S.F. news project launches as Bay Citizen

The Bay Citizen, the online news start-up in which KQED was to have been a founding partner, launches today with a top story on how San Francisco's wealthiest homeowners benefit from a property tax loophole written into California's Proposition 13. The public media group, formerly known as the Bay Area News Project, has recruited a team of 13 editor/writers and two interns; among them is Queena Kim, a Makers Quest 2.0 grant recipient and producer/reporter who left Pasadena's KPCC to join the launch team as community editor. Editor-in-chief Jon Weber plans to partner, not compete, with local bloggers and nontraditional news outlets, reports the San Francisco Bay Guardian. "We hope we can be a supporter of the local media ecosystem," Weber tells SFBG. So far, 14 indie publishers are on board. The BC offers to pay local bloggers $25 for each post that its editors link to and to work with them on long-form reporting. A media writer who intially slammed this payment scheme took a closer look and decided it's a good way for the online news service to build editorial relationships and good deal for writers after all.