The Bay Area News Project announced today it has a new name, The Bay Citizen.

This is the project that started when the Chronicle, in its effort to obtain concessions from its unions, began talking about closing. Wells Fargo heir F. Warren Helman has promised to put up $5 million for the project and there’s talk that the New York Times will use the project’s copy.

“Together with our tagline – News / Culture / Community – the name neatly encapsulates our mission as a publicly supported journalism organization,” writes Editor Jonathan Weber:

As anyone who has had the privilege of naming a company knows very well, there are, to put it mildly, a lot of things to consider. As we worked through the process, though, we kept coming back to the notion of “citizen.” For us, citizen is a not legal description, but rather a state of mind, a way of thinking about and describing a rich and dynamic relationship between individual and community. …

The notion of the “good citizen” has become a wry, almost sarcastic reference in the age of snark, but it’s hard to deny the simple fact that good citizens make great communities.