Bucking the Trend: We Are Adding Journalists at LocalNewsMatters.org
Bay City News Foundation is turning three!
Thousands of journalists lost their jobs in the last 15 years, leaving many communities without the information they need to make good decisions, participate fully in their communities and uphold the fundamental tenets of democracy. Bay City News Foundation has been bucking the trend by doubling its staff, launching the careers of more than 20 paid interns and building a photo department from scratch to expand coverage on our free LocalNewsMatters.org site and in newsletters that go straight to you.
Publishing local news is costly and labor-intensive. Our biggest expense by far is paying journalists fair wages and benefits. Almost every dollar we raise goes toward paying the talented staff we — and you — depend on for covering our communities. We are sending reporters to city council meetings, verifying calendars so you know when events are coming up, photographing the volunteers who keep nonprofits humming, and editing stories to be sure they are accurate, fair and inclusive.
And because we believe in supporting the next generation of reporters, we have launched the careers of more than 20 paid interns, providing mentoring and training to young people so that they have a viable professional path toward careers in journalism. Partners include San Francisco State, San Jose State, UC Berkeley, Stanford University and other universities and we’ve been thrilled to subsequently hire several interns as full-time reporters.
In addition to the words we write, we know that a great news piece is nothing without a captivating image that tells a story. We built a photography department this year, enhancing our capacity to train and hire journalists focused on visual journalism to document the people, places and issues in the Bay Area that deserve more attention. We also trained a dozen staff to do data journalism with Microsoft’s Power BI program, creating graphics that help tell the stories around COVID-19, equity and demographic shifts in our community. We have tapped into training and tools from Microsoft News and Enlighten Designs to help us create formats that display regional information in creative ways.
And we’re just getting started! Our next ambition is to create more multi-media packages as we did on a special project about the Tenderloin in partnership with Catchlight and photojournalist Felix Uribe. Audio, video and data visualizations tell stories in compelling ways that meet audiences where they are — whether that be through listening, watching or reading.
Bay City News is here to stay and we have proven that our hybrid model works: a nonprofit newsroom combined with our affiliated newswire for distribution to other media is a powerful and impactful combination. Today, I’m asking you to invest in the future of our communities with your donation to our 501(c)(3) nonprofit of any amount.
With your support, there’s no limit to what we can accomplish with local news in the Bay Area.
Thanks so much,
Katherine Ann Rowlands
Founder and Executive Director, Bay City News Foundation
