Point Reyes Light (newspaper)

Newspaper in Point Reyes Station, California
the weekly newspaper

The Point Reyes Light is a weekly newspaper published since 1948 in western Marin County, California. It is generally considered the newspaper of record for the region. The Light gained national attention in 1979 due to its reporting on a cult, Synanon, and the Pulitzer Prize awarded to the paper for this coverage. The paper is owned by Tess Elliott and David Briggs. In the late 2000s, the paper was itself the subject of local controversy and national coverage, based on a dispute between the then publishers (owners from 2005 to 2010) and their predecessors, over perceived changes in both style and content. The current editor, Tess Elliott, has restored the paper's original style, while continuing to improve content and upholding a standard of rigorous reporting and engaging prose. She and her partner David Briggs also created the North Coaster, a quarterly guide to the northern California coast, featuring local artists, writers and poets. The Light covers regional issues in and near West Marin, including the communities of Point Reyes Station, Inverness, Olema, Bolinas, Inverness Park, Nicasio, Stinson Beach, the San Geronimo Valley, Tomales, and the nearby Point Reyes National Seashore, as well as Fairfax and Bodega Bay. Other media outlets serving this region include the community FM radio station KWMR. The Light purchased its years long competitor, the West Marin Citizen in 2015.

Dave and Wilma Rogers on March 1, 1948, founded the paper as The Baywood Press, a name it retained for its first 18 years. At first, the paper was published in neighboring Inverness but moved to Point Reyes Station (present pop. 750) within a year. Its coverage area, which consisted of 14 small towns spread over 400 square miles (1,036 km2), is known as West Marin. It was renamed the Point Reyes Light by publishers Don and Clara Mae DeWolfe in 1966 after the Point Reyes Lighthouse. For many years the logo in the newspaper's banner and masthead has been an image of the lens and upper structure of the Lighthouse. In 1951, Al and Madonna Bartlett, both experienced newspeople, bought the newspaper. Although they were one of the paper's few owners to ever make a profit, they sold it in 1956 to George and Nancy Sherman. In 1958, the Shermans sold The Baywood Press to Don and Clara Mae DeWolfe, who on September 8, 1966, renamed it The Point Reyes Light. Don DeWolfe later explained that he grew tired of out of town advertisers asking, “Where the hell is Baywood?”

DeWolfe owned the newspaper 13 years, counting on a commercial print shop to help keep the business profitable. In 1970, however, the DeWolfes sold The Point Reyes Light to Michael and Annabelle Gahagan. The Light in those days was still printed in house on a 1910 flatbed, web Goss press. Production was laborious and expensive, and after six years of financial frustration, the Gahagans sold the newspaper to David and Cathy Mitchell, who had both previously worked for other newspapers. With their first issue in August 1975, the Mitchells converted The Light from hot type to offset reproduction, farmed out the printing, and sold the old Goss press for $1. By using modern production techniques and a central printing plant, The Light eventually was able to make a small profit. When the Mitchells divorced in 1981, they sold The Light to Rosalie Laird and her short term partner Ace Ramos. Laird owned The Light from October 1, 1981, to December 31, 1983, when David Mitchell reacquired it through a default action.

Dave and Cathy Mitchell bought the Light in 1975 for $47,000, when its circulation was 1,700. Dave Mitchell became the editor, and he and Cathy Mitchell became co publishers. In 1979 under the Mitchells, the Light earned the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for reporting on a cult, Synanon, which had a major presence in the area and had attempted to murder an attorney who won a lawsuit against the cult. The San Francisco Examiner dropped their coverage of Synanon after libel threats. The Light won the Meritorious Public Service gold medal for an exposé of Synanon Incorporated, a onetime drug rehabilitation program that changed its name to the Church of Synanon and evolved into a violent cult. The Mitchells sold the Light to Ace Ramos and Rosalee Laird in 1981. Dave Mitchell returned as editor and publisher in 1984 after working for the San Francisco Examiner as a general assignment reporter and covering the wars in El Salvador and Guatemala.

After Mitchell's return, the paper's longest running story was a series on five historic waves of immigration to Point Reyes in the previous 150 years. Despite being a small town weekly with only about 4,000 circulation, The Light sent reporters and photographers abroad four times in 13 years to interview relatives of Point Reyes’ immigrant families to learn why some members left the old country and some did not. One purpose of the series was to defuse the term immigrant and put in perspective an ongoing immigration from Jalostotitlán, Mexico. In 1988 and 1991, The Light sent reporters to Jalostotitlán to report on immigration then underway. It also hired 11 year old Alicia Hernandez to write a weekly Spanish language column describing West Marin from a young Latina's perspective, and in 1986, a special issue of Newsweek magazine named her one of “100 New American Heroes.” Highlights of all of those reports are featured in Mitchell's book, The Light On The Coast,

In 1995, the paper sent reporters to Ticino, the Italian speaking canton of Switzerland, and to war torn Croatia. In 1997, a Light reporter went to Northern Ireland, the Republic of Ireland, and Portugal's Azores to research historic immigrations from those islands. The immigration reports won both journalism awards and attention from other news media. In a special report on America's First Amendment, German’s ARD television network in 1989 observed, “America’s small newspapers top the list of things US citizens can take pride in, and among America’s best small papers is The Point Reyes Light.”