It’s been a year and a half since we launched the San Diego Documenters program and, like everyone else during this time, we have encountered a whirlwind of chaos along the way and experienced growth.
To start, I’d like to highlight some of our accomplishments thus far. We have trained over 322 community members to become Documenters, attended more than 264 public meetings, led more than 64 public trainings in English and Spanish and published over 82 news stories, briefs, recaps and perspective pieces. We’ve also launched the first-of-its-kind microsite at sandiegodocumenters.org and established over 43 partnerships with community organizations, news partners, educational institutions and community leaders.
If someone had told me when I first stepped into this role that we would go on to train so many people and do it so soon, well, I would have laughed nervously. I wouldn’t have laughed in doubt that we would accomplish so much but rather at the realization that we were about to be pushed to our limits to make it possible. All of us, the whole team, which includes Documenters, staff, editors, partners, colleges, libraries and leaders — we’ve had to work tirelessly and together to keep this program going.
It has been astounding and inspiring to witness so many unique and amazing people uphold a high level of dedication to our vision of community-powered journalism. We hold firmly that community-powered journalism is an important key to a thriving democracy and to empowering community members to hold their local government accountable. I am grateful for everyone who has supported us and this program in the last year and a half — it’s because of you that these accomplishments are a reality.
With that being said, we also find ourselves facing challenges in this work. As with most nonprofit organizations in the region, we are facing uncertainty and unprecedented times. In order to address local and national changes, we’ve made some adjustments to our program.
Pausing bilingual programming
We are pausing our bilingual programming. It’s not that we have stopped believing in the importance of co-creating an accessible democracy. The problem lies in our current capacity. At a certain point I felt that we were not providing the Spanish-speaking community with the proper support they needed to succeed in our program. It’s not fair to those Documenters and for that I am sorry. But we have not given up on this initiative. As soon as we have more staff capacity, we plan to return to offering our program bilingually in Spanish and English.
Reducing the number of available public trainings
You may have noticed a reduction in the number of public trainings available to become a Documenter. As we continue to grow, we want to make sure that our work is both sustainable and impactful. I want to clarify that this does not mean that we will stop hosting trainings and that there will always be at least one training available each month.
On the bright side, decreasing our monthly training availability gives us the capacity to do more community engagement! You may soon see a Documenter at a tabling event, coffee shop or business, and you may also have the opportunity to meet some of our dedicated reporters. I won’t spoil what we have planned but please keep an eye out for something in August!
Pay changes
Following difficult, weekslong conversations to make this program more financially sustainable, we are making some budgetary adjustments for the 2025-26 fiscal year.
Negotiated hourly rates won’t change for the rest of 2025 and into 2026. What will change is the workload. Assignment expectations have been restructured to reduce the expected amount of time it takes a Documenter to complete an assignment. With our new simplified approach, as referenced below, we expect Documenters will take about four hours to complete their assignments instead of five hours. We expect the work to take less time to complete, as we will only be publishing the Documenter Insight part of the note. More on that in a bit.
We are ending travel expense reimbursement, including parking fees. We are working to provide Documenters with guidance on deducting their travel expenses from their taxes at the end of the year. We’ll have more information on that later.
Note-taking changes
Another element we’ve spent a lot of time thinking about is how we can make our notes even more accessible. We do not want Documenters to work more for less. As such, we have changed the expectations for the notes. Moving forward, we will only require that Documenters fact-check and edit their “Documenters Insight” section, and not their entire submission. For those of you who work more frequently with us, the Documenters Insight used to be the “Summary” section at the top of your notes.
This updated section will keep many of the subsections that were included in our previous notes template, such as feedback on news tips and accessibility issues. We’ve added sections for Documenters to list possible Brown Act violations and community events. The biggest change will be to the “Here’s what you need to know” section, in which Documenters will be asked to include more detail than they have in the past. They’ll be asked to describe the main takeaways, but also provide slightly more thorough explanations that include a little more context and noteworthy remarks from discussions.
While we won’t require Documenters to fact-check anything other than the Documenters Insight section, we still want them to know how to write quality notes. We will continue training each new Documenter to take notes using our template, provide timestamps and share other tips. This will help our Documenters to effectively write out their highlights in the Documenters Insight section of their notes. You can take a sneak peek at the new notes template here.
New resources guide
With changes to our notes template and expectations, we have also updated our training and materials and resources. This includes the creation of this handy-dandy San Diego Documenters Reference Guide. This has anything and everything you need as a Documenter with the nice bonus that it will be a live link — meaning, when we add new information or make changes to this document it will update automatically! We are also working on a Documenters mentorship pilot program we plan to launch within the next month as part of our restructured model that focuses on peer-to-peer education.
Building online and in-person Documenters community
Lastly, we are using a new online platform for all of our Documenters needs. Discord is a free communication platform primarily used for creating and joining communities called servers. It allows users to chat via text, voice and video. We are calling our server the San Diego Documenters Discord server and can’t wait to have you join!
Documenters who have questions about their notes, need more support, want more information or have any other requests can contact us through the server. It is our hope and intention that this server will help to more succinctly and efficiently communicate with all of our Documenters and address needs and concerns. We also believe that the server will provide a space to connect with fellow Documenters and help with our goal to foster a deeper Documenters community. It may take some getting used to, but I am confident that by supporting one another, it is possible!
If you haven’t signed up for the server yet, please follow the instructions in this custom Documenters Discord Guide.
I know this has been a lengthy read. I appreciate all of our Documenters for adapting and sticking with us through the ride. As we look past 2025, I hope we will be able to resume and return to parts of our program that have made us so accessible to our community. While we weather these uncertain times, I will leave you with this quote from one of my favorite TV presidents, Josiah Bartlet:
“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.”
– Joshua Piedra
San Diego Documenters Director
P.S. Interested in becoming a Documenter? Join us today and sign up for our weekly Documenters Dispatch newsletter!