The Point Reyes Light Publishing Company L3C is wholly owned by Marin Media Institute.  To learn more about L3Cs, click here. 

Mission statement

Marin Media Institute promotes excellent local journalism through a variety of media and educational programs in west Marin County. Governed by a board of journalists, writers and educators, the Institute fosters rigorous local news reporting and analysis that reflect the needs and values of the region and its connection between local, national and global issues. The Institute supports inclusive civil discourse; provides a voice for the region’s culturally diverse populations; and furthers the craft of village journalism through internships, fellowships, educational forums and public seminars. As an independent nonprofit organization, the Institute is beholden to no interest except its mission—to enable journalists to do their best work, which in turn lays the ground for an informed, engaged and enlightened society.

Nonprofit journalism: A model for West Marin

In a recent issue of The New Yorker, Steve Coll wrote: “In the foreseeable future, it seems, there will be two kinds of nonprofit newspapers—those which are deliberately so and those which are reluctantly so.” West Marin’s local newspapers, like hundreds if not thousands of other community newspapers across the country, are reluctantly nonprofit.

Newspapers are going out of business as readers migrate to the internet. Hundreds of publications folded last year and thousands of journalism jobs were cut. Without a new model, West Marin’s weekly newspapers may suffer the same fate. We can lament the end of print journalism, or we can be pioneers. The future points to a hybrid model that combines the best of a traditional newspaper with a nonprofit institution committed to fostering community education and communication in a variety of media and formats.

West Marin’s Pulitzer Prize-winning weekly, the Point Reyes Light, has struggled financially for decades. Four years ago, David Mitchell sold the Light to Robert Plotkin; since that time, the newspaper has continued to struggle with limited resources and reduced staffing. The Light has not had the resources to provide the depth of community coverage that its editor desires and our community deserves.

A local group of journalists, writers, educators and philanthropists has come together to forge a new path forward. Collectively we have purchased the newspaper from Robert Plotkin with the goal of creating a nonprofit, sustainable weekly newspaper—the new Point Reyes Light. This is the first issue of the newspaper published by a nonprofit corporation. The lighthouse logo has been revived, as a symbol of the paper’s role as a beacon for the community. Other changes will unfold during the coming year. 

The Light is now owned by the Point Reyes Light Publishing Company L3C (a low-profit limited liability company) that in turn is owned by Marin Media Institute (MMI), a nonprofit corporation that has applied for 501c3 status. This structure eliminates the pressure for profitability and at the same time allows MMI to fulfill its broader mission of enhancing education and communication in West Marin through a variety of media. 

The board of directors (listed below with brief biographies) has appointed Tess Elliott as editor and Renee Shannon as business manager. They both report to the board, and they alone control their respective editorial and staffing decisions. The board consists of a rotating group of journalists, writers, educators and community leaders with staggered terms to assure continuity and renewal. 

Our hope is that under this nonprofit model the paper can be properly staffed and can expand its coverage of issues important to the community. Grants, philanthropy and community support through MMI will fund special projects, educational and cultural supplements, long-term educational initiatives, fellowships for the training of future journalists and an endowment to support community journalism. 

For MMI, the newspaper is just the beginning. We are also launching a new publication, the North Coaster, a quarterly guide to the northern California coast, featuring local artists, writers and poets. Other publications and media will follow in the future.

We hope you enjoy what you see and read, and that you share your suggestions and thoughts with the editor, business manager and members of the MMI board. We encourage you to learn more about MMI. If you like the model, we invite you to join us in supporting MMI’s goals of building a sustainable nonprofit newspaper and other media for West Marin.

Marin Media Institute Board of Directors

Mark Dowie is an investigative historian, founder of Talking Point Radio, former publisher and editor of Mother Jones magazine and former editor-at-large of InterNation, a feature syndicate based in Paris. During his 35 years in journalism, Mark has written over 200 investigative reports for magazines, newspapers and other publications. He is a contributing editor of Orion and editor-at-large of Guernica in New York. He taught science and foreign correspondence at UC Berkeley’s graduate school of journalism and is recipient of 19 journalism awards, including four National Magazine Awards, a George Polk Award, Best American Science Writing and Best Science and Nature Writing. He received citations from the National Press Club, University of Kansas and University of Missouri, a bronze medallion by Investigative Reporters and Editors, the Media Alliance’s Meritorious Award for Lifetime Achievement, and a Doctor of Humane Letters by John F. Kennedy University. Mark has written seven books; his most recent is Conservation Refugees: The Hundred Year Conflict Between Global Conservation and Native Peoples. He lives with his wife, Wendy Schwartz, on Willow Point.

Phyllis M. Faber has spent many years as a wetland scientist and environmentalist. She was appointed by Peter Behr to the first California Çoastal Commission in 1972, and later chaired the North Central Regional Commission. She and Ellen Straus, an established dairy rancher in Marshall and a friend, proposed the idea of an agricultural land trust to help stem the tide of ranch losses. From 1980 to today, the Marin Agricultural Land Trust (MALT) program has grown, now protecting well over 40 percent of agricultural land in the county. She is a current MALT board member and a past board member of Point Reyes Seashore Association. Phyllis has written a number of books, including two wetland field guides and other titles in the University of California Press’ Natural History Series, for which she is the series editor. She lives in Mill Valley and has traveled all over the world, so she knows “there is no place in the world like West Marin.”

David Miller is an international development specialist and has worked in over 30 countries from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe. His career has included Peace Corps, the United States Agency for International Development, and Save the Children Federation. He founded the International Community Economic Development Program at Southern New Hampshire University, which has trained hundreds of community leaders and social entrepreneurs from over 90 countries, in 1986. He now serves as a consultant to international development organizations in Asia, Africa and the Middle East on the design and implementation of microenterprise projects. In 2009 David joined the faculty of UC Davis as a visiting professor in the Center for the Study of Regional Change, where he teaches courses in micro-enterprise and economic development. He has served on the Tomales Bay Library Association and was one of the founders of the West Marin Review. David and his wife, Susan, have been living in Inverness Park since 2000.

Pioneering village journalism in West Marin

by Tess Elliott, editor

The term “village journalism” may have been coined in Point Reyes; I first heard it from Mark Dowie this spring while we were honing the vision that will guide the Point Reyes Light into its new life under the nonprofit Marin Media Institute.

I like the term because it captures the element of social responsibility inherent in a village and its media. Journalism that is responsible to its subjects and readers—not only for spreading the news but for telling the truth, and telling it skillfully, which in a village means telling it with cooperation and sensitivity—is a different approach than that suited to urban settings or the world wide web.

A large piece of this approach is that it is participatory. If we can first agree that we need a newspaper—not only to inform us, but to give us a means to speak to each other and a galvanizing force to further our communal interests—then we can agree that we have to cooperate on such a newspaper. A story can’t be told without a variety of sources, and if it does, its bias will both disappoint and confuse.

Participation, of course, requires trust. In my three-plus years at the newspaper I have seen public opinion dramatically improve. If you ask Renee Shannon, who has been at the paper five times as many years and who is stepping into the role of business manager, she will describe numerous ebbs and flows in public trust and opinion of the paper.

Our Pulitzer Prize-winning weekly has been successful (if not profitable) as a community force for most of its life. Yet during the first couple years under the last publisher it lost one third of its subscribers; the effects of those years continue to reverberate. Our reporters still regularly hear complaints and flat out refusals to talk. The presence of a second paper in town splits resources such that both are endangered.

As a result, the vehicle for informing our community and providing a collective voice and a galvanizing force has shrunk. The community cannot afford to let this happen, as the nine founding board members of Marin Media Institute recognized when they got together. They have tremendous excitement for their endeavor, as do the more than 80 founding donors who have donated generously to their cause. I am struck by their magnanimity and excited to manifest their vision.

Village journalism starts with trust and participation, but what does it look like? In large part that will determined by the people of West Marin. I see the new newspaper as a series of spheres, starting with the inner sphere of the board. The board of directors holds the vision; they advise Renee and me as we manage the daily operations along with Missy’s indispensable help and the help of the rest of our staff—which, in the new model, will include, as a start, a salaried reporter, as well as a photographer, interns and community contributors who are compensated for their work.

Next is the community: readers, advertisers, sources, subjects, etcetera. Outside the community sphere are larger spheres: East Marin, California and beyond—our Pacific coastal biome, North America, the Western Hemisphere, the human race and biosphere.

These interlocking spheres will be evident in our newspaper as we begin to draw the connections between local, national and international news. We may invite in commentary from out of the area, and feature stories that resonate with local ones, informing our local discourse and decision-making. At the same time a surge of local voices will illuminate the underrepresented communities within our region—Latinos and the elderly, to name two.

We will zoom in on issues such as the future of our agriculture, watersheds, marine life and local economies. These issues will also be the subjects of other products and services of Marin Media Institute: special supplements featuring magazine-style articles and public forums, for example. None of this will happen at the expense of coverage of our schools, utility districts, village associations, parks, businesses and people—the bread and butter (or in our case, cheese) of West Marin news. 

Marin Media Institute’s founding donors

The founding donors of Marin Media Institute have generously supported the purchase of the Point Reyes Light and the creation of a sustainable, nonprofit newspaper in West Marin. They have supported the establishment of the nonprofit Marin Media Institute, helped oversee the purchase of the Light, and provided the resources to increase staffing and operations while we revitalize the newspaper and launch the North Coaster. Moreover, they have enabled us to begin to consider how to foster community education and communication in a variety of media and formats. We are indebted to the following people, families, trusts and foundations for their support.

Bill Barboni II Warren Bingham

Pamela Bridges & Gordon Bryan

Mark Buell

Susie Tompkins Buell Foundation

Christian Caiazzo  

Robin Carpenter & Andrew Olmsted

David Clarkson

George & Sheri Clyde

Rigdon Currie

Chris Desser & Kirk Marckwald     
Sharon & Steve Doughty

Anne Dowie

Mark Dowie

Suma Elan and Greg Eligian

Tess Elliott

Andrew Elliott & Olivia Klassen

David Escobar

Mary Eubank

David Evans

Phyllis Faber

Doug Ferguson

Madeleine Fitzpatrick & Evan Shively

Tod Friend

Sally & Mike Gale

Tony Gilbert & Laurel Wroten

Joe Gillach & Reynaldo ZertucheBing

Gong & Eleanore Despina

Corey Goodman & Marcia Barinaga 

Margaret Graham

Hellman Family Foundation

Mark Hertsgaard

Harriet Heyman & Michael Moritz

Cheryl Higgins & Norman Solomon

Gary Ireland

Trish Johnson 

Richard Kirschman

Lori Kyle 

Dewey Livingston 

Tony Magee

Jerry Mander

Peter Martinelli

Nion McEvoy 

David & Susan Miller

Hannah Mott & Paul Rampel

Mara Stolurow Nelson & Axel Nelson

Christine Nielson 

Wesley “Scoop” Nisker

John Osterweis & Barbara Ravizza 

Missy Patterson

Rappaport Family Foundation

Peggy Rathmann & John Wick  

Art & Laura Rogers

Orville Schell

Wendy Schwartz

Renee Shannon

Judith Shaw

Judith Ciani Smith

Nancy Stein

Judy Teichman & Chet Relyea

Sim Van der Ryn

Francesca Vietor

Nick & Elan Whitney

Elizabeth Zarlengo  

A call for nominations to the board of Marin Media Institute

It was nearly a year ago that Mark Dowie and I first started discussing the plight of journalism across the country, and the potentially sad implications for our community. The financial landscape looked bleak, as hundreds of newspapers were going under. West Marin has a tradition of great journalism, but could it endure?

Both local papers were losing money. Our community had come to rely on strong and sustainable voices, and the more the merrier. We weren’t worrying about one versus two newspapers. Rather, we were concerned that at least one newspaper survived. And we still are.

Mark and I believe that the only viable model going forward is a non-profit one—much like he had done with Mother Jones—governed by a community board. Removing the need to make a profit, we felt, would open up a world of potential of grants and fundraising opportunities. We also thought that shifting from a single publisher to a community board would provide greater diversity of input.

We recruited a talented group of writers, educators and leaders to join us in launching our vision. What they share in common is their belief in the nonprofit model. We raised donations from 90 people and bought the Point Reyes Light from Robert Plotkin. We empowered Tess and Renée to take charge as editor and business manager respectively, and gave them the resources to hire essential staff.

We feel, and hope that you, our readers, agree, that Tess and Renée—along with Missy, Kyle, David and their list of regular community contributors—are doing a great job.  

Regrettably, this past summer witnessed an unnecessary distraction. We had a war that, like all wars, never should have been. There is enough blame to go around. The issue isn’t one paper versus the other. The issue is whether any newspaper can survive in the long term—how to keep journalism alive, healthy and productive in our community. Mark and Joel have made peace with the help of a skilled mediator, and for that we are all grateful.

The summer had some positives for us as well. Tess and Renée launched our second project, the North Coaster. We hope you like the inaugural issue. We are very proud of it. It fills a unique niche in the history of coastal travel guides, presenting prose, photographs and poetry that paint a romantic image for travelers exploring our coast, while also telling stories of interest to us locals. We hope that you will share your ideas and suggestions with Tess for future issues. 

Now begins the hard work. Our community has a lot of important issues to cover and explore, and we’d like your help charting our course. We believe more than ever in the nonprofit model that we launched a year ago.

Our vision is to build the Light into a sustainable nonprofit newspaper run by a community board. Our founding board has done a superb job, and now we all agree that it is time to expand its representation. We want to bring in more diverse views as we create a path forward over the next few years.

As Chair of Marin Media Institute, I ask all of you to help us realize the potential of the nonprofit model, and to help us forge our future. We want to build a firm foundation for the Light, and expand to other media and aspirations. What would you like to see us do? How should we evolve? We would like to hear your views. And we would like your nominations for new board members.

In the July 15 issue of the Light, we announced that we would revise our bylaws to expand the Marin Media Institute board to gain a broader representation of our community. We plan to make this change to our bylaws when we meet in a few weeks, and to begin to invite new members to join us. We anticipate adding a series of new members over the next six months.  

While some of you have already given suggestions for new board members, we would like to hear from a broader range of readers. To that end, on behalf of the board, I invite you to submit nominations. In less than one page, please tell us about the person you wish to nominate, his or her background, and why you think he or she would be a good addition to the board of Marin Media Institute. Feel free to submit multiple names. 

Please either email your nominations to corey.goodman@me.com or send them by mail to PO Box 803, Marshall, CA 94940. As new members are appointed, we will announce their names and terms in the Light. Thanks for your help and support.