Birth of Bay Area News Project Slower, Messier than Founders Hoped

Well, it turns out that getting a table-full of variant partners to agree on how to begin spending millions of dollars isn't so easy -- and, in a way, the News Project has missed its first deadline. While the organization's ostensible goal was to have a director in place by Thanksgiving -- that didn't happen. An American Journalism Review article noted that top brass for the News Project would be named soon -- but that was back in early December. 

Carl Hall, a union rep for the Media Workers Guild, confirmed that it's taking more time to get off the ground than he'd hoped. "I think it's taken longer than I would have liked," he said. "I would have liked to have started doing journalism by now and hiring staff. I think that's fair to say."

Questions as to why things are taking longer than the founders had hoped are a bit beyond Hall's pay grade -- and it appears that hiring someone who can answer those queries is also something the Bay Area News Project has yet to nail down. Our calls to the "media contacts" listed on the Project's inaugural press release haven't yet been returned.

All Hall would say about the delays is that birthing a Bay Area news startup is "a very complex thing to do," and it's difficult to get all of the varying partners on the same page. As for when a leader might be in place, Hall said there may be "an announcement" soon -- which may mean that a decision has been made on a director and may not.

We'll soon see. Either way, once there's some news to report, it seems Hall and his colleagues are itching to report on some news.