Bill Kelly didn't set out to venture into web-based environmental journalism, but after an unplanned initiation, he intends to stick with it.

Kelly left his job as a communications officer for the Los Angeles regional air pollution agency with the aim of pursuing a longtime ambition to try freelance writing and publish a traditional, paper-based newsletter on environmental issues in California.

Just a few days after his departure from the South Coast Air Quality Management District, however, terrorists crashed airliners into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

The 9/11 attacks "put a damper on my initial schedule," Kelly said. "It didn't seem like a good time to launch a new publication -- maybe on security issues, but not on the environment certainly."

A few months later, he decided to forge ahead with several test-market editions of a biweekly environmental newsletter, but was soon overwhelmed by the magnitude of the task he had taken on.

"It was a backbreaker to do that much and to deal with the mechanics of actually publishing a paper-based newsletter," he said. "I quickly concluded after a couple of months that I did not have the wherewithal to do this -- time-wise or energy-wise or financially."

Upon concluding that he couldn't sustain the effort, Kelly refunded the subscription money that had come in and began rethinking his plans.

In the summer of 2002, he launched an email edition of the newsletter, California Environment Report, which he continues to publish in tandem with a promotional website. The website features a sampling of what email subscribers receive.

The web-based approach "is much better on economics and the amount of labor involved," he said. "I don't have to pay for mailing, promotion, envelope-stuffing and all those types of things that take a lot of time and money."

A Washington reporter for the Bureau of National Affairs before his move to Los Angeles, Kelly describes California Environment Report as "a traditional news publication that's objective and balanced." In general, he said, "it's very much written like a wire service. I'm not advocating one way or another."

The newsletter primarily covers pollution issues as they unfold at the California Environmental Protection Agency, known as Cal/EPA, and at some of the state's regional pollution-regulating boards in the Los Angeles, San Francisco and Central Valley areas.

Some editions of the newsletter are made up of shorter news stories. The June 9, 2003 issue, for instance, featured 12 articles that reported on news including the adoption of a rule covering refinery flares in the San Francisco area, an increase in sales of hybrid vehicles, and progress toward construction of a sports complex on a hazardous waste dumpsite.

Other editions may run fewer stories, including some news features, which are much more detailed. For example, the October 13 issue had two lengthy articles -- one, on a variety of environmental bills signed by outgoing Gov. Gray Davis, and another, examining new concerns being raised by activists about nuclear power plants.

Some articles from the newsletter also are published elsewhere. The story on the bills signed by Davis, for instance, appeared on the website of the Environment News Service (see EW, July-August 2003 article). "Initially, I wanted others to pick up the stories I was doing," Kelly said, "but it's hard to get people (in newsrooms) to pay attention."

Still, things are looking up after the rough start he experienced. At a modest price of $44 a year, the still-biweekly newsletter has attracted a broad range of subscribers including law firms, environmental consultants, government officials and journalists. Out of about 150 subscribers, about a half-dozen are journalists, and they pay the full subscription price like everyone else.

"I won't say I'm making a living doing this," Kelly said. "I'm covering my costs, perhaps making a little bit of money, but what (the newsletter) also has done is give me a structure to do freelancing. It keeps me, in a disciplined and systematic way, in touch with what's going on with the environment in California. I've been able to build up a decent freelance business that looks promising into the future and is actually beginning to pay the bills."

He plans to continue publishing California Environment Report, hoping some day to transform it into a nonprofit business. That way, he might qualify for grants so he could make the newsletter available, free of charge, for a much broader audience.

He said he is fully aware that grant funding, even if he manages to get some, is not a safe bet to sustain such a publication for the long haul. "It's a thought in my mind," he said. "It's nothing I've really explored."

Still, he believes that "the web increasingly has made people think that information, music, video and everything else is free. Most people, if they can't get it for free, they don't get it, unless you really do the marketing."

If he does somehow manage to try the nonprofit route, Kelly envisions making the website the centerpiece of the enterprise, perhaps distributing a periodic compilation of stories for readers who are "interested, but more passive."

A grant-funded business model might also allow him to publish articles by other journalists, he said.

For now, though, Kelly remains the sole staff member, which has given him the sobering realization about the type of publication he produces: "The lesson is, one person can't do everything."