By Steven T. Jones
The Bay Area News Project – a new media collaboration that will be formally announced tomorrow, but which we wrote about earlier today – is already generating excitement from San Franciscans who have long been concerned about the journalism industry’s decline.
“I very much like the idea of another locally owned and edited news voice in San Francisco. The Guardian and I wish them well,” Bay Guardian Editor and Publisher Bruce B. Brugmann said.
While principal investor Warren Hellman discussed the project with the Guardian, none of the other local partners – KQED, UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, the Media Workers Guild, and the consulting firm McKinsey & Company, which is handling the managing editor hiring process – returned our calls or were willing to discuss the project before its formal announcement in the morning.
Yet the long-rumored news was greeted warmly by local media innovators, including some who have been closely watching the scene and waiting to see what Hellman and company would do. “I’m absolutely thrilled that significant resources are being put into an alternative business model for the local media because it’s sorely needed,” said Michael Stoll, project director for The Public Press, a noncommercial news outlet that launched earlier this year after years in development. “It represents the first hopeful sign in a long time that watchdog journalism is on the rebound.”