The Bay Citizen Names Interim CEO
Chief Technology Officer Brian Kelley steps in, as merger talks continue
Brian C. Kelley, the chief technology officer of The Bay Citizen, was named interim chief executive officer of the two-year-old Bay Area nonprofit news organization Monday, replacing Lisa Frazier, who resigned.
Kelley took over the leadership of the 36-person organization after a search for a new CEO was not completed before Frazier’s departure. Frazier notified The Bay Citizen’s board of directors last October that she would step down in early 2012 for personal reasons.
“I'm honored to be able to help The Bay Citizen through this time of transition, and I'm committed to The Bay Citizen's mission of providing quality journalism to the Bay Area,” Kelley said.
Directors of The Bay Citizen met Monday to continue discussions about a new CEO and a possible merger that, if consummated, would put the organization under the control of the Berkeley-based Center for Investigative Reporting. A decision whether to enter into a memorandum of understanding with the board of CIR is expected by the end of this week.
Sources on both sides of the discussions said Monday that no agreements had been reached Monday, and cautioned that talks over the new leadership and possible merger could fall apart.
In introducing Kelley as the new CEO Monday afternoon, Christian Selchau-Hansen, the treasurer of The Bay Citizen’s board, expressed its “deep commitment to The Bay Citizen and to the journey and mission going forward. We know that times are uncertain, and we will get back to you with more clarity as soon as we can.”
Susan Hirsch, another director, declined to answer specific questions from the staff “at this time.”
“We’re working as hard as we can to continue the mission,” Hirsch said.
Kelley, 34, joined The Bay Citizen’s executive leadership team in March 2010 after serving as co-founder of ReputationDefender, an online reputation management and privacy company based in Redwood City. Kelley has led The Bay Citizen's online product development efforts. He lives in Palo Alto.
Phil Bronstein, the president of the Center for Investigative Reporting's board of directors and a former top editor at both the San Francisco Examiner and San Francisco Chronicle, is the leading candidate to be the new permanent CEO, according to people familiar with the negotiations.
Bronstein was the choice of Warren Hellman, The Bay Citizen’s founder and benefactor, to succeed Frazier as CEO, sources said. But Hellman’s unexpected death in December, at age 77 of complications from leukemia, threw the fledgling news organization into turmoil.
Rumors of a proposed merger began circulating soon after Hellman’s death.
The Bay Citizen’s mission is to enhance civic and community news coverage in the Bay Area, foster civic engagement and stimulate innovation in journalism. The Bay Citizen has a contract with The New York Times to provide weekly coverage of the region.
According to 2010 tax documents, The Bay Citizen had $11.4 million in revenue in 2010, primarily from private donations and foundation grants. The company reported $3.6 million in expenses in 2010, including $456,918 in salary, bonuses and other compensation for Frazier, and $261,330 in salary and other compensation for Jonathan Weber, the founding editor-in-chief of the news operation.
Weber resigned unexpectedly in September, and was replaced by Steve Fainaru, a Pulitzer prize-winning investigative reporter for The Washington Post who had been managing editor for news.
Fainaru announced earlier this month that he was resigning to pursue a book project. His last day is Thursday, and no replacement has been named.
CIR, founded in 1977, is the nation’s oldest nonprofit investigative news organization. It has 35 employees, 27 of whom are on the editorial team, including reporters and editors who work for California Watch, a reporting initiative created by CIR in 2009 to produce in-depth, multimedia journalism specific to California.
On financial statements, CIR lists as its mission “to reveal injustice and abuse of power through the tools of journalism, to provide the public with the information needed to participate in democracy and bring about needed reforms.”
According to tax documents, CIR in 2010 reported total revenue of $2.4 million, down from $4.2 million a year earlier, while total expenses rose to $4.6 million, compared to just under $2 million for 2009. Tax records indicate that CIR paid its executive director, Robert Rosenthal, $203,750 in 2010.
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Mason Wolf
Congratulations, Brian. I know how deeply committed you are to the Bay Citizen and I'm glad to see you stepping into this role. I wish you the very best of success in this difficult time for the organization.
Edward Liu
Is this growing pains.? ... Or is this an organization roiled by internal contradictions and conflicted as to where to lead to the Promised Land instead of Tarnished Land?
Phil Bronstein is an excellent journalist who when he was hitting the pavement... did good investigative reporting, specially about Marcos and the Philippines.
Along the way, as he ended up in executive positions with the SF Examiner, and later the SF Chronicle... He started losing steam, and the fire in his belly.
The SF Chronicle today is in comatose state... Unable and I'll-equipped to handle and stay tuned, connected, and capable of covering the browning and yellowing of California, as the once great state gets seismically transformed by these cultural, demographic shifts.
The SF Chronicle and most mainstream organizations remain blind-folded by a business and social-cultural mindset which is "lily-white," Euro-centric. It shows in its content, and the lack of true diversity in its staff and management.
The Bay Citizen has something refreshing, and innovative, off the gates.
Let's hope it does not fuck up and not learn from the mistakes of old media, specially the SF Chronicle.
Is Phil Bronstein, as he age, and his past footprints, seeking redemption?
Can an old editor fire up new media, and bring about great journalism, draw on great writers, thinkers, and probative, thoughtful analysts to the Bay Guardian?
I will be watching closely as a news junkie and Asian-American blogger, from my perch.
The world has shifted. And the forces of globalization, technology, new media impel San Franciscans to wean themselves away from their insularity, provincialism, and West-Coast chic and narrow-mindedness.
Will Phil Bronstein and the new team being contemplated do it? Will they open up instead of doing their own self-narcissistic, incestuous in-breeding, and not reach out to the communities of color out there?
Edward Liu
Journalism, like teaching, is a calling and a passion. Unfortunately, in high-cost of living Chi-Chi town, now a magnet for twenty-somethings, preppies, and techies from the East Coast in heat, in search of that pot of Gold in the New Gold Rush towards Dot.com IPOs, start-ups, a la Twitter, Zynga, Sales Force, Facebook, Apple, et al... Chi Chi Town is hollowing out its creative artists, writers, intellectuals who are into the larger social-cultural-political issues beyond the warped and frenetic narrow world of new tech!
What to do? How to make rent and sustain a family?
Balancing between the need for thoughtful thinking, writing... Purity... And the mercantilistic and raw reality of coping with a stressful city with high cost of living, rising urban gentrification, and corrosion of basic,fundamental cilvility and what little is left of Chi Chi town's civic culture is tough!
I feel for the grunt workers within news organizations. Reporters' pay is starvation pay, a little better than the Chinese worker in China, assembling those Apple I-Pads, I-Phones, Macs in Shenzhen, Chengdu, slaving away as contract workers, at US$150 a month, while the elite and 1% swim fabulously in their boomlets in Chi Chi Town, Palo Alto, Cupertino, Los Altos, Los Gatos, and Saratoga.
The world of globalization and new media have largely ignored the widening global wealth gap, and the wide wealth chasm, within America... And within our own Chi Chi town!
Bonnie Britt
The reporter on this story, Peter Lewis, wrote: "According to 2010 tax documents, The Bay Citizen had $11.4 million in revenue in 2010, primarily from private donations and foundation grants. The company reported $3.6 million in expenses in 2010, including $456,918 in salary, bonuses and other compensation for Frazier, and $261,330 in salary and other compensation for Jonathan Weber, the founding editor-in-chief of the news operation."
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Nearly half a million in salary and perks for a young nonprofit's CEO? For someone who stayed a couple of years at a news organization with 36 employees? Let's see how that compares with what the heads of public universities are paid to oversee thousands of employees.
That's here:
<http://newscenter.berkeley.edu/president-and-provost-salary-data/>
To compare the Bay Citizen's CEO salary with other nonprofits, see the PDF at Charity Navigator’s 2010 CEO Compensation Study, accessible at page bottom at the following link.
<http://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?bay=studies.ceo>