California Watch

At precisely the time California newsrooms are shrinking, the state is experiencing its worst budget and governance crisis in decades.

Come meet members of our leadership team and other media professionals this Friday at noon at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco as they consider the implications of these simultaneous realities. 

Quality journalism is still being done around the state, but in a less sustained way than a decade ago. This is certainly the case nationally as a number of reports have asserted. The downsizing of the news media raises troubling questions about how Californians will be informed about what is happening in the state -- in both public and private institutions that affect their lives in fundamental ways. 

I'll be moderating the panel, which will consist of Sandy Close, executive director of New America Media; Stuart Drown, executive director of the Little Hoover Commission; Mark Katches, California Watch's editorial director; Martin Reynolds, editor of the Oakland Tribune; and David Lauter, assistant managing editor/California, Los Angeles Times.

For more information, or to buy a ticket, check out this listing on the Commonwealth Club Web site.

If we’ve learned one thing here at California Watch, every week seems to present an entirely new way of doing business.

Our Sunday story, produced in collaboration with the UC Berkeley Investigative Reporting Program, is just the latest example.

Program fellow Ryan Gabrielson, a Pulitzer Prize winning investigative reporter, produced a startling project about the rising number of cars seized at sobriety checkpoints – many of them from minority motorists. He found that departments up and down the state are far more likely to seize a car from a sober, unlicensed motorist than arrest someone for driving drunk.

Gabrielson and the program’s legendary director Lowell Bergman began working with us late last year. At the same time, Bergman – himself a Pulitzer Prize winner and one of the founders of the Center for Investigative Reporting – got the New York Times and PBS NewsHour interested in the story.

The Times wanted it for their Bay Area edition, so Gabrielson produced a focused, regional story for the Times. KQED Radio will air a segment of "The California Report" with Gabrielson today. The PBS NewsHour segment airs tonight.

At the same time, California Watch worked with Gabrielson and Bergman to edit two statewide versions – one about 1,800 words and one about 3,600 words. The full-length version appears on our Web site.

We really had no institutional baggage to overcome when we built our California Watch team from scratch. No voices telling us, “You can’t do that.” Or, “That’s not the way we do it here.” We weren’t weighted down by the kind of intractable culture that has made it hard for lots of newsrooms across America to adjust and adapt quickly enough to a fast-changing world.

We have pretty much thrown out the old rule books. Here editors will write and report and – gasp – reporters will edit. And even crazier than that: investigative journalists are blogging – a ton. Our hard-working staff has generated close to 100 blog posts in a little more than three weeks, on top of some kick-ass stories, terrific multimedia and nearly two dozen searchable databases. If you missed it, be sure to check out the video by Mark S. Luckie about our team and mission.

In our first few months of operation, the staff of California Watch has begun to mold its own way of doing things – one that stresses innovation, ideas, and a can-do spirit. We will try new things, and we will occasionally miss the mark, but you can’t move forward without throwing out antiquated, obsolete rules and challenging the way journalists have operated. It’s one of the endearing things in our little newsroom that makes this an absolutely thrilling place to be.

We’ve gotten lots of feedback on our new California Watch site. People are commenting on the clean look and applauding the simple organization. Several readers have complimented us for the array of searchable databases on our Data Center.

I’ve also gotten some really great feedback about the way we’re making our staff more accessible to readers. Carrie Brown-Smith, a University of Memphis journalism professor, commended us for our bio pages, which include each staffer’s list of coverage priorities and some details about what they are working on – even the stories, journals or Web sites they’re reading.

We felt strongly that our reporters, multimedia producers and editors should let their personalities shine through on these pages and that it might help lift the veil on who we are and what we do.

“I just think that is incredibly smart and utilizes the research on credibility as well,” Brown-Smith wrote in an e-mail to me.

We’ve implemented other subtle innovations – including the way our reporters and a couple of other acclaimed investigative journalists have helped organize our Resources pages. Our resources are organized by topic. They serve as a guide for civic-minded citizens, students, bloggers and young journalists to conduct their own basic investigative reporting.