The Bay News Movement grew out of an aspiration to preserve a vital pillar of free society and to remind the public that true news reporting is not solely the purview of international corporations. Journalism is for everybody. Wielded by the public, it is a weapon against even the most powerful oppression and a megaphone for the voiceless. Our movement is rooted in the realization that a technolog
ical communications revolution has already empowered all people to act as journalists, but a social revolution is still needed to unify citizen journalists and empower them to compete with the commercial news media. We can build a model to serve as an effective watchdog for the public interest—for our own interest. To that end, BNM was formed. The organization began to take shape in editorial meetings at the City College of San Francisco Guardsman newspaper. As California’s community colleges were being systematically dismantled around them, the paper’s editors found few satisfying career prospects in corporate media. In the quest for eyeballs and advertising dollars, large media conglomerates have abandoned the true news reporting that helped to create and defend humanity’s greatest civil liberties. They have sold our liberty and replaced it with “infotainment” designed to coddle and mislead. Now, more than ever, individual journalists must take personal responsibility for the stories they tell and the way they tell them. At BNM, we’re tired of business as usual and we’re ready to put in the hard work of finding new solutions to the changing information needs of an increasingly smaller world. We created a California nonprofit as a vehicle to contribute to the next wave of journalism. The real work is only just beginning, and we need your help.
