Our vision is to strengthen democracy and civic engagement by bringing news, community and delight to San Francisco neighborhoods.
digital news kiosks in san francisco
We’re building digital news kiosks that display local news and community information, and bring joy and beauty to the neighborhood.
Googly eyes optional.
we are focused on public sidewalks in high foot traffic areas, with priority to low-income neighborhoods.
Three innovation tiers:
Product:
Digital news kiosks don’t exist elsewhere. New York’s 9000 LinkNYC kiosks are metal boxes primarily displaying ads. Other cities signed kiosk contracts with ad companies. Ours is the first and only nonprofit digital kiosk, anchored on community information needs, using ad revenue to reinvest in newsrooms.
Design:
The heart of our work is Neighborhood Feedback Days. At these public events, we collect resident feedback, evolving content and design of each kiosk. No city has different kiosks in different neighborhoods, crafted by local artists. We are uniquely focused on delivering information and joy to neighborhoods.
Sustainable business model:
Billion-dollar ad companies dominate city sidewalks, but as a nonprofit, we’re disrupting the model. Our two-sided kiosks, displaying news on one side (facing pedestrians) and ads on the other (facing cars), enable us to pass revenue directly to newsrooms and community organizations who “adopt a kiosk.”
How we started
In summer 2022, Julia walked by one of those old green print news racks in her neighborhood. It was empty and collecting dust. She looked at it and thought, "Wow, this is outdated. Someone should really modernized and digitize it… especially ‘cause so much local news is online." The next week she walked by and the entire news rack was gone! What just happened? Julia couldn't find any information about the sudden disappearance, so she decided to do some digging herself. With no background in journalism, she wrote the first story about the news racks disappearing, which was published in Mission Local.
After researching that story, Julia was even more convinced that having a modern and digital version of the news racks would help people in San Francisco engage with their communities. She organized the first Neighborhood Feedback Day with a cardboard prototype she built in her living room.
Julia is still a news rack nerd. She published another story about San Francisco’s last news rack in January 2025.