POINT REYES LIGHT
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
Corey Goodman is a scientist, educator and biotech entrepreneur. With a B.S. from Stanford and a Ph.D. from UC Berkeley, Corey spent 25 years as a biology professor at Stanford and Berkeley, where he co-founded the Wills Neuroscience Institute, and is on the faculty of UC San Francisco. He is an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences, American Academy of Arts and Sciences and American Philosophical Society. He moved into biotech to apply biomedical discoveries to human and environmental health. He co-founded Exelixis, Renovis and PhyloTech, was CEO of Renovis and president of Pfizer’s Biotherapeutics and Bioinnovation Center. Among his public policy roles, Corey is on the board of the California Council on Science and Technology, Pacific Institute and Bay Area Science and Innovation Consortium, and is former chair of the National Research Council’s Board on Life Sciences. Corey and his wife, Marcia Barinaga, have lived in Marshall since 1993, where she oversees a farmstead sheep dairy and produces artisanal cheese. Scientist and entrepreneur by day, Corey is jazz pianist by night, inspired by Bill Evans, Art Lande and many others.
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.
Chris Desser is an artist, writer, advocate for progressive social change and practitioner of yoga and Buddhist meditation. She has served on the boards of many companies, foundations and progressive non-profit organizations, including The Women’s Donor Network, The Rockwood Leadership Institute, Patagonia, Mother Jones magazine, the Rainforest Action Network and the Furthur Foundation. Author of numerous articles and essays, Chris co-edited “Living with the Genie—Technology and the Quest for Human Mastery.” She was appointed to the California Coastal Commission by Governor Gray Davis and later to the San Francisco Commission for the Environment by Mayor Gavin Newsome. In 2003 she co-founded Women’s Voices, Women Vote, a project that successfully increased the participation of single women in the electoral process; she continues to serve on the board of directors. Chris lives in Marshall.
David Escobar is Salvadoran born of the indigenous group Lenca-Poton and grew up in the Mission and Excelsior districts of San Francisco. He has a long history of advocating for multi-ethnic Bay Area communities, and has worked to educate and develop cultural competency as it pertains to indigenous people of the Americas. As a drug and alcohol counselor, David established the first men’s Spanish bilingual drug and alcohol support group in the Marin County Jail. He helped establish the first Latino Peace Officers Association in Marin County, worked as a Marin County Probation Officer, was appointed as a delegate to the California Democratic Party by Assemblyman Joe Nation, is a former member of the Native American and Latino Caucus, and works as an aide to Marin County Supervisor Steve Kinsey. He is board chair of Three Nations Indian Circle and a Tribal Advocate for the Lenca-Poton and Nahuat communities of Guatajiagua and Maquilishuat of Central America. He lives in Pittsburgh, California.
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.”
Jerry Mander is the founder, former director, and distinguished fellow of the International Forum on Globalization (IFG), a San Francisco think tank focused on exposing the negative impacts of economic globalization and the need for economic transitions toward sustainable local economies. Former program director of the Foundation for Deep Ecology, Jerry was trained as an economist at Columbia University in the 1950s and was president of the major commercial ad agency Freeman, Mander & Gossage and founder of the country’s first nonprofit ad agency, Public Media Center, which ran publicity campaigns for Sierra Club, Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth and various indigenous and antiwar groups. He is author, co-author or editor of several bestselling books, including Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television, In the Absence of the Sacred, The Case Against the Global Economy, Alternatives to Economic Globalization, and Paradigm Wars: Indigenous Peoples’ Resistance to Globalization and The Superferry Chronicles. He has been called “the patriarch of the antiglobalization movement” (Andrew Revkin, New York Times). Jerry has lived in Bolinas since 1977.
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.
Wes “Scoop” Nisker is a teacher of Buddhist meditation and philosophy, an author, radio commentator and performer. He is an affiliate teacher at the Spirit Rock Meditation Center in Woodacre, Marin County, and does regular workshops at Esalen Institute and other venues. His books include Essential Crazy Wisdom; The Big Bang, The Buddha, and the Baby Boom; Buddha’s Nature; and his latest, Crazy Wisdom Saves the World Again! Scoop is also the founder and co-editor of the international Buddhist journal Inquiring Mind. A DVD of his comic monologue, Crazy Wisdom Saves the World Again! is now available through his website wesnisker.com or scoopnisker.com. His famous tag line is: “If you don’t like the news, go out and make some of your own.” Scoop lives in Oakland.
Norman Solomon has been a journalist and activist since the late 1960s. A nationally syndicated columnist on media and politics from 1992 to 2009, he is founder and executive director of the nonprofit Institute for Public Accuracy. He has authored a dozen books, including The Habits of Highly Deceptive Media and War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death. Norman received the Annual Ruben Salazar Journalism Award in 2007 and is a recipient of the George Orwell Award for Distinguished Contribution to Honesty and Clarity in Public Language. He is a longtime associate of the media watchdog group Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting and is a former associate of the Center for Investigative Reporting and former judge for Project Censored. He is co-chair of the Commission on a Green New Deal for the North Bay and national co-chair of the Healthcare Not Warfare campaign. A resident of Inverness Park, he hosts a weekly program on KWMR.
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
Summary of negotiations with The West Marin Citizen
Marin Media Institute pledged to support community journalism in West Marin through diverse media and educational programs. To that end we purchased the Point Reyes Light and made an effort to purchase The West Marin Citizen. Joel Hack, publisher of The Citizen, rejected our good faith offer in late March. We regret that significant misinformation is rampant about our negotiations with The Citizen. While we continue to hope for an independent report on the history of negotiations, that may take some weeks. In the meantime, we think it will be useful to publicly correct the record on these negotiations before the situation is forever confused. Below is a short timeline based on our records, notes, and memories. From the beginning, we negotiated in good faith to purchase The Citizen on friendly terms, and we certainly did not launch a “hostile takeover,” as has been alleged.
December 10 and 17, 2009: Several of Joel’s friends tell us The Citizen is for sale and that Joel is willing to sell it to the Institute for $40,000.
January 17, 2010: Joel approaches us and asks us to buy The Citizen.
February 26: Joel files for Chapter 13 bankruptcy. All his personal assets, including The Citizen, come under control of the bankruptcy court.
March 9: The Institute begins negotiations to buy The Citizen. Joel does not tell us that he filed for bankruptcy eleven days earlier.
March 17: Joel tells us that he is in financial trouble, that the IRS is his major creditor and that he is considering filing for bankruptcy.
March 17 to 26: We offer the following terms to buy The Citizen:
· $40,000 to Joel;
· $10,000 to editor Jim Kravets for severance benefits;
· Full-time employment for manager Linda Petersen and reporter Andre Blum;
· Joel’s name on the masthead as publisher emeritus and advisor to the Institute;
· Joel’s appointment as an ex-officio member of the board; and
· A one-page column for Joel in the Light, accompanied by photos, titled The Citizen.
March 17: Joel tells us he likes the offer and finds nothing wrong with it but that he does not want our payment to go to the IRS for his tax bill. He asks us if we could defer payment.
March 18: Our attorney, Doug Ferguson, advises us to decline Joel’s request for deferred payment, saying it could lead to complications with the IRS and the bankruptcy court if Joel indeed files for bankruptcy.
March 23: The bankruptcy trustee recognizes the deficiency in Joel’s filing, which omitted information regarding The Citizen. He requests further information. We still do not know Joel has declared bankruptcy.
March 23: Jim tells us in writing that our offer is good and we are down to a single issue — the frequency of Joel’s column. Within a few days, we come to an agreement with Joel’s negotiator, Peter Laufer, for a biweekly column. Jim writes:
“I think that fact that we are now left with discussing the page/column (its frequency, its nature, its oversight) is a good sign, and we've come a very long way. If word gets out that the golden future of West Marin journalism was derailed because we couldn't come to an agreement about a single !@%*! page that costs $0.00...we'll never live it down, and we may both be forced to relocate out of state. So I'm quite optimistic we'll work this out.”
In another email Jim writes that if we solve the frequency of Joel’s column (which we did within a few days) that we would get:
“100 percent enthusiastic support from The Citizen, 100 percent (or as close as possible) enthusiastic support from the community.”
“It will be seen as a most gracious gesture to kick off a new era founded with the spirit of coalition-building; it would end years of ridiculous politics, unflattering sniping and wasteful tandem newspapering.”
March 24 to 26: Joel and his friends make a series of new requests, including that we hire all The Citizen employees, including Joel and Jim (this would break the bank and likely lead to organizational problems at the Light); that we hire Joel’s daughter-in-law, Shari, although he never tells us her last name, job description, hours, hourly pay or qualifications; that Joel’s one-page biweekly column is insufficient, and that we should provide a four-page insert in every issue, titled The Citizen, over which the editor of the Light would not have editorial control.
March 25: Joel asks for the identity of our board members and our donors. With so many unresolved issues and a concern about the privacy of board members and donors, we suggest that once the other issues are resolved, we will disclose all names to him. We say in the meantime we will reveal the names under confidentiality to his negotiator. Peter says this makes sense.
March 24 to 26: We agree to Joel having a biweekly column, but reject his other new requests.
March 26: Joel declines our offer; we keep negotiations open.
April 12: We learn through a Google search that Joel filed for bankruptcy on February 26, two weeks before we started negotiations with him on March 9. Our attorney tells us we should not engage in further negotiations to buy The Citizen without involving the bankruptcy trustee since the bankruptcy court has control over the debtor’s assets; he says we are legally obliged to inform the trustee of our negotiations and offer (advice other lawyers have since endorsed).
April 14: We ask our attorney to inform the trustee about our negotiations and offer, which he does in a letter dated April 14. This letter reappeared in The Citizen’s Extra June 14 edition. In the letter, Doug neither suggests, advises nor demands (as Joel claims in his Extra) that the trustee convert Joel’s bankruptcy from Chapter 13 to Chapter 7 or 11, or that he liquidate The Citizen. Doug's letter does, however, contain several oversights that should have been corrected by us. The letter mistakenly says that the Institute terminated the negotiations, when in fact Joel declined our offer on March 26; we left our offer on the table. Moreover, it says Joel filed for bankruptcy after negotiations ended, when in fact he filed on February 26, before negotiations began on March 9.
Late May: The trustee asks our attorney if the Institute wishes to submit our same offer to the court.
June 7: The trustee files a motion dated June 1 to convert Joel’s Chapter 13 to Chapter 7 or 11, citing, among other reasons, Joel’s failure to answer the trustee’s March 23 request for additional information concerning the value of The Citizen.
June 9: Through our attorney, we reply to the trustee that we do not wish to make this offer to the court.
June 17: We state in the Light that “the only way the Institute will again consider buying the paper is if Joel wants it to.”
