Bay City News’ unconventional model to serve newsrooms and communities with Katherine Ann Rowlands

Local News Matters

Katherine Ann Rowlands, owner and publisher of Bay City News, shares insights into the unique hybrid model of her organization, which has served the San Francisco Bay Area with round-the-clock news coverage for 45 years. She discusses Bay City News’ evolution from a pure newswire service into a dual operation that includes the nonprofit site Local News Matters. This hybrid structure helps provide essential coverage to underserved communities while meeting the needs of media and business clients and the general public. Rowlands highlights the challenges of balancing for-profit and nonprofit revenue streams to create a sustainable model that can be replicated in other regions.

Rowlands also addresses the importance of collaboration over competition in local journalism. With many news organizations competing for limited resources, she advocates for shared coverage efforts that can free up reporters to pursue more in-depth and investigative stories. She shares examples of Bay City News’ work that has impacted local policies.

The conversation touches on Rowlands’ commitment to supporting the next generation of journalists through paid internships and capacity-building efforts, while also advocating for greater gender diversity in media leadership. Rowlands explains how diversifying revenue and leveraging innovative tools like AI have positioned Bay City News to grow its impact and improve accessibility to critical local news across platforms.

Episode chapters:

(00:02:50) - History of Bay City News

(00:07:36) - The news service model

(00:14:42) - Collaboration and competition in local news

(00:16:52) - Launching Local News Matters, partnerships and expansion

(00:22:28) - Advice for replicating the Bay City News model in other regions

(00:29:48) - Impact of Bay City News on local reporting

(00:34:06) - Balancing client needs with community coverage

(00:38:20) - Entrepreneurship and imposter syndrome

(00:42:00) - Resilience, revenue diversification and capacity building

(00:50:17) - Gender diversity in journalism leadership

(00:55:08) - Rapid-fire questions

(01:04:06) - Media and local recommendations

Links:

• Katherine Rowlands: LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram

• Bay City News

• LocalNewsMatters.org

• Mentioned

• Macalester College

• London School of Economics

• Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism

• JSK Fellowship Program at Stanford University

• CalMatters

• EdSource

• The Mendocino Voice

• Piedmont Exedra

• Radio Sausalito

• KZYX

• Knight Foundation

• American Journalism Project (AJP)

• Press Forward Initiative

• Journalism and Women Symposium (JAWS)

• Women Do News

• San Quentin News

• Local recommendations

• Grizzly Peak

• UC Berkeley campus

• Zachary’s Pizza

• Media recommendations

• Newsroom Robots podcast

• Prison Truth by William Drummond

• Radio Sausalito

• Local News Matters: web, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn

• Pirate Audio

• Colorado Press Association: web, Twitter, Facebook

• Tim Regan-Porter: bio, Twitter

For show notes, transcripts, newsletter sign-up and past guests on the Local News Matters podcast, please visit localnewsmatterspodcast.com or lnmpod.com.

Past guests on the Local News Matters podcast include: Jim O’Rourke (O’Rourke Media Group), Teri Finneman, Nick Mathews and Pat Ferrucci (Reviving Local News), Nic Dawes (THE CITY), Allison Taylor Levine (Local News Initiative Delaware), Crystal Good (Black by God), Lisa Snowden (Baltimore Beat), Karen Rundlet (INN), Jim Brady (Knight Foundation), Candice Fortman (Exit interview, Outlier Media), Jean Friedman-Rudovsky (Resolve Philly), Jay Rosen (NYU), Sue Cross (Exit interview, INN), Mary Margaret White (Mississippi Today), Amy Kovac-Ashley (Tiny News Collective), Michael Shapiro (TAPinto), Kenny Katzgrau (redbankgreen and Broadstreet), John Garrett (Community Impact), Shannon Kinney (Dream Local Digital), Larry Ryckman (The Colorado Sun), Frank Mungeam (Local Media Association), Kelly Ann Scott (Alabama Media Group), Sara Lomax and S. Mitra Kalita (URL Media), Elizabeth Hansen Shapiro (National Trust for Local News), Mike Rispoli and Richard Young (via When the People Decide), Sarabeth Berman (American Journalism Project), Rabbi Hillel Goldberg and Shana Goldberg (Intermountain Jewish News), Lyndsay C. Green (via The Journalism Salute), Rashad Mahmood and Mark Glaser (New Mexico Local News Fund), Christian Vanek and Barbara Hardt (The Mountain-Ear), Dan Grech (BizHack), Zack Richner (Easy Tax Credits), Tracie Powell (Pivot Fund), Dan Oshinsky (Inbox Collective), Linda Shapley (via What Works), Yehong Zhu and Jake Seaton (Zette, Column), Charity Huff (January Spring), Joaquin Alvarado and Dave Perry (Aurora Sentinel), Steve Waldman (Rebuild Local News), Maritza Félix (Conecta Arizona), Michael Bolden (American Press Institute), Jeff Roberts and Corey Hutchins (CFOIC, Colorado College), Eve Pearlman and Erica Anderson (Spaceship Media), Jennifer Brandel (Hearken, Democracy SOS), Corey Hutchins with Bay Edwards, Todd Chamberlain and Raleigh Burleigh (Sopris Sun).