Point Reyes Light / Tomales Bay Publishing Co. Inc.

""I think the reporters take pride in being assigned stories with an edge, stories that ask the awkward questions. We also try to do stories requiring research that we know will amaze readers . . . Part of our readership consists of commuters, but it is important that at least one member of the family remain involved in community life âboth for the newspaper''s sake and for the sake of West Marin''s 14 towns. If the towns lose their self-sufficiency, we will become a bedroom community for the rest of the Bay Area. If fewer residents spend their days in town, it will become easier for a handful of special-interest groups to dominate public policy."
David Mitchell, in a 2002 interview with Jeff Forward for the California Newspaper Publishers Association. "

Address: P.O. Box 210

Location: Point Reyes Station, CA, 94956

Email: editor@ptreyeslight.com

Website: http://www.ptreyeslight.com/light.html

Work: 415-663-8404

About

UPDATE: Mitchell sold the Light in early 2006.

David Mitchell was co-publisher of the Point Reyes Light, a 4,100-circulation weekly newspaper in western Marin County, north of San Francisco, which won a 1979 Pulitzer Prize for its reporting on the Synanon Foundation, a religious group, was the subject of a 1984 movie, "Attack on Fear", in which Mitchell was portrayed by actor Paul Michael Glaser.

BELOW FROM: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086918/
" ''Attack on Fear'' was based on a Pulitzer Prize-winning series of newspaper articles by David and Cathy Mitchell. Paul Michael Glaser and Linda Kelsey play the Michaels, who labor away at a tiny California daily. Upon hearing of iniquities at the famed Santa Monica drug-rehab center Synanon, the Michaels begin publishing their evidence. Despite legal pressure from Synanon and bizarre anonymously mailed threats, the Mitchells'' story results in a major investigation of the revered institution. Completed in 1982, the made-for-TV Attack on Fear was not telecast until October of 1984, and then only after (presumably) being reshaped to satisfy Synanon''s battery of attorneys.

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The California Newspaper Publishers website profiled David Mitchell in Sept. 2002 -- LINK HERE.

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David LaFontaine profiles David Mitchell in an August 25, 2005 articles posted at the Online Journalism Review site of the Annenberg School of Journalism at the University of Southenr California. Writes Lafontaine: "A legendary print weekly offers online publishers important lessons on how to earn the respect and support of the communities they cover."