By Jennifer Baldwin, Managing Editor, Bakersfield Express

At every newspaper I’ve ever worked, the newsroom has always sat above the rest. In fact, in all but one, the newsrooms have been on the top floor of the building, giving a literal and figurative perception of looking down on the world around us, commenting on what we see, and remaining detached from our sources of information and our source of income – advertising.

People inside the journalism profession call this separation between editorial and advertising “The Wall.” And the wall is thick. Journalists don’t give special consideration to advertisers and ad reps don’t tell journalists what businesses to cover.

So each time I meet with a member of the community about Bakersfield Express, I always feel a twinge when the conversation moves from editorial content and story ideas to sponsorships and advertising. Even though I clearly state that I am removing my journalist hat and putting on my fundraising hat, straddling “The Wall” grays out the black-and-white ethics of traditional journalism. But this is today’s reality if we are to sustain local news coverage as a nonprofit website. We don’t have the luxury of separate editorial and advertising departments. As managing editor of the startup – and a volunteer, at that – I am only one person. Our business plan includes a future, paid business manager who will handle fundraising and advertising. But until then, our volunteers are focused on creating content for the site. That leaves the fundraising in the hands of our board of directors and me.

As the journalism industry experiences a massive sea-change due to changing audience habits and the down economy, my story is playing out across the country. Out-of-work, experienced journalists are experimenting with hyper-local, nonprofit and for-profit business models for news websites from coast to coast. Often starting out as one-man and one-woman bands, these news organizations are reinventing journalism ethics and tearing through “The Wall.”

Meanwhile, traditional media business models are also facing challenges. Smaller news staffs mean less news coverage. Couple that with technology that enables anyone to be a journalist through blogging or other forms of social media, and the idea of  “citizen journalism” becomes a tempting way to tell community stories through non-staff contributors. Much of this content comes from writers with self-serving agendas, such as publicizing their business, nonprofit organization, cause, or even themselves. At Bakersfield Express, some of our volunteer writers each have areas of interest, such as arts or locally grown produce, which they champion in their articles. The reality is, citizen journalists and bloggers overstep another “wall” of traditional journalism: that of impartiality.

Even though some may think now is a dire time for the media industry, I believe that it’s a time of excitement, experimentation, and evolution. But I also believe we must constantly keep our traditional ethical values at the forefront as we cut the path into the future. Just because our industry is evolving, does not mean we throw our ethics policies out the window. Instead, we must revisit them regularly, pitting new case studies against old policies and debating the merits for change.

Bakersfield Express has an ethics policy. The first draft was written by our board vice president, Christopher Meyers, director of the Kegley Institute of Ethics at California State University, Bakersfield, and editor of the book “Journalism Ethics, a Philosopher’s Approach.” The policy was debated, edited and approved by the board of directors with my input. This was not the first time I’ve participated in creating an ethics policy – I led a newsroom-wide effort to revamp the policy at The Bakersfield Californian in 2006 when I was an editor there.

The key difference was writing a policy that reflects an evolving base of volunteer (and, in future plans, paid) community writers rather than a full-time staff of trained journalists. Also, as a Web-based organization, we address online standards for decency, commentary and hyperlinking.

Furthermore, our policy takes a unique, humanistic approach to issues of privacy and respect. We recognize that all news coverage constitutes a degree of privacy violation, and we commit to justifying such publication for the greater moral good.

Surprisingly, journalism law and ethics was not a required course for my undergraduate degree in journalism at California State University, Sacramento (BA ’98). I had heard the class was dry and boring and so I did not take it. As a young journalist just out of school, I learned ethics on the job. One very clear educational moment occurred the night of the 2000 presidential election between Al Gore and George W. Bush. My also-young co-worker and I had been tapped to relay precinct tallies from the one computer in the newsroom with Internet access to the reporters and copy desk. As we updated numbers on the white board, we eagerly cheered each time a certain presidential candidate won another state. After a few particularly loud cheers, the editor stepped out of his office and scolded us for acting out our biases. He told us some reporters don’t even vote in the interest of maintaining impartiality. Thus, my quest as a journalist to uphold the strongest of ethical values was born.

The law and ethics course was required when I attended UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism (MJ ’03). Not only did the case studies we learned significantly shape my values today, but one of the teachers also left a significant mark. That teacher was Jay Harris, former publisher of the San Jose Mercury News who had resigned in 2001 out of ethical principles after Knight Ridder, then-owner of the newspaper, made drastic cuts to its budget and staff. Some heralded his move as heroic, others as cowardly. I thought, and still think, he was a role model for upholding journalistic integrity. But after 10 years of watching newsrooms across the country get slashed and slashed again, I also applaud those who continue to uphold strong ethical values as they lead their bare-bones staffs through this time of tumultuous change.

After being laid off from two different newspaper companies in the past decade, the Bay Area News Group and The Bakersfield Californian, I launched Bakersfield Express last year as a nonprofit website to help fill the growing gap in local arts, culture and news coverage. This experiment wades into all sorts of ethical issues, from citizen journalism, to fundraising, to transparency about our volunteers’ affiliations. Hence, the critical importance for our ethics policy to not only guide our volunteer staff (many of whom have never taken a media law and ethics course) but also to inform our audience, donors and sponsors about our duties and limits.

One aspect of being a startup website is the lack of resources. Specifically, the lack of an office building. Bakersfield Express has been headquartered in cafes and art galleries, dining rooms and living rooms, and in cyberspace. We do not sit together in an office above the community – we are members of the community, existing within and among our readers and sponsors. While this experience has made me feel more a part of the community than I ever felt in a newsroom, it also brings with it ethical pitfalls that require the utmost vigilance and concern. I, our board of directors, and our volunteer staff commit to upholding a high standard of ethics and excellence.

Editor’s note: As of Monday, May 17, Jennifer Baldwin will be employed as public affairs coordinator at California State University, Bakersfield. To avoid conflict of interest, Bakersfield Express volunteer Jeff Nachtigal will become assistant news editor of the website and will handle all editorial decision making regarding CSUB coverage on the site. This update will be reflected on the “About Us” page of Bakersfield Express.