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About

About Big Bear News

One calm morning read instead of six websites and a Facebook group.

Our mission

To give Big Bear Valley one honest, current read on what is happening here — and to turn what this site earns into a paid human reporter covering it.

Big Bear Valley has around 20,000 year-round residents, a few million visitors a year, and no daily newsroom. What is actually happening here — what the council is about to vote on, which road is closed, what the water district is charging, what is on this weekend — is scattered across dozens of agency sites, PDF agendas, and Facebook groups. Most of it is public. Almost none of it is read.

Big Bear News exists to take the valley's pulse every day and put it in one place, in plain language, with a link to the source behind every claim. That is the near-term job. The longer-term job is to make local coverage here pay for itself well enough to put a human reporter back in the room.

What is Big Bear News?

We gather what happened in the valley today from more than 40 scattered public sources — government agendas, dispatch logs, weather and road feeds, event calendars, and local newsrooms — and write it up plainly, with every claim linked to where it came from. One calm morning read instead of checking six websites and a Facebook group.

What we are is a consolidator and a summarizer, and we say so plainly. We are not yet a newsroom: nobody here attends a council meeting, works a source, or files a public records request. That gap is exactly what we are trying to fund.

Why does this exist?

Big Bear News was started by a resident of the valley, to solve a resident's problem: there was no way to find — or even know about — everything going on here, let alone what was happening at city hall and the special districts. Concerts and town nights lived on a dozen calendars and Facebook pages, if they were posted at all. Council, the fire district, the water boards, and the rest of the local agencies posted agendas in PDFs almost nobody opened.

What was missing was one place that said what is happening this week, and what local government is about to decide — sourced, current, and quiet. No rumor, no clickbait. This is not a company with a newsroom: it is one household, some software, and a monthly hosting bill.

Big Bear News is owned and operated by SAUERAPPLE LLC, a California company. It takes no money from any government body, campaign, or agency it covers.

Where the money goes

Reading Big Bear News is free, and we intend to keep it that way. So it is fair to ask what the sponsorships and the newsletter are for.

They are for hiring a person. Software can consolidate what agencies already publish. It cannot sit through a four-hour council meeting, ask a follow-up question, cultivate a source, or file a public records request when an agency would rather not answer. That work is what the valley actually lost, and the only way to get it back is to pay someone to do it.

So every dollar goes, in this order: keep the lights on (hosting, feeds, and the AI that writes the daily read), then bank the rest toward a paid local reporter. No investors, no growth targets, nobody to sell out to.

We will not pretend we are further along than we are. Right now the writing is AI, and every page says so. If and when a human is doing the reporting, their name will be on the story and this page will say what changed.

If you want to help that happen sooner: sponsor the site, subscribe to the newsletter, or send us a tip about something we missed. All three help.

How do you write these stories?

We are honest about how these stories are made, because trust is the whole point.

  • Stories are written by AI from cited public sources. Nothing is invented — every factual claim traces back to a document, feed, or page we monitor.
  • An AI editor reviews every story before it publishes, checking that each claim is supported by its source.
  • Some stories are additionally reviewed by a named person. When that happens, the story says so and names the reviewer.
  • Every claim links its source. You can open the original document and check it yourself.
  • Not everything here is reporting. Letters are written by residents, and opinion from the newsroom is signed by the person accountable for it. Both are labeled where they appear, and neither is held to the sourcing rules above. The rules letters run under are published at /letters/policy.
  • When we get something wrong, we correct it promptly and publish the correction at /corrections.

Sources we monitor

We watch 54 public sources across the valley. Here is the current list, with links to the feeds and pages we poll. Paused feeds are left off until they are working again.

Schools

Bear Valley Unified School District. School-board coverage is limited right now — the district's agenda feed is paused while we fix how it's published.

Beyond these fixed feeds, we use the Brave Search API to surface Big Bear stories from outlets we don't monitor directly. Web discovery is powered by Brave Search.

Valley meeting agendas and minutes are powered by CivicCatch.

Know a public local source we miss? Suggest it below.

Suggest a source

If you run a public Big Bear Valley site — or know one we should monitor — send the URL. We review suggestions by hand and only add sources that fit our consent and adapter rules. We do not automatically start crawling.

We review by hand. We do not automatically crawl new URLs.

What won't you cover?

Some things are not ours to publish, and we hold that line on purpose. From public-safety dispatch feeds we follow a strict policy:

  • No medical calls. Health and welfare calls are private and stay unpublished.
  • No names of suspects or people involved. We never carry a person's name from a dispatch log.
  • Block-level locations only. We say the block and town, never a house number or exact address.
  • An explicit allowlist. Only traffic collisions and fires are eligible to appear. Any call type we don't recognize stays private by default.

Corrections

We publish corrections promptly and in the open. When a story is wrong or incomplete, we fix it, note what changed and why, and keep a permanent record at /corrections. If you spot something that needs correcting, email us — we want to know.

The newsletter

Big Bear Today is the weekday morning page in your inbox — what's going on in the valley that day: conditions, today's stories (when there are any), happening today, a short look ahead, and a link you can share. Saturdays bring the weekly recap. Signup starts you on weekday mornings; you can switch to Saturday-only any time.

Privacy

We keep tracking to the minimum and turn nothing on unless you opt in: anonymous analytics run only after you accept them in the consent banner (and never when your browser sends Global Privacy Control), your newsletter email is used only to send the newsletter, and we never sell your data.

The full details — what we collect, the vendors we use, and your California privacy rights — are in our privacy policy.

Sponsorships

Local businesses may support Big Bear News through labeled sponsorships. Sponsored slots on the home page carry an “Ad” label; newsletter sends say “Supported by.” Government meetings, public-safety dispatch, and all civic coverage are never sponsored. Acceptance of advertising or sponsorship does not influence editorial decisions. That firewall is how we keep the reporting trustworthy. What that money is for is spelled out in Where the money goes. You can read the full terms at /advertise.

Contact

The full list — advertising, outages, tips, corrections, and site feedback — is on Contact. Questions or news we missed? Share a story, or email hello@bigbear.news. We read everything. The daily briefing is also on Facebook.

Curious about our crawler? See our crawler.