In 1996, journalist Chris Clarke started talking about the need he perceived for a broad-spectrum environmental magazine devoted to California issues.

"It seemed odd to me that we had the world's fifth-largest economy, that we were an absolute bellwether of a number of environmental trends, but we didn't have our own environmental publication," said Clarke, an environmental editor since 1991.

A veteran of the Berkeley Ecology Center's Terrain magazine and the defunct environmental website Verde.com, Clarke launched just such a magazine as an online presence in July 2001 -- Faultline.org.

In Feburary last year, he affiliated his young publication with Earth Island Institute, a San Francisco-based environmental group founded by the prominent activist David Brower. Earth Island provides organizational support for diverse entities in its loose-knit Project Network, some of which graduate to independent status. As Clarke puts it, Earth Island serves as "an incubator for new, innovative projects."

He had formerly worked for Earth Island's quarterly magazine, so it made sense for Faultline to come under the Earth Island umbrella. Two months after that happened, he also returned to the group's magazine, the Earth Island Journal as its editor.

Editing the Journal is his 40-hour per week paying job. His work on Faultline is done without compensation, which is also the case so far for the services that three other staffers provide. In addition, contributing writers have provided all original articles on a pro bono basis, though Clarke said he hopes to start paying for such submissions in a year or so.

He readily concedes that getting the new publication going has been a struggle, even though the cost of posting a website publication that doesn't pay any staff salaries can be "remarkably small."

Much of the "extremely small funding" that launched Faultline came out of his own pocket, and other volunteer staff members also chipped in. Readers' tax-deductible contributions, most in the $25-$30 range, have been sporadic, but are on the increase, Clarke said. He would like to make time to prepare grant applications to foundations, but said he has been busy concentrating on content more than major fiscal development so far.

Although it's affiliated with Earth Island Institute, Faultline doesn't mention the connection on its homepage. (It is briefly noted on Faultline's "About Us" page.) Faultline is "not an Earth Island house organ," Clarke explained. "There are issues where we might well differ from Earth Island's projects."

The Contributors' Guidelines section of the Faultline website offers a succinct expression of Clarke's editorial vision: "Though the information Faultline publishes may range from hard news and investigative reporting through personal essays and analysis to creative writing, each piece should contribute to promoting a 'sense of place' for one or more of California's many localities.

"We're interested in pieces on issues ranging from wilderness protection and endangered species to environmental justice and urban quality-of-life issues. We also welcome writing that simply conveys what it's like to live in your part of California-even if there isn't an environmental controversy rearing its head there at the moment."

The guidelines state that Faultline doesn't "insist on objectivity in the pieces we publish, but we do insist on fairness."

"Basically, our willingness to look at tough issues is what saves us from being ideologues," Clarke said. "Our assumption is that people are going to know that we're environmentalists," he said. "We need to be upfront about our general editorial position. Full disclosure is more ethical than some mythical objectivity principle."

Recent Faultline articles have included a California activist's dispatches from the ministerial meeting of the World Trade Organization in Cancun, Mexico, last month; an in-depth examination of the surprising decline of San Francisco Bay's herring fishery; and a former Dow Jones Newswires reporter's article about a 2001 meeting between Arnold Schwarzenegger and Enron's Ken Lay.

To complement Faultline's steady stream of such hard-news fare, Clarke recently began writing a lighter, weblog-style column, Creek Running North with personal ruminations on the natural world and other subjects. Next year, he hopes to launch a Faultline-sponsored award to honor outstanding newspaper journalism on the environment. He said he especially admires the work of reporters "in the trenches" at some of California's smaller papers.

In the future, Clarke has a wish list of other Faultline projects he'd like to undertake-a print version of the magazine, "quality audio content" for radio stations, perhaps even a foray into news-talk radio some day.