Pulitzer Prize-Winning ?Point Reyes Light? Sold, Will Operate Under L3C Business Model

The Point Reyes (Calif.) Light, which won the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service in 1979 but had been owned by a polarizing figure for the past five years, has been sold to a group of journalists, political activists and  educators who will operate it under a so-called L3C model.

Terms of the sale were not disclosed, but the San Francisco Chronicle, in an article by staff writer Peter Fimrite quoted unnamed “sources involve in the negotiations” as disclosing the price was “considerably less” than the $500,000 former Monterey County (Calif.) prosecutor Robert Plotkin paid to acquire the weekly in 2005.

Plotkin by all reports alienated some in the community, which remains a bastion of counterculture lifestyles. He feuded with David Mitchell, who was the editor when the Light won its Pulitzer.

In a prepared statement, Plotkin compared the newspaper to a spoiled daughter marrying “into West Marin’s hippy oligarchy, who can more easily support her spendthrift habits.

"Sadly, West Marin did not want editorial excellence,” the statement said. “They did not want to see behind the curtain. They wanted a newspaper that would record their births, celebrate their accomplishments and habitually congratulate them on living here. But most of all, the neo-romantics of West Marin took themselves too seriously."

Under its new ownership group, which calls itself Marin Media Institute, the Light is a low-profit limited liability company, or L3C, a structure much-discussed as a business model for newspapers, but not adopted until now. An L3C is run like a for-profit business, but is operated for a social benefit.

Marin Media Chairman Mark Dowie told the Chronicle the Light’s social benefit would be investing in “village journalism.”