, the nature and medium of the social networks within a group and across groups is often one of the more significant aspects of creating a sense of belonging to a particular “community.”

The student apprentices focused on developing a better understanding of how new media might be used to connect communities. Each apprentice gained familiarity with the Mission and tech community, created useful techniques for a community news site, and discovered ways in which they may connect and offer print and multimedia coverage that will help the two communities connect.