$400K in the Bay Area for a CEO is average-low. It's not a paltry sum, but it's certainly not anything a truly Tier-1 CEO would work for unless they either had some upside (equity) or had ulterior motives (Labor of Love).
We are talking about someone who:
1) is leading a startup journalism non-profit.
2) has no prior experience as a CEO
3) has never worked in the journalism industry
If this were a tech startup, the salary range for this CEO would be $0 to $100K. To be fair, since as a non-profit there is no equity upside, one could argue for a hefty year end performance-based bonus. But a guaranteed $400K salary is beyond absurd.
Someone decided that his background would make him an effective CEO - and once they did, the salary should be commensurate with the responsibilities.
If this were a tech startup, the salary range for a CEO in the valley (for a Series A/B Round startup) would be $250K-$300K with an upside ranging in the 10s of millions.
A guaranteed $400K salary is really not a very decent salary for a CEO. I'll see if I can find some stats to back up my claim.
[EDIT: http://www.siliconvalley.com/salary-survey/ci_12523817?nclic...]
In 2009: The median pay package the valley's boards of directors awarded their chief executives dropped 5.6 percent, to $2.2 million.
Rather this is someone with no journalism experience at a nonprofit startup. If we were talking about a first-year startup in a failing industry with $5mil in total funding there wouldn't even be a suggestion of a CEO salary close to that.
But my larger point is that this is an organization that needs public support to succeed. Burning through all of your funding in the first year while paying top-level executive salaries in a down economy doesn't build public confidence.