Fifty-Year Bond between El Tecolote, SF State Strengthens during Pandemic

El Tecolote Editor-in Chief Alexis Terrazas (center) speaks to students in the Community Journalism class early in the Spring 2020 semester before instruction went remote.
Photo by Jon Funabiki

For more than a decade, San Francisco State University students in Professor of Journalism Jon Funabiki’s Community Media class have written for the Mission-based newspaper El Tecolote — a bilingual publication founded in 1970 by a former San Francisco State instructor. After the city issued a stay-at-home order in response to the COVID-19 pandemic earlier this year, these student reporters became vital to the newspaper and the community it serves.

The students have written about COVID-19 testing in the hard-hit Mission District, the rise of pandemic-related hate crimes and the unique challenges vulnerable communities face due to the spread of the virus.

“We would not have been able to publish the kind of content we’ve been producing without them,” said El Tecolote Editor Alexis Terrazas, an SF State alumnus (’11) and former student of Funabiki’s. The community looks to El Tecolote for resources, he says, and students rose to the occasion in spite of the many challenges they faced this semester.

Read more about the enduring relationship between El Tecolote and the Journalism Department here.