Today is Giving Tuesday, a global day of giving to advance causes you care about. We hope local news — and the Piedmont Exedra — are among the organizations you’ll support this season.
Our four-year anniversary
The Piedmont Exedra was launched on Thanksgiving day in 2018 to offer local residents an independent, online, hyperlocal news source. We originally formed as a B-Corp (social purpose organization) with financial support from generous founding families and local advertisers. We are grateful for their early confidence and contributions.
Last month, the local news organization and nonprofit Bay City News Foundation (led by Katherine Rowlands) became our fiscal sponsor. We can now process donations as a 501c3 — giving you a tax break when you make a contribution.
Donate HERE
Our mission remains unchanged. Read on for some quick reminders about what we do and other housekeeping notes as we wrap up another year:
What we cover
We cover public meetings — city council, board of education — so that you know what your local elected officials are doing. We receive regular updates from the police and fire departments and will publish notices from the city or PUSD as we receive them. We also love chronicling community life — the traditions and community events that bring us all together. We like to support local entrepreneurs, businesses, and nonprofits.
Through our partnership with Bay City News, we also publish regional stories of interest from Local News Matters, and also pull from EdSource, CalMatters, and Kaiser Health News — three nonprofit reporting outlets that cover California education, government, and health news. (All three organizations are worthy of your support if you are inclined to donate to other nonprofit news sources this year.)
Bylines
We identify our paid reporters and staff with bylines and use “Exedra staff” when our volunteer editorial team either individually or collectively works on an article. We are grateful to our experienced local reporters — Sam Richards, Lou Fancher, Damin Esper — for their contributions and hope to hire another reporter to cover education topics this year.
If we run a press release from the city or the school district, we will note that at the top of the article or in the body of the post.
Comments
Our comments policy has evolved over time. Before a comment is published, we do our best to make sure submissions come from real people in the community. We do not accept anonymous comments nor will we run comments that deliberately spread misinformation or seek to provoke. (Yup, it’s subjective. We’d rather not spend our time trying to figure out if someone is commenting in good faith or merely acting as a provocateur, but we’ll continue to moderate comments in order to allow space for dialog. If it becomes too burdensome, we’ll simply stop allowing comments.)
Disclosures and conflicts of interest
If a reporter or editor has a relationship to the subject of our reporting, we do our best to make note of that fact. Piedmont is a small town of approximately 11,000 people — we’re all connected one way or another. Are we biased? Most certainly, yes. We believe in our city government, public schools, civic institutions, and community — but that doesn’t mean we can’t or won’t cover controversial issues.
Feedback and corrections
We work hard to avoid mistakes, but we’re not perfect and we correct our mistakes as quickly as possible and welcome reader feedback on any article. Is there something you’d like to see covered? Let us know.
Send your queries, concerns, praise, or criticisms to news@piedmontexedra.com
Wow! Can’t believe it’s been 4 years since you launched. Congratulations to the whole Piedmont Exedra talent pool of reporters, editors and publishers who make your thorough coverage of local news possible. Grateful to you all. And of course, thanks to the many financial supporters who value quality journalism and continue to support your efforts for the benefit of the whole community.
Thank you so much to the amazing team behind the Exedra! It has been a wonderful addition to the Piedmont community and I appreciate the high quality of reporting. Congratulations on four years and keep up the good work!