lisa frazier is the publisher of "bay area citizens." paul connelly is the senior vice president of the tcc group and he manages the challenge fund for journalism, one of the largest sources of grants for journalism. now on the back row, crank aaron is the senior director of the free press, a group working to increase government funding for the media. frank frankle is a journalism professor at stanford university. next to him is ron dellens, the mayor of oakland. he has served 14 houseyears. next to him is a former writer and publisher. he and embed the publisher. next to him is david calloway, editor in chief of marketwatch.com. next to him, sandy close, the director of new american media. she is also my executive editor and i get to hold the microphone up to her. let's begin the discussion. >> thank you. let's start with a question that is on many people's mind. with cutbacks and technology shifts, what has that done to the quality of news, barry parr? >> when i worked at the "mercury news" back in the 1990's, we were trying to compete

lisa frazier, you are testing a new model, the bay citizen, formally known as the bay area news project. you are a nonprofit startup. what is your annual budget, is it enough to provide coverage, comparable to the chronicle? >> i think the challenge we all have is that this is a difficult problem. no one organization can go forward on their own. it is irrelevant when our budget is -- in five years, we hope it is $12 million. our aspirations is to have 15 journalism editors contest by the end of the year to help fill the gap that we, as a community, are all feeling. the fundamentals for around our model are non-profit, but there are a number of elements that are important that we are passionate about. first and foremost is the collaboration element. i just talked about why we feel we cannot do this on our own. there are so many great media organizations, that coming together to represent news for the community is important. another element is r and d. we talk about how technology can make us more efficient and effective, the tools that can help a journalist do their job more effectively.