Bay Area News Project

When Warren Hellman said last week that he anticipated using students from the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism to serve as "foot soldiers" in his fledgling Bay Area News Project, it garnered some attention but was ultimately overwhelmed by stories about the impact BANP might have on both the local and national media landscapes.

Inside Higher Ed revisited the notion today. Berkeley's graduate program is the only one in the UC system, and highly regarded nationally. Still, the concept of hiring students to do work that has traditionally been performed by trained journalists has raised some hackles.

The East Bay Express ran a column by Robert Gammon calling it "slave labor" that will, said Gammon to Inside Higher Ed, give BANP an unfair advantage. It's more than unpaid interns, he said -- it's a legitimate, unpaid staff.

"[T]he new venture promises to be bad for the public over the long term," Gammon wrote. "It's true that the Bay Area likely will experience an increase in local news coverage right away, but if the new venture forces traditional news organizations to further contract, then the public will be forced to increasingly depend on inexperienced, unpaid students to inform them about what's happening in the region."

That's not the way Berkeley j-school dean Neil Henry sees it. Henry said that his program wanted "to be front and center in figuring out a way to give news to local communities at a time when the industry is losing its ability to do that kind of work."

His students are already effectively doing that through several hyperlocal sites in the East Bay, and now have one more outlet through which to learn their trade.

As for the unfair competitive advantage argument, Henry doesn't buy it. "I believe a rising tide lifts all boats," he said in the Inside Higher Ed piece. "We hope to find new ways to collaborate, innovate and engage new audiences; to help news organizations in the region and across the country."

At the very least, there's no denying that the BANP, in whatever form it takes, will provide an unparalleled learning experience for the journalists of the future. Finding them places to work once they graduate, however, is another story altogether.

In the wake of Warren Hellman's announcement that he plans to start a local news nonprofit -- the Bay Area News Project -- in concert with U.C. Berkeley, KQED and possibly the New York Times, some journalists are not responding well.

Valleywag reported on "Billionaire Vulture's Newspaper Betrayal." Susan Mernit, progenitor of hyperlocal site Oakland Local offered up a headlined query asking whether the new consortium will "crush local journalism--or help it?" The San Francisco Business Times went so far as to ask whether the new entity would be a union shop.

Amid all the questions, a good degree of heat is being directed toward San Francisco Chronicle Metro Section Editor Audrey Cooper, who, in an internal memo, vowed that her staff will "smash whomever is naive enough to poke their noses in our market."

They're strong words, and they've managed to drag Ms. Cooper into the heart of the debate. SF Appeal editor and publisher Eve Batey, a reasoned, reasonable voice in Bay Area media, devoted a column to the dual concept of local news outlets being intimidated by Hellman's organization and whether they shouldn't instead be considering its greater good.

What seems to be missing, at least in the case of the Cooper memo, is that her exhortation to employees was part tongue-in-cheek, part pep-talk to a staff reeling from what seem to be endless rounds of layoffs. It was a single rah-rah sentence in a five-point memo intended to discuss company business.

In an e-mail response to a question about the stir she's inadvertently caused, Cooper declined to comment about "other news ventures," but made a point of saying, "I am very comfortable discussing how proud I am of our reporters and editors. Journalistic competition is good for the Bay Area. And we want to be the best. Our readers expect that and deserve it."

Across the building, Chronicle writer Michael Cabanatuan, president of the Northern California Media Workers Guild, wrote a far-ranging post on the Guild's Web site, detailing the history of his union's involvement with Hellman. ("It started with a threat. On Feb.24, Chronicle publisher Frank Vega stood in front of employees and announced that unless the unions bargained significant concessions, the paper would be sold -- or closed. And even if they did their part (again) to help save the Chronicle, it still might be sold.")

In his post, Cabanatuan asks the question, Will the new organization accelerate The Chronicle's demise? His answer goes a long way toward allaying suspicions:

My hope -- as both a Chronicle staffer and a Guild official -- is that it will actually do the opposite, that it will prompt the Chronicle to improve its journalism just as it recently improved its printing -- or at least stop gutting its news staff. . . .

Will competition renew public interest in journalism? It's possible. More competition will lead to better news coverage, and better products, be they online, on the air, or in print, that could lure more advertising and the kinds of demographics that attract advertisers. As less gets covered, there's less reason to read, subscribe to, or advertise in, newspapers. . . .

Some folks have asked why the Guild would support the creation of a competitor. Well, we've always represented (and supported) competitors to the Chronicle: the (Hearst) Examiner, the Oakland Tribune, the San Jose Mercury News, the former ANG papers.

As new models for journalism are developed, we want to make sure they involve quality journalism -- and decent wages and benefits. Many of the new journalism experiments count on people giving away their work for free or for very little compensation. We think journalists and other mediaworkers, not to mention our readers, deserve better.

We want the news industry to thrive -- not surrender -- and we want it to be union.

This much discussion about any new media organization can only be a positive. Here's hoping the final product lives up to the early attention.

Much has been written about Warren Hellman's recent announcement of a media nonprofit he's starting with $5 million of his family foundation's money, in conjunction with U.C. Berkeley's graduate school of journalism, KQED and possibly The New York Times. However, not many quotes about it have come from Hellman himself.

Forbes begins to change that today, with a short Q&A interview with the San Francisco financier, a former president of Lehman Brothers. Some highlights of the conversation, direct from Hellman: