Lisa Frazier, president and CEO of The Bay Citizen, said Saturday she doesn’t know if nonprofit journalism online will be able to sustain itself. Frazier was one of the panelists for a discussion on nonprofit journalism at the 12th International Symposium on Online Journalism at the University of Texas at Austin.

According to Reportr.net, Frazier said The Bay Citizen can be a “test kitchen” for journalism, technology and business models. To make the model sustainable, takes time but also takes money to make money, she said. “The community will decide if nonprofit is sustainable,” said Frazier.

The Bay Citizen reaches 150,000 unique readers a month and additional 61,000 readers through its stories appearing in the Bay Area editions of The New York Times on Friday and Sunday.
Frazier said Bay Citizen has 27 people working in editorial and “innovation.” She pointed to one example of innovation — a web application that helps bikers in San Francisco avoid places where there have been a high number of bike accidents.