Really interesting collaboration between the Bay Citizen and Queena Kim, the community editor.
I love the video, and as Kim acknowledges, ACT helped with the access. On something like this, I don’t know that it would have been any different without ACT’s help, but in exchange the Bay Citizen gets funding and ACT gets a very good video.
I’ve been a Mission resident since 1998 and a professor emeritus at Berkeley’s J-school since 2019. I got my start in newspapers at the Albuquerque Tribune in the city where I was born and raised. Like many local news outlets, The Tribune no longer exists. I left daily newspapers after working at The New York Times for the business, foreign and city desks. Lucky for all of us, it is still here.
As an old friend once pointed out, local has long been in my bones. My Master’s Project at Columbia, later published in New York Magazine, was on New York City’s experiment in community boards.
As founder and an editor at ML, I've been trying to figure out how to make my interest in local news sustainable. If Mission Local is a model, the answer might be that you - the readers - reward steady and smart content. As a thank you for that support we work every day to make our content even better.
More by Lydia Chávez4 Comments
Here’s how it works, according to Queen Kim. The Bay Citizen raises money for the projects from donors who have an interest in arts and citizen journalism. The Bay Citizen then partners with arts organizations that give them access.
Best, Lydia
I looked at the Night at the Opera description, it doesn’t mention an exchange of funds from the arts organization for content from the Bay Citizen.
When you say “in exchange for the videos, ACT donated some funds and publicity,” doesn’t that make the content essentially non-transparent advertising?
Or is your second comment correcting the first, and you’re saying that ACT did not actually give the BC money, and that these donors are private citizens?
It’s important to me to know how Mission Local perceives what might be (from your first comment) a journalistically questionable arrangement.
I know that this is common for magazines (I do not believe that the writers at Lucky believe that every adverttisers’ handbag that they describe as “to die for” is actually worth a life), but I don’t think it is acceptable for a news organization that makes the claims about itself that the Bay Citizen does.
The fact that Mission Local and, by extension, Berkeley’s School of Journalism, understanding that ACT was giving them money for advertorial, is OK with this arrangement, troubles me deeply.
When you say that the Bay Citizen gets funding, what do you mean? Is ACT paying them for coverage? Would love an elaboration on this, thanks.
Queena Kim the community editor explained the new collaborations here. In the case of this project, in exchange for the videos, ACT donated some funds and publicity for the Bay Citizen. Best, Lydia