California Watch

California Watch

Founded	2009
Focus	Investigative Journalism
Location	Berkeley, California
Method	Foundation and member-supported
Key people	Robert Rosenthal, Executive Director of CIR Mark Katches, Editorial Director Christa Scharfenberg, Associate Director of CIR
Website	californiawatch.org

California Watch is a nonpartisan and nonprofit investigative reporting group operated by the Center for Investigative Reporting. The news organization tracks a variety of statewide issues in California, including money and politics, the environment, health and welfare, public safety and education."

California Watch, which began operating in 2009, says its mission is to pursue “in-depth, high-impact reporting on issues such as education, public safety, health care and the environment” and produce “stories that hold those in power accountable, while tracking government waste and the misspending of taxpayer resources.”

With offices in Berkeley and Sacramento, California Watch distributes its stories through local and regional news organizations, such as the San Francisco Chronicle, the Bay Area News Group, the Los Angeles News Group and the Sacramento Bee, as well as through online news websites, including the Huffington Post. It also publishes original news stories about California and databases about state and regional issues on a website, Californiawatch.org, and through social media such as Twitter and Facebook.

California Watch is supported by major grants from the James Irvine Foundation, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the California Endowment, and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.

History

Founding

California Watch officially launched January 4, 2010, after a soft-launch period and months of preparation. Editorial Director Mark Katches claims 85 reporters covered the California state house 10 years ago, while there are fewer than 25 today. He sees California Watch as filling a "big void in doing investigative work in California." California Watch assembled the largest investigative team in the state with seven reporters, two multimedia producers and two editors to begin its news-gathering operation.

Katches gathered a team with impressive resumes in investigative work, including longtime San Francisco Chronicle reporters Louis Freedberg and Lance Williams, one of two reporters to uncover the Barry Bonds-BALCO steroid doping scandal. Los Angeles Times veteran Robert Salladay signed on as a senior editor, while multimedia guru Mark Luckie (of 10,000 Words fame) joined to produce content. Along with the Berkeley-based team, California Watch added a four-person team in Sacramento with hopes of opening a Los Angeles office. Former Philadelphia Inquirer executive editor Robert Rosenthal now serves as executive director for the Center for Investigative Reporting and offers development and administrative support for California Watch, along with others on the CIR staff.

The site aimed for up to a dozen updates each week day, including daily blog entries on its WatchBlog and Inside the Newsroom features. CIR gathered about $3.5 million in funding to start California Watch - enough for more than two years of operation at its $1.5 million annual budget. Major funding came from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and the James Irvine Foundation.

Katches said California Watch plans to develop a business model that combines continued philanthropic support with revenue from sponsorship, individual memberships, advertising and licensing. The site offers its content to California newspapers and media on a fee basis. Twenty-five state papers carried one of its first stories during the development period, all on the front page. California Watch partners with KQED in San Francisco for radio and TV distribution; with the Associated Press for distribution through its Exchange marketplace; and with New America Media for distribution of translated versions to ethnic media.

Open Newsroom experiment

While moving California Watch operations between offices in January 2010, reporters and editors were left without an office or Internet access for more than a week. To take advantage of a somewhat unfavorable situation, California Watch announced its first “Open Newsroom” project as “an opportunity for the public to stop by, share a cup of coffee and maybe give us some story ideas.” Reporters fanned out around the Bay Area and across California to work in coffee shops with wireless Internet access. California Watch announced the plan - complete with a Google map detailing locations of each reporter's chosen coffee shop - on its Inside the Newsroom blog, as well as through Facebook and Twitter.

The experiment had mixed results. Katches told the Columbia Journalism Review, “It was a pretty uneventful day at our first Open Newsroom ... We don’t have, I don’t think, the type of connection with readers that is going to have long lines of people at the coffee shop coming to see us.”

Expansion

Despite California Watch's small staff, the news outlet was called "one of the most watchable new journalism models in the country" and quickly gained legitimacy. Knight-Ridder veteran Ken Doctor said the broad acceptance of California Watch by recognizable news brands conferred legitimacy on the startup, primarily because of the expertise California Watch reporters brought to the organization .

This speedy acceptance as a news organization allowed California Watch to expand its reporting team to 11 members in June 2010, with the addition of Puliter Prize-winner Ryan Gabrielson as a public safety reporter; John S. Knight Fellow Susanne Rust on the environmental beat; and FairWarning-founding member Joanna Lin as an enterprise reporter focusing on public health. California Watch also hired Ashley Alvarado in July as public engagement manager to identify stories in neglected California communities and make sure the organization reaches those who need to know about its work – both affected parties and those who can make a difference. This brought the newsroom to 16 members.

Notable Work

Politics Verbatim

California Watch launched its politicsverbatim.org companion website June 21, 2010, to track all statements and campaign promises by Republican Meg Whitman and Democrat Jerry Brown, California's major-party candidates for governor in the Nov. 2, 2010 election. The concept emerged in spring 2010 when the California Watch team was brainstorming new ways to cover the election. Money and politics reporter Chase Davis pitched the project, obtained funding and had a working demo within six weeks.

Davis said there are plans to launch another phase in August 2010 that includes features to simplify comparing the candidates' positions on issues, as well as "sort out the day-to-day controversies that inevitably erupt during a campaign." Katches hopes to broaden the functionality of the Politics Verbatim model to include other candidates and races in the future.

Major Stories

Dubious Homeland Security spending

California Watch's first foray into a new model for journalism was a story on wasteful homeland security spending, purchasing violations, error-prone accounting and shoddy oversight throughout California during the years immediately after 9/11.

CIR homeland security reporter G.W. Schulz examined thousands of pages of documents from 160 state homeland security monitoring reports. California Watch found more than $15 million in questionable costs, such as communities buying large-screen televisions with anti-terrorism funds; not using software or hardware purchases; failing to keep adequate records that lead to overpayment or loss of equipment; and not seeking competitive bids when buying both large and small-ticket items.

California Watch released the article Sept. 11, 2009. The story got picked up by more than two dozen news outlets including California's top newspapers, reaching almost 2 million readers in print and many more online.

Seismic safety

In mid-March 2010, California Watch published a report by higher education reporter Erica Perez investigating how California’s public universities are slow to fix buildings deemed significant seismic hazards. The story broadcast on television and radio stations throughout California and appeared in newspapers and online websites. A college student newspaper published the story as well (the Daily 49er at California State University Long Beach).

California Watch supplied the story to news partners a week before publication to localize the story for their audiences. The San Francisco Chronicle published a lengthy version, while The Bakersfield Californian, The Eureka Times Standard, the Long Beach Press Telegram and Orange County Register included condensed versions in their publications.

Hetch Hetchy Power Crew

Five highly-paid electricians working for the city of San Francisco spent years allegedly stealing from taxpayers by throwing sex parties with prostitutes, moonlighting on city time and fraudulently billing the city to pay for suburban lifestyles, according to a California Watch report by money and politics reporter Lance Williams and freelancer Stephanie Rice.

Williams hosted an online question-and-answer session July 8, 2010, to answer reader questions about the investigation. He revealed the electricians were caught because of an anonymous tip to the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission that accused alleged ringleader Donnie Thomas of running a business on city time. Williams also said the city attorney’s office of San Francisco hired private investigators, who installed surveillance cameras around the offices on San Francisco Bay's Treasure Island to record the electricians' activities and compare with their time card punches.

The San Francisco Chronicle featured the California Watch report in a front-page article July 4, 2010, while KGO TV, KQED public radio, and KCBS radio also covered the story.

Shrinking school years

Education reporter Louis Freedberg investigated the effect California's budget crisis is having on public education in the state, finding that 16 of California's 30 largest school districts were opting to reduce the number of days in the academic year - a change affecting some 1.4 million students.

Freedberg's report found that educators believe shrinking school years and other budget cutbacks could "depress hard-won academic gains in recent years," while some saw it as proof California's budget crisis is starting to erode "the core of public education in California."

California Watch released the story July 15, 2010, and it was was widely covered in radio, television and newspaper accounts, including Spanish-language media such as La Opinión.

External links

• californiawatch.org
• centerforinvestigativereporting.org