The Bay Citizen

Budget: $4,000,000

In fiscal year 2010, $3,700,000 is contributed by way of major gifts, foundation grants, memberships, and $300,000 is earned through sponsorship and content licensing.

Other Support: Grant, Major donor, Pro-bono services

The Bay Citizen was launched with a $5 million start-up grant. Prior to launch, an advisory committee leveraged pro bono support from over 30 professionals, including media business experts, management consultants, investment bankers, public media leaders, brand and marketing specialists and lawyers.

Administrative Staff: 8 paid, 0 volunteer

Administrative staff includes a chief executive officer, director of development, office administrator and an online team that includes a chief technology officer, designer and two web developers.

Editorial Staff: 17 paid, 0 volunteer, freelance

The initiative has an editor-in-chief, two managing editors, an online editor and a community editor. Eight reporters are on staff, along with a photographer, web producer and an editorial assistant.

Competitive Environment: Very Competitive

The Bay Citizen competes for consumer mindshare with established media in San Francisco and San Jose and startup news organizations, but sees the competing entities as valuable for the region.

Partnerships: Content

Partnerships with 15 local independent media organizations and bloggers who are doing on-the-ground reporting in the areas of hyper-local news, culture and lifestyle topics including food and sports. Through the partnerships The Bay Citizen pays partners for some content and provides to them technology support if applicable.

Monthly Visitors: 75,000

At time of record, the site had only been launched for three weeks and hadn’t yet compiled statistics. It expects to reach 75,000 unique monthly visitors by December 2010, which will be its sixth month in operation.