THE MARIN COMMUNITY FOUNDATION has awarded Bay City News Foundation a $120,000 grant to enhance local coverage, adding a dedicated reporter whose work will be given away to local outlets.

The new reporting, focusing on pressing issues and underserved populations, will be made freely available to all local news outlets in Marin County, and to residents directly on the Marin News Matters section of BCNF’s LocalNewsMatters.org web site. 

“Despite the national decline in local news, there are still important outlets in Marin,” said Katherine Ann Rowlands, Bay City News Foundation founder and executive director. “By helping them, we hope to show how an increase in coverage can have outsized reach and impact.”

BCNF has done similar partnership projects in Mendocino, Stockton and the South Bay. The foundation can add reporters, serve as a fiscal agent for others, and even manage outlets. 

“At a time when national public media is being defunded and longstanding newsrooms are shutting down, it’s critical that we do everything we can to ensure that all Marin residents have access to the news they need to inform their communities and their lives,” said Rhea Suh, President & CEO of Marin Community Foundation. “While this is a national issue, we’re choosing to go hyper-local with this grant, because we fundamentally believe that more factual, local knowledge can lead to more, and better conversations about the challenges that we face in the county.”

Through this grant, Bay City News Foundation will:

  • Dedicate a full-time reporter to Marin County coverage, supported by its regional, 24/7 newsroom. Enhance the coverage with photo, video and data. 
  • Share every Marin County story with the county’s other news outlets at no charge to test the county’s news-sharing capacity. 
  • Distribute the enhanced coverage to many other news outlets, including TV, radio, print and digital, across the greater Bay Area through BCNF’s distribution agreement with the Bay City News Service.
  • Build Marin News Matters, a free public-service news site with more useful, civic-oriented content.
  • Deepen partnerships with other outlets so that the entire ecosystem benefits from more coverage.
  • Focus on story leads identified through community listening sessions, reader surveys and direct engagement with underserved residents.
  • Track use of the news to better understand how it flows in the current ecosystem and its impact in the community.

About Marin Community Foundation

The mission of the Marin Community Foundation is to mobilize the power of community and the resources of philanthropy to advance equity for people, places and the planet. It does so by partnering with over 570 individuals and families in their philanthropic endeavors — locally, across the U.S. and around the world. It is one of the largest community foundations in the country, overseeing $4 billion in philanthropic assets and distributing over $285 million annually in grants. 

About Bay City News Foundation

Bay City News Foundation is a mission-driven 501c3 that serves as the backbone of the region’s news ecosystem, encompassing 13 counties. With its network of partners, BCNF serves as many as 9 million people by empowering communities and newsrooms from Mendocino to Marin to Monterey. We address news deserts, experiment with the latest techniques and technologies, embrace partnerships and foster the next generation of journalists. Through these pillars, we work to strengthen democracy by ensuring all communities have access to reliable, high-quality local news.