Bay Citizen, Center for Investigative Reporting Announce Intent to Merge
Two nonprofit journalism organizations sign memorandum of understanding
The Bay Citizen and the Center for Investigative Reporting have signed a formal letter of intent to merge the two award-winning Bay Area nonprofit news organizations, the directors of both companies announced Tuesday afternoon.
Under terms of a memorandum of understanding approved by both boards, management of The Bay Citizen will be handed over to the existing leadership of the Berkeley-based CIR within 30 days. Phil Bronstein, the chairman of CIR’s board of directors, will become the executive chairman of the combined companies.
Bronstein said in a statement, “I’ve been a journalist in the Bay Area my entire adult life and have deep roots and affection for the extraordinary and unique culture here. There is more innovation, activism, and civic involvement in this region than anywhere in the country. This is the basis for engaging people where we all live.”
Robert Rosenthal, CIR’s executive director, will retain that title with the combined organization. In a press release, the boards said that Rosenthal will be in charge of the combined editorial teams and will be responsible for day-to-day operations.
“This is an opportunity to take accountability journalism to an even higher level,” Rosenthal said in a statement. “We will now be able to bring our combined strategies for engagement and accountability journalism to a region of the country that can best embrace it. Because it’s the Bay Area, stories we do here will be of interest to audiences across the country and around the world.”
Mark Katches is editorial director of CIR and its California Watch investigative reporting project. The Bay Citizen will be without editorial leadership on Thursday, when its current editor-in-chief, Steve Fainaru, steps down as previously announced.
“We are entering into a memorandum of understanding with the Center for Investigative Reporting which would propose a merger of equals,” said Christian Selchau-Hansen, a director and treasurer of The Bay Citizen’s board. “It is simply an arrangement for the two organizations to explore a merger.”
At the end of 30 days, Selchau-Hansen said, each board will have to independently decide whether to approve a final merger. If either side rejects the plan, Selchau-Hansen said in response to a question from The Bay Citizen staff, “Then there won’t be a merger.”
But, he said, both boards believe the merger would create a formidable news organization that will be greater than the sum of its parts. “It’s an incredible opportunity to further high-quality journalism for the San Francisco and Bay Area communities,” Selchau-Hansen said. “It takes two organizations that are both deeply committed to high-quality journalism and allows them to do more than either one could do individually. It’s really exciting.”
Selchau-Hansen, 36, said the editorial leadership and direction of the new organization will be decided in the next 30 days by a six-person joint transition committee, consisting of three members from each side. Brian C. Kelley, The Bay Citizen's interim CEO, said he and The Bay Citizen’s board will choose The Bay Citizen’s three representatives. Bronstein and Rosenthal will take two of the three slots from CIR, Selchau-Hansen said.
The merger would combine the business, technology and news operations of both organizations, creating what Bronstein earlier called “an unprecedented level of accountability reporting for the Bay Area.”
“We will leverage the complimentary strengths of the two organizations for greater depth, reach and efficiency,” Bronstein said in a presentation to The Bay Citizen board late last month.
Selchau-Hansen said the newly combined nonprofits would be governed by a board composed equally of members from The Bay Citizen, a two-year-old startup founded in 2009 by the San Francisco investor Warren Hellman, and from CIR, founded in 1977, the nation’s oldest nonprofit investigative news group.
Together, the two organizations have more than 70 employees. In a presentation to The Bay Citizen’s board in late January, Bronstein identified “economies of at least $1 million in operational expenses and $900,000 in duplicative personnel.”
Representatives of the two groups declined to talk about the timing or extent of the expected layoffs.
CIR was founded by a small group of investigative reporters, including Lowell Bergman, David Weir and Dan Noyes. CIR distributes its stories directly and through television, print, radio and online outlets, including NPR News, PBS “Frontline,” The Los Angeles Times, “60 Minutes,” The New York Times, Harper’s Magazine, Salon.com, “ABC Nightly News,” CNN, and many others. CIR stories have received numerous journalism awards including the Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Silver Baton, the George Polk Award, the Emmy Award, Investigative Reporters and Editors Award, and a National Magazine Award for Reporting Excellence.
The Bay Citizen was founded in 2009 by Hellman and Lisa Frazier, who resigned this week as The Bay Citizen’s chief executive officer. She was replaced on Monday by Kelley, who said Tuesday he would remain as interim CEO until Bronstein takes over in 30 days.
The Bay Citizen operates its own website, baycitizen.org, and provides four pages (typically eight stories) each week to the Friday and Sunday Bay Area editions of The New York Times. The Bay Citizen’s contract with The Times is scheduled to renew in October unless terminated by either party with 60 days notice.
Related
Michael Boyd
Great news and good luck on the non-profit merger.
Clifford Barney
"In a presentation to The Bay Citizen’s board in late January, Bronstein identified “economies of at least $1 million in operational expenses and $900,000 in duplicative personnel.”
same old same old -- merge and fire.
so long bay cit - been nice to know ye.
Ann Garrison
On September 30th, 2010, the Center for Investigative Reporting (CIR) co-sponsored a San Francisco showing of the film, "Earth Made of Glass" by Deborah Scranton, which presents Rwandan President Paul Kagame as the saviour who stopped the Rwanda Genocide, and helped Kagame blame France. Trailer, http://www.earthmadeofglass.com/. CIR held a panel discussion afterwards about "documentary film as investigative reporting."
CIR thus collaborated in a massive cover-up of the Pentagon armed, trained, and advised invasion, by Kagame's Rwandan Patriotic Army, from Uganda, that led to the death of nearly a million people, both Hutu and Tutsi, in Rwanda, and then, became the excuse for Rwandan President Paul Kagame, and Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, to invade the Democratic Republic of Congo in the First Congo War of 1996-1997, the Second Congo War of 1998-2003, and the violent conflict that continues in eastern Congo despite the peace treaty signed in 2003. By 2008, the International Rescue Committee reported 5.4 million war dead in Congo between 1998 and 2008 alone.
In 2001, the UN Panel of Experts on Illegal Minerals Trade in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, in the first of five reports, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2008, and 2011, reported that militias fighting in Congo were closely allied with Rwanda and Uganda, and that they were smuggling Congolese minerals across the eastern Congolese border into both countries. The experts also reported that Rwandan President Paul Kagame and Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni were then "on the verge of becoming the godfathers of illegal resource exploitation and ongoing conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. "They have," the UN experts wrote, "indirectly given criminal cartels a unique opportunity to organize and operate in this fragile and sensitive region."
In Paragraphs 181 - 190 of the 2001 report, the experts described the complicity and/or collaboration of donor nations, foreign corporations, cargo companies, private banks, and the World Bank. The World Bank, they said, gave the impression of rewarding both Rwanda and Uganda for plundering the Congo, by proposing them for a new debt relief program.
The 2010 UN Mapping Report on Congo atrocities, documented Kagame's Rwandan Patriotic Army's genocidal massacres of Rwandan Hutu refugees in eastern Congo, many of whom were women, children, the sick, and the elderly. It was leaked on August 26th, 2010, before being officially released on October 1, 2010.
It would seem that no one at CIR read any of these UN reports, or no one heeded them, before presenting "Earth Made of Glass" as an example of documentary filmmaking as investigative reporting.
CIR's collaboration in such a massive cover-up of such epic violence and criminality makes me less than optimistic about this merger, though I always try to consider the work of any individual reporter or team on its own, apart from the organization sponsoring it. I wouldn't, myself, want to be held responsible for the rest of the work of every publication I ever wrote for.
I wrote to Phil Bronstein about this film screening and "Filmmaking as Investigative Reporting" panel before it happened. He didn't respond.
Ann Garrison
Replying with this added note to my own response:
"Stopping the next Rwanda Genocide" was the excuse for the US/NATO invasion of Libya and the overthrow of Muammar Ghadaffi. Now it's close to becoming the excuse for a US/NATO invasion of Syria and the overthrow of Bashar al-Assad.
Roland Salvato
This concerns me.
I believe most people, obviously even investigative reporters, do not have any idea of Kagame's complicity. Can you outline that for us?
Thanks for bringing this up -- it's critical for both boards to know this before voting on a merger that would cause 20 + people to lose their jobs.
Ann Garrison
I posted a link to my website, which includes more hot links, below, and there are lots of my KPFA and WBAI reports about this on my website as well. Also, here's my Dutch blog partner's 2010 essay "Kagame's 'Leni Riefenstahl': Deborah Scranton," http://coloredopinions.blogspot.com/2010/07/kagames-leni-riefenstahl-deborah.html.
MJP
From the story: “We will leverage the complimentary strengths of the two organizations for greater depth, reach and efficiency,” Bronstein said in a presentation to The Bay Citizen board late last month.
I'll bet he said "complementary" with an "e." ;-)
Roland Salvato
Read Ann Garrison's comment..."I wrote to Phil Bronstein about this film screening and "Filmmaking as Investigative Reporting" panel before it happened. He didn't respond."
This concerns me because it challenges the integrity of the Center for Investigative Reporting. How could the reporters proceed without reading the details of Kagame's complicity?
Ann Garrison
Yes, it does. I took the comments I left here, added a few more, with hyperlinks to various examples of evidence, including the 1994 Gersony Report, a UN human rights investigation, and a series of other UN human rights investigations. Law Professor and ICTR Defense Lawyer Peter Erlinder has amassed thousands of pages of UN documents about the Rwanda Genocide in his Rwanda Documents Project available online, but there is a need for a simpler, evidence based account of the Rwanda Genocide available to the public.
Here's the response with hot links to the human rights investigations I mentioned, posted to my own website: On the Merger of the Bay Citizen and the Center for Investigative Reporting, http://www.anngarrison.com/content/on-the-merger-of-the-bay-citizen-and-the-center-for-investigative-reporting.
Phil Bronstein
Knight Foundation supports merger
The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, which has invested in both the Center for Investigative Reporting and Bay Citizen, sent us a statement today in support of the merger. Here is the text:
"The impact and strength of these organizations already is
substantial. The merger would make them stronger. They'll have even more
reach if they use the technology as smartly as we think
they will, and they'll have improved their chances at sustainability,"
said Knight Foundation president Alberto Ibarguen. "They can be leaders,
showing the way for nonprofit news into this new century. We support the
merger and are glad to be part of their partnership."
The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation was an early investor in both
the Bay Citizen and the Center for Investigative Reporting. Knight
funded the free, open source Armstrong digital platform developed by the
Bay Citizen and the Texas Tribune for use by all non-profit news
organizations. The foundation also supported the Center for
Investigative Reporting's pioneering California Watch project, the
multimedia investigative news service used by scores of the state's media
outlets.
Paul Albert
I'd appreciate it if you would respond to Ann Garrison's posts about CIR and the Rwandan genocide.
Clifford Barney
from peter lewis's story on the naming of an interim ceo for the baycit:
"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."
Source: The Bay Citizen (http://s.tt/15zCc)
"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."
Source: The Bay Citizen (http://s.tt/15zCc)
so despite paying 20 percent of its income to just two people, the baycit finished 2010 substantially in the black. cir spent twice as much as it brought in.
phil bronstein knows where to save nearly two million in expenses and salaries; how wonderful for cir. will cir also take over whatever cash the baycit has left? because it looks as though this "merger" resembles, as a.j. liebling would have it, the way the shark merges with its prey.
Indy Swain
Clifford, this is the best analysis I've seen yet. You nailed it. CIR snagged the Bay Citizen for its cash. The gutless Bay Citizen board just threw up its hands after Mr. Hellman's death. And it looks like they are firing most of the BAy Citizen staff and putting their own people in. Someone needs to investigate the investigators.
music1
I very glad that the Bay Citizen is getting some Foundation support and although I can live without Phil Bronstein he is very capable. The typically San Francisco neurotic discussion about the legalities involved are irrelevant as usual. The two functions are compatible. What concerns me most is that that some major players on the Bay Citizen side quit or left for ill defined reasons as soon as the effects of Mr. Hellman's demise were being felt. The Bay Citizen, commenting as a reader, has always been calm, rational and thorough in a media environment filled with dross. The Paper had some great talent writing for it. If it's possible the integrity of the enterprise as it is should be left as intact as possible, with a redesign of the site for us older folks who have trouble navigating it. Very best to the Paper.