In the summer of 2020, Annelise Pierce stood amid a group of around 500 protesters, police and militia members in front of a local courthouse in Shasta County, California. Members of the 181,000-member community in the northern region of the Sacramento Valley gathered to protest the murder of George Floyd by police officer Derek Chauvin.

Pierce was covering the protest as a stringer for a local news blog. She didn’t expect such a large turnout given the majority-conservative makeup of Shasta County. She also didn’t expect some residents to come decked out in full military gear.

“I didn’t know there was a militia presence in Shasta County,” she recalled. “When I interviewed those people, they said the sheriff had asked them to come.”

Pierce said her on-the-ground experience was vastly different than what was reported by the area’s legacy media outlet. “At one point, the protesters and I were kettled between the police and the local militia.” The situation continued to escalate. She remembers feeling some anxiety, and considering what kind of force the police might use on the crowd.

“The outcome that was reported by the legacy outlet was a police officer marching with protesters. There was this moment at the end (of the protest) when a police officer kind of stepped forward and met protesters,” she said, but that portrayal inaccurately illustrated the tenor of the event. “The environment wasn’t one of trust but of compromise because of the impending threat of violence. It felt so disingenuous.” Most egregious to Pierce was that the outlet failed to mention anywhere that the local folks in camo were asked to attend the protest by the local sheriff, information they gave to her freely when she asked, and integral to the narrative.

That moment catalyzed Pierce into starting her own, independent nonprofit news outlet, Shasta Scout.

A winding road to journalism

Pierce had long loved journalism, but a conservative upbringing meant she wasn’t allowed entry into the profession. Her journey to the media industry was a winding one, spanning more than two decades and including time as a missionary, a mother of four and a ministry student.

“I was raised by a family with viewpoints that many would see as extreme. I wanted to become a journalist when I was 12, but my family didn’t support or believe in the media.”

The only access she had to the media at the time was the occasional listen to a story on NPR during a family drive. She remembers listening to a female NPR journalist who was overseas and reporting from the front lines of a war. The moment left an impression.

As an adult, she broke away from her family’s beliefs. She said that since then, her life “has been a journey of learning how to think for myself.”

She thought she wanted to be a lawyer and in 2016  started working with Shasta County’s grand jury to get a feel for the profession. “It was while I was working with the grand jury that I learned there was so much going on in our community that wasn’t being reported on.”

So she started stringing for local news blogs, which led her to the 2020 protests and to the start of Shasta Scout.

A unique perspective for a unique place

Pierce believes her “outsider” perspective has been key to Shasta Scout’s success.

“I’m a relative newcomer to the media world without a background in journalism. It’s a perspective that’s allowed me to confront long-standing issues in the media industry.”

She largely defines success by the makeup of her readership, which includes people on both sides of the political spectrum, including those who would traditionally be characterized as far-right and far-left. She recently covered a protest where participants were speaking out against the Trump administration. She said the lone Trump supporter in the crowd of 1,200 reached out to her a few days later, thanking her for representing him with fairness and accuracy.

“Of course, metrics and revenue matter but the battle in Shasta County is for the hearts and minds of a politically polarized community who no longer believe there is such a thing as factual, trustworthy news. If I can help them believe that trustworthy local news exists, and that we’re producing it… well, that could change everything,” she wrote in an email.

The metrics, however, also speak to Shasta Scout’s success. Pierce said Shasta Scout is still in the buildout phase, but donations and grants have been steady, and this year the outlet will hire an operations manager.

The publication’s newsletter, called “Signals from Shasta Scout” has a 5,000 subscribers with an average open rate of 45 percent. She has plans for a campaign to increase that count to 7,500, which would represent 10% of the county’s households.

Pierce felt like the for-profit model often prioritized the owner’s agenda over public trust, so she opted for a nonprofit newsroom instead.

She knew her commitment to telling the full breadth of stories that were missing in Shasta County would take time and resources, so she got to work, enrolling in programs and courses to figure out how to create a sustainable model.

One of the people she met along the way was Sam Gross, co-founder and vice president for Stacker, a newswire that helps its publishing partners reach a wider audience through production and syndication.

The two met while Pierce was participating in a 10-week LION Publishers revenue growth program. Gross found that the more Pierce talked about her goals with Shasta Scout, the more interested he became. He offered up his expertise in the way of an informal mentorship. Pierce eventually asked Gross to join Shasta Scout’s board.

Gross said signing on as a board member was an easy yes.

“She shows up. She goes to the meeting. She talks to people,” he said. “She has really hard conversations and she’s really driven in her approach, but she’s also very empathetic to the range of perspectives in the community. And I think it shows up in the reporting.”

He also recognizes Shasta County as an important representation of a wider, national narrative.

“The region is just a fascinating microcosm of the rest of the country. There’s really relevant stories about environmentalism, whether it’s wildfires or native land stewardship. There’s polarization you see around the country, but kind of in a more intense way in that area. There’s housing. There’s just a lot to unpack.”

This microcosm is one of the factors that sold Nevin Kallepalli, a California Local News Fellow and Shasta Scout reporter, on the outlet.

“Shasta County, for a place that’s so small, it actually really crystallizes these larger problems, these larger national problems. They really come to a head here,” he said, and stated that watching how it all plays out on a local stage is really interesting through the lens of journalism.

Transparency over everything else

Pierce says she’s dedicated to transparency because that’s how trust is fostered, especially for a media outlet.

Under the “Who We Are” tab on the Shasta Scout website, visitors can find everything from a synopsis of the organization’s inception to a list of story corrections to detailed information on how it’s funded and even a bulleted list of guidelines to promote constructive conversation.

Pierce also wants to make sure she’s an approachable face in the community. This, she says, is important because she’s noticed that many people think journalists are unapproachable, and that needs to change. “I really want people to think of me as an everyday person. That’s where the (Shasta Scout) name comes from. I’m your scout that you send out and I find the truth and bring it back to you. I’m out there in the front lines for you standing where you might not want to stand so that you can get the info you need.”

Kallepalli said Pierce lives up to her commitment to understanding the residents and becoming someone they know.

“She knows everyone. She has everyone’s number. I can ask her any question, or she’s always able to fill in the gaps in my reporting in ways that I would never be able to sort of foresee because she has such an intimate knowledge of the fabric of the place,” he said.

Representative of all residents

Shasta County is largely conservative and over three-quarters of the population identifies as white. This sector of the population can be overrepresented in the news, which Pierce was keenly aware of at Shasta Scout’s inception.

“I immediately started telling stories about local Native communities, stories that have almost always been told from the criminal justice lens — negative. But we started telling tribal culture stories.”

She said she got some pushback from some residents, so she used her newsletter to turn that pushback into an editorial. She explored the idea of “Native stories” versus “community stories” and argued that Native stories are Shasta County stories. If the population includes Native peoples, then to accurately represent the locale, Native peoples need to be represented in the narrative.

So too, then, do stories about rural conservative white folks who feel disenfranchised by the government and stories about communities of color, like the 50 Sikh families who call Shasta County home, she says. And she makes sure Shasta Scout represents all of them.

What’s most interesting about this, said Gross, is that Pierce is somehow able to reach all of these communities — who might usually be at odds and rarely see themselves represented alongside each other — and effectively tell their stories and gain their trust.

“She’s really careful about talking to everybody and acknowledging that there’s different perspectives on things,” he said, noting that Pierce’s approach to reporting is rooted in curiosity. She’s constantly looking at ways to dig deeper into a story rather than assuming she knows the answers.

Shasta Scout also seeks to give voice to those who are largely unheard within the wider media sphere, including the unhoused, and groups or individuals who want to bring light to issues affecting their communities. One reporter spotlights individuals doing good in the community.

Pierce is also focused on government accountability, in large part due to her time working with the grand jury. “I learned that there was so much going on in our community that wasn’t being reported on.”

She knew that residents needed a better understanding of the government’s inner workings, and they needed coverage on local meetings with context about what various government measures meant to them as citizens.

“My job is to inform the people so that they can make the best decision. The way democracy works is that it is dependent on the people making decisions, she says. Where I have power is in helping people see all of the context behind their choices.”

In addition to reporting on local government actions and meetings, the Shasta Scout website also includes an “Inside Public Service” page, where a local neuroscientist humanizes the public service sector by telling the stories of the people who work within it.

Building a sustainable future

Pierce wants Shasta Scout to exist for the long haul, so she’s spent much of her time and energy focused on making that happen.

Gross said that as an operator/owner, she has an uncanny ability to envision the future and work toward it.

“Annelise really understands the importance of comprehensive coverage, building out the business side and then thinking about operational efficacy and how that is all (related),” he said.

She focuses as much on the business side of running the outlet as she does the reporting, which has paid off in recent months and led to Shasta Scout securing some long-term funding.

“What she’s done as a founder operator is pretty incredible and so much of it is just starting with the coverage,” he said, noting that Pierce’s commitment to comprehensive coverage paved the way for grants and long-term funding opportunities.

As she continues to navigate the business side, however, Pierce knows that it’s fair reporting that will continue to drive Shasta Scout’s reach and impact. She’s committed to representing the needs and values of all of Shasta County’s residents.

Correction (April 10, 2025): An earlier version of this story misstated the size of the protest. About 1,200 people attended, not 2,000.