Voice of San Diego was born because, in 2004, the dominant San Diego newspaper, the Union-Tribune , fired veteran columnist Neil Morgan. Among the many outraged by the forced retirement after 55 years of a respected editorial voice was philanthropist Buzz Woolley. Like many US newspapers at the turn of the 21st century, the Union-Tribune had struggled to stay profitable and had cut costs by steadily paring back staff. Morgan, whose byline had appeared in San Diego newspapers for over half a century, was the highest-profile casualty to date. But his departure fit a pattern.

This pattern was precisely what worried Woolley, who had made his fortune as an entrepreneur and venture capitalist in a number of different fields and who, like Morgan, had spent most of his career in San Diego. Woolley was the head of his own charitable foundation, the Girard Foundation, which donated millions to education in the San Diego area. He also had a longstanding concern with the quality of San Diego journalism, which he felt had never been high and was declining to new lows. He recalls:

The Union-Tribune , being the only significant newspaper in town, has never been very strong. Its had some serious biases Its credibility in a lot of areas is shaky. Even though Im a registered Republican, I recognized that historically its been fairly far off to right and its irritated a lot of people [For example,] theres been a fair amount of corruption and very bad management within our government system [Yet] nobody knew what they were doing because there wasnt adequate reporting. [1]

Morgan, in Woolley's view, had been one of the few consistently skeptical voices at the Union-Tribune . Soon after Morgans last day at the newspaper in April 2004, Woolley contacted him to suggest that the two team up to start a news venture of their own. Woolley recalls: I said: Neil, we cant lose your voice. Somebodys got to question whats going on. After several weeks of discussion, they agreed to create a Web-based outlet for San Diego-focused public-service journalism.

Listen to Woolley describe his meeting with Morgan and what came of it.

The point was not simply to preserve Morgans column in another venuethough Morgan planned to contribute. Instead, with a small staff of perhaps two or three young reporters at salaries in the $40,000-$50,000 range, the two hoped to address some of the Union-Tribune s investigative failures at relatively low cost. Woolley would finance the enterprise himself. The bulk of the sites content, they hoped, would be provided by civic-minded San Diegans whom they would convince to write blogs or columns for free. Woolley and Morgan planned to call the site Voice of San Diego , in part to emphasize its planned reliance on citizen journalism of this kind.