 | |
| Type | Nonprofit news site |
|---|---|
| Owner(s) | Embarcadero Media Foundation |
| Editor | Zoe Morgan |
| Founded | December 1992 |
| Headquarters | 450 Cambridge Avenue, Palo Alto, California, U.S.A. [1] |
| Circulation | 200,000 unique monthly visitors(as of May, 2020) |
| Website | www |
The Mountain View Voice is an American independent newspaper published by Embarcadero Media Foundation and covering Mountain View, California. [2] Formerly a free weekly, since March 2020 it has been a wholly online publication.
The Mountain View Voice was established in December 1992 by Kate Wakerly and Carol Torgrimson as a monthly independent newspaper. They ran operations for a time from Wakerly's basement. [3] [4] It was briefly called the Voice of Mountain View. [5]
In March 1994, Wakerly and Torgrimson sold the Voice to Embarcadero Publishing Co., which already owned newspapers in two neighboring cities, the Palo Alto Weekly and the Menlo Park Almanac. [6] [7] Embarcadero Publishing changed the Voice's schedule to weekly. Reporter Rufus Jeffris became the editor, until 1998. [6]
Wakerly returned as publisher in 2000, stepping down in 2002 because of a diagnosis. [8] Tom Gibboney took over as publisher, and Wakerly died in 2004 after a long battle with breast cancer. [6] [7] Wakerly was posthumously honored as the 2004 Public Sector Hero by the Peninsula Interfaith League for her work founding the Voice. [9] Justin Scheck became managing editor in 2001. Candice Shih was named managing editor in 2003, and was succeeded by Don Frances. Gibboney retired from his position as editor and publisher in 2014, handing the reins to longtime Almanac reporter Andrea Gemmet. [10]
The Voice was available free from street news racks in Mountain View, and offered paid subscriptions for delivery. In 2016 it instituted a pay meter system for non-subscriber access to online articles. [11]
At the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Voice was forced to cease publishing a physical paper in March 2020 but continued to post stories online. [12] [13] While the move was supposed to be temporary, in May that year, then-publisher Bill Johnson announced the Voice would remain an online-only publication indefinitely. [14] [15] When it was a weekly paper, the Voice was adjudicated as a paper of general circulation to publish legal notices in Santa Clara County. Since it became wholly online, its sister publication, the Palo Alto Weekly, has taken over its legal publishing business. [16]
During the pandemic, Gemmet become editor of both the Voice and The Almanac. She left Embarcadero Media in 2023 to lead Punch Magazine. [10] Reporter Kevin Forestieri took over as editor of the Voice until his departure in 2025, [17] when he was succeeded by education reporter Zoe Morgan. [1] [18]
The Voice was headquartered in Mountain View, on Evelyn Avenue, until 2009, when Embarcadero Media consolidated the staff of its three weeklies at a purpose-built building in Palo Alto. [19] The company transitioned to a nonprofit in 2024 and was renamed Embarcadero Media Foundation. Its editorial and design staff, including the staff of the Voice, unionized in 2023. [20] [21] The Voice and its sister publications are members of the California News Publishers Association, which Johnson headed when he was publisher. [22] [23]
At the California Newspaper Publishers Association annual meeting in 2014, reporter Daniel DeBolt and photographer Michelle Le won first place in environmental reporting for "Toxic city: Danger from TCE lurks underground", a series on the toxic plume in northeast Mountain View caused by careless disposal of trichloroethylene by computer chip manufacturers in the mid-20th century. The Voice placed second in its category in the General Excellence competition; [24] it took first place in 2016 [25] and 2018. [6] [26] [27]
| Year | Nominated work | Category | Award | Result | Notes | Ref. |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2024 | Coverage of Life Moves | Investigative Reporting | California News Publishers Association | 1st place | [28] | |
| 2024 | Mountain View High School | Coverage of Youth and Education | California News Publishers Association | 2nd place | Awarded to reporter Zoe Morgan | [28] |
| 2024 | Coverage of Kick Volleyball and kayak polo | Sports Feature | California News Publishers Association | 2nd place | Awarded to reporter Emily Margaretten | [28] |
| 2024 | Foothill College Photos | Feature Photos | California News Publishers Association | 3rd place | Awarded to reporter Magali Gauthier | [28] |