José Martin Aguilar outside his home in the Fruitvale district of Oakland. Photo: Pete Rosos

As of June, 2020, El Tímpano is no longer Oakland’s newest newsroom. That month marked the launch of The Oaklandside, a nonprofit newsroom dedicated to telling the stories of Oakland with a commitment to listening and collaboration. 

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Those values sound a lot like El Tímpano’s, so it should come as no surprise that we have come together to partner in amplifying the stories of Oakland’s Latinx and Mayan immigrant communities and launch new ways of partnering to serve and reflect Oakland’s Spanish-speaking communities. 

Already, this partnership has resulted in powerful storytelling, as we have published the stories of El Tímpano audience members like José Martín Aguilar and Orlando Ruiz—two Oakland residents whose lives have been uprooted by COVID-19, and whose personal stories provide a window into why Oakland’s Latinx immigrants have the region’s highest rates of the virus, and how it has affected their lives. 

Click here to read more about this partnership, and keep your eyes on www.oaklandside.org to see the latest.

Madeleine Bair is an award-winning journalist and media developer, and the founder of El Tímpano. Madeleine has been carrying a microphone in her backpack since she belonged to the Oakland bureau of the Peabody Award-winning youth media organization, Children’s Express. As Senior Program Manager at the international nonprofit, WITNESS, she led a pioneering initiative dedicated to advancing the use of citizen video as a tool for human rights. Madeleine has taught radio production to young adults, worked on a morning show at Chicago Public Radio, and produced multimedia for Human Rights Watch. Her stories have appeared in the Washington Post, the San Francisco Chronicle, Colorlines, and Orion, and broadcast on PRI’s The World and Independent Lens. She lives with her partner and son in Oakland, where she spends her free time making mixtapes, dancing cumbia, and exploring the region on bike.