Supporting democracy is a key part of our mission at Bay City News Foundation.
As a nonprofit, our organization serves the greater San Francisco Bay Area and is backed by charitable donations from contributors who care about local news, a free press, democratic values and an informed citizenry. We target both geographic and topical news deserts. We collaborate with other media. We experiment with technology. We work with journalism schools to train the next generation of reporters.
We are in a critical time for local media as a third of the nation’s local newspapers have vanished. Print circulation, once 55 million, is half that today. Revenues, once $50 billion a year, are at $20 billion. The 70,000-journalist workforce is down to 30,000. Millions of local stories, with information that could have helped communities better understand themselves, have gone untold.
Scholars have linked the decline in local news to the decay of local democracy. When news declines, so does local knowledge, public debate, the number of candidates for office and voter turnout. The cost of government rises. Disinformation flourishes. Corruption grows.
We started this site — LocalNewsMatters.org — to help provide the critical information people in the greater Bay Area need to navigate their lives, make informed choices and participate actively in their communities in a meaningful way. Learn more about our work in this video below and support us if you can.
You can help in several ways:
