Celebrating 40 Years of Bolinas Hearsay News

Of all the newspapers of West Marin, past and present, the Bolinas Hearsay News is the most unusual. Now celebrating its 40th anniversary year, the “Hearsay,” as it is commonly called, is a uniquely democratic community service. It was established in 1974 with the concept “Everyone is a reporter.”

Bolinas Hearsay News has no agenda. Each editor of the three weekly issues is asked to avoid his or her own biases and be inclusive. As the voice for local community news, anyone can contribute as long as submissions are signed and do not contain slander or libel. Each issue may include community news, events, town meetings, want ads, prose, opinions, controversies, art, birthday and death announcements, complaints, compliments, commentary, savvy articles on world events and much more. There may be poetry from a nationally renowned local poet or from the little kid next door.

Produced and supported by locals, townspeople also serve as editors, printers, and distributors, and while the staff changes over time, their dedication does not. Now, after forty years, so many talented people have worked on the paper the family of Hearsay staff past and present is huge. The contributors must count in the thousands.

The Hearsay is still published three times a week, with different combinations of individuals working together regularly on a Monday, Wednesday or Friday publication. For the past three years it has also been available on-line by subscription at http://hearsaynews.org. To celebrate the remarkable longevity of this local newspaper, the Bolinas Museum and Bolinas Hearsay News collaborated to present this history room exhibit that includes more than 50,000 pages of published Hearsays from the past 40 years in bound volumes for you to peruse. The issues from 2012, 2013 and 2014 (as yet unbound) are archived on line.  These Bolinas Hearsay News pages are a chronicle of 40 years of civic activities and an insight into the character of this smart, eccentric, conservation-minded and community-oriented town of Bolinas.