Columnist Heather Knight is just the voice San Francisco needs
A neon sign glows in the San Francisco Chronicle and SFGATE newsroom on Thursday, April 13, 2023, in San Francisco, Calif.
Dan Hernandez / Journalism 221, SF State
It’s right before a San Francisco Board of Supervisors meeting at City Hall on a Tuesday afternoon in April. San Francisco Chronicle columnist Heather Knight waits in anticipation at the doors of the chamber wearing a T-shirt of the city’s flag with a cartoon parrot over it.
Waiting alongside Knight is her colleague, who helped rally Chronicle readers in a month-long race to find a mascot to represent the city after Knight discovered that San Francisco had no official animal.
When they awarded the title to the parrot, supervisors were ready to enshrine the bird into their legislation at the meeting. Suddenly, a cable communications box was vandalized a few blocks away, halting the meeting from proceeding. The meeting resumed the next day and the resolution passed with unanimous support — but resolutions passed by the board don’t change the law, ordinances do.
In a very San Francisco-like fashion, bureaucratic inefficiency and vandalism are just normal elements to a story that Knight encounters when reporting. She’s no stranger to this sort of snafu. She in fact, expects it. It’s one of the many things she comes to love when covering stories across San Francisco.
Knight’s passion for writing about the city grew when she began her time at the Chronicle in 1999. A Stanford alum with a degree in English and communications, she built her career in journalism writing for Newsday and the Los Angeles Times Washington bureau after graduating. At the Chronicle, she started as an intern doing general coverage before being hired as a reporter two years later writing for the now-defunct Friday section.
Her first beat was to cover the San Francisco Board of Education before being moved into the City Hall bureau for the next decade. Her shift from being a reporter to a columnist came in 2017. Knight described the change as abrupt, saying that one day she was a reporter and the next day she had to start writing with her perspective mixed in.
“I never wanted to be the kind of columnist who’s just like, ‘this is what I think about this subject without doing any actual research,’” Knight said. What sets her writing apart from other columnists is the expanse of in-depth reporting that goes into each of the topics that she covers. While most columnists use their own point of view to voice their criticisms, Knight searches for subjects who are affected by issues and reports on them to amplify her feelings about San Francisco. “I do probably just as much or more reporting than regular reporters.”
Her work in the City Hall bureau and covering the school board prepared her with the connections to be a successful investigator. Knight says her email is hard to keep up with because so many people send in tips. She’s established herself as a reporter that most people can trust to bring their concerns to light.
“Sometimes people call me a dog with a bone. If I see something that’s wrong, I just keep prying until it’s fixed eventually,” Knight said. Through her writing, she’s managed to grab the attention of city leaders to promote change. In 2017, Knight wrote about a San Francisco high school educator who was homeless because a teacher’s salary and a lack of affordable housing failed to provide the teacher a place to live. The story was brought to the late Mayor Ed Lee’s attention, and soon after he declared a site to build teacher housing on.
Her reporting can make an impact and bring justice. Sometimes she’s just at the right place to make it happen. Knight recalls one of her favourite moments breaking a story happening in 2018 while she was interviewing a subject on Lombard Street about robberies. Standing outside with a photographer alongside her, the pair witnessed a smash-and-grab on a parked car down the street and captured photos of the crime in action. Knight used those photos in her case against the city’s lackadaisical response to car break-ins and police were able to use the photos to arrest and try the suspect.
“I think journalism is important because you can shine a light on the problems and hopefully highlight some solutions,” she said. “And oftentimes, you know it can turn into legislation or some way to actually make a change.”
Knight also gets up close with her subjects. In effort to intimately examine the struggle of San Francisco’s fentanyl epidemic, she followed along a mother that was trying to convince her homeless daughter to fight addiction. After receiving a tip from a SoMa deli owner, she met with the mother that flew down from Seattle and walked with her through the streets of the Tenderloin as she and her daughter bickered and shed tears.
“I think it’s one thing to hear about the fentanyl crisis, but another to hear a story about real people,” Knight said. She continued to follow the story for over a year when the mother returned to the same situation in San Francisco. Knight used this coverage to examine the bigger picture for what’s at stake with the city. One that’s torn by overdoses, tent encampments, a depleting local economy and a city leadership that could do more.
But through all the struggles that the city faces, she continues to find the silver lining in ways to show how it can be a great place — with its quirks.
“I try to keep readers guessing and I want them to constantly be surprised by what I’m writing about,” she said. “Just complaining all the time can be kind of repetitive and turn people off, but I want to show you why this city’s worth fighting for also.”
To discuss those quirks and to find things to love about San Francisco, Knight and culture critic Peter Hartlaub co-founded the Total SF podcast through the Chronicle. The pair teamed up together five years ago when they worked on a project where they rode every Muni line in a single day. Since then, their partnership has led them to undertake fun stories such as revising the 49-mile scenic route around San Francisco, hosting movie nights at classic theaters and finding an official animal for the city as aforementioned. Through their podcast, they continue to explore fun topics and bring guests to share their unique angle of San Francisco.
In Hartlaub’s time working with Knight, he’s developed an appreciation for how dedicated she to her job. He recalls a time when they were recording an episode of their podcast on a Ferris wheel. Knight had to leave early because she wanted to spend time with a subject of a story that was in the throes of an addiction; praising her for the commitment she has.
“Her loyalties are to two things — her immediate family and the city of San Francisco — everything else is fair game,” Hartlaub said. He expressed that nobody would get a break if she is committed to reporting her story; not even himself if he predicted it to be the case. “We’re journalists, but we’re also ringmasters.”
Knight’s perseverance commands respect, even from those highest in the city’s offices. He said that she doesn’t go easy on leaders such as Supervisor Aaron Peskin and Mayor London Breed when she must. Her critiques may infuriate others, but Hartlaub says Knight does it in the name of tough love.
“She’s a hard hitting badass and a cheerleader for the city,” Hartlaub said. “She’s one of the greatest journalists in Chronicle history through everything she did. Nothing was just given to her and I’m in constant awe.”