California Watch
Encyclopedia
California Watch is a nonprofit and nonpartisan
investigative reporting group operated by the Center for Investigative Reporting
. Writers and editors at the news organization track a variety of issues, including money and politics, the environment, health and welfare, public safety and education.
California Watch, which began operating in August 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
.
Veteran journalists Louis Freedberg and Robert Rosenthal established California Watch. Katches was brought on as editorial director. One of the first reporters hired was investigative journalist Lance Williams, who uncovered the Barry Bonds-BALCO steroid doping scandal
with Mark Fainaru-Wada. Los Angeles Times
veteran Robert Salladay signed on as a senior editor, while multimedia expert Mark Luckie joined to produce content. Along with the Berkeley-based team, California Watch added a four-person team in Sacramento. Rosenthal, the former Philadelphia Inquirer executive editor, 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.
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.
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.”
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.
A survey from the American Society of News Editors found California Watch is among the most diverse newsrooms operating in the nonprofit journalism world. The survey gauged racial, ethnic and gender diversity of online-only newsrooms and found they appear more diverse than the average daily newspaper. ASNE reported 35.7 percent of employees at California Watch were among the included minority groups.
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.
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.
of California women during pregnancy. His report found that the number of women dying from causes directly related to pregnancy almost tripled during the past decade. This prompted worries about the dangers of obesity in expecting mothers and about medical complications of cesarean sections. The story appeared on the front pages of many state newspapers, including The Sacramento Bee and The San Francisco Chronicle, and in television and radio outlets throughout California.
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.
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.
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 versions of the story appeared in 21 different print, radio and television outlets. Translations of the story in Filipino, Korean, Vietnamese and Spanish appeared in the ethnic media including La Opinión.
California Watch shares a radio producer with KQED San Francisco (public radio and television); distributes to ethnic media throughout California in partnership with New America Media; and is part of a pilot project with The Associated Press to distribute nonprofit investigative reporting through its AP Exchange Marketplace feature.
's pardons during two terms as governor "an abuse of a technique called 'crowdsourcing
'" The report featured a database of 403 people Brown had granted clemency or pardoned, encouraging readers to search the database for names they know to find what happened to those people.
Nonpartisan
In political science, nonpartisan denotes an election, event, organization or person in which there is no formally declared association with a political party affiliation....
investigative reporting group operated by the Center for Investigative Reporting
Center for Investigative Reporting
The Center for Investigative Reporting is a non-profit journalism organization located in Berkeley, California. It was founded in 1977 by Lowell Bergman, , and David Weir to reveal injustice and abuse of power through the tools of journalism....
. Writers and editors at the news organization track a variety of issues, including money and politics, the environment, health and welfare, public safety and education.
California Watch, which began operating in August 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
San Francisco Chronicle
thumb|right|upright|The Chronicle Building following the [[1906 San Francisco earthquake|1906 earthquake]] and fireThe San Francisco Chronicle is a newspaper serving primarily the San Francisco Bay Area of the U.S. state of California, but distributed throughout Northern and Central California,...
, 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
James Irvine Foundation
The James Irvine Foundation is a philanthropic nonprofit organization established to benefit the people of California. It seeks to promote social equity and enrich the cultural and civic life of America’s most populous state through its grants in three areas: the arts, youth and education, and...
, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation
William and Flora Hewlett Foundation
The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation is a private foundation, established by Hewlett-Packard cofounder William Reddington Hewlett and his wife Flora Lamson Hewlett in 1967. The Hewlett Foundation awards grants to support educational and cultural institutions and to advance certain social and...
, the California Endowment
The California Endowment
The California Endowment is a private health foundation, created after the conversion of BlueCross of California to a for-profit company, that provides grants to community-based organizations throughout California working to expand access to affordable healthcare and improve the health of residents...
, and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation
John S. and James L. Knight Foundation
The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation is an American private, non-profit foundation dedicated to supporting transformational ideas that promote quality journalism, advance media innovation, engage communities and foster the arts....
.
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.Veteran journalists Louis Freedberg and Robert Rosenthal established California Watch. Katches was brought on as editorial director. One of the first reporters hired was investigative journalist Lance Williams, who uncovered the Barry Bonds-BALCO steroid doping scandal
BALCO Scandal
The BALCO scandal is a scandal involving the use of banned, performance-enhancing substances by professional athletes. The Bay Area Laboratory Co-operative was a San Francisco Bay Area business accused of supplying steroids to Major League Baseball players...
with Mark Fainaru-Wada. Los Angeles Times
Los Angeles Times
The Los Angeles Times is a daily newspaper published in Los Angeles, California, since 1881. It was the second-largest metropolitan newspaper in circulation in the United States in 2008 and the fourth most widely distributed newspaper in the country....
veteran Robert Salladay signed on as a senior editor, while multimedia expert Mark Luckie joined to produce content. Along with the Berkeley-based team, California Watch added a four-person team in Sacramento. Rosenthal, the former Philadelphia Inquirer executive editor, 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.
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
KQED
KQED is a Public Broadcasting Service-member public television station in San Francisco, California, broadcasting digitally on UHF channel 30 . This channel is also carried on Comcast cable TV and via satellite by DirecTV and Dish Network...
in San Francisco for radio and TV distribution; with the Associated Press
Associated Press
The Associated Press is an American news agency. The AP is a cooperative owned by its contributing newspapers, radio and television stations in the United States, which both contribute stories to the AP and use material written by its staff journalists...
for distribution through its Exchange marketplace; and with New America Media
New America Media
New America Media is a multimedia ethnic news agency and a coalition of ethnic media. Founded in 1996 by the nonprofit Pacific News Service, NAM is headquartered in San Francisco with offices in Los Angeles, New York and Washington, DC...
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
Ryan Gabrielson
Ryan Gabrielson is an investigative journalist.He graduated from the University of Arizona.He reported for the East Valley Tribune.He is a journalism fellow at University of California, Berkeley. He is currently working for California Watch as a public safety reporter.-External links:*, Berkeley...
as a public safety reporter; John S. Knight Fellow
Nieman Fellowship
The Nieman Fellowship is an award given to mid-career journalists by The Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. This award allows winners time to reflect on their careers and focus on honing their skills....
Susanne Rust
Susanne Rust
Susanne Rust is an American investigative journalist.She graduated from Barnard College with a bachelor's degree, from University of Wisconsin–Madison, with an MS in 1999....
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.
A survey from the American Society of News Editors found California Watch is among the most diverse newsrooms operating in the nonprofit journalism world. The survey gauged racial, ethnic and gender diversity of online-only newsrooms and found they appear more diverse than the average daily newspaper. ASNE reported 35.7 percent of employees at California Watch were among the included minority groups.
Politics Verbatim
California Watch launched its politicsverbatim.org companion website June 21, 2010, to track all statements and campaign promises by Republican Meg WhitmanMeg Whitman
Margaret Cushing "Meg" Whitman is an American business executive. She is the President and Chief Executive Officer of Hewlett-Packard. A native of Long Island, New York, she is a graduate of Princeton University and Harvard Business School...
and Democrat Jerry Brown
Jerry Brown
Edmund Gerald "Jerry" Brown, Jr. is an American politician. Brown served as the 34th Governor of California , and is currently serving as the 39th California Governor...
, 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.
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.
Increasing pregnancy complications
California Watch published a story in early February 2010 by Nathanael Johnson on the mortality rateMortality rate
Mortality rate is a measure of the number of deaths in a population, scaled to the size of that population, per unit time...
of California women during pregnancy. His report found that the number of women dying from causes directly related to pregnancy almost tripled during the past decade. This prompted worries about the dangers of obesity in expecting mothers and about medical complications of cesarean sections. The story appeared on the front pages of many state newspapers, including The Sacramento Bee and The San Francisco Chronicle, and in television and radio outlets throughout California.
Higher C-section rates at for-profit hospitals
Reporter Nathanael Johnson's investigation in September 2010 found that women are at least 17 percent more likely to have a cesarean section at a for-profit hospital in California than at one that operates as a non-profit. A surgical birth can bring in twice the revenue of a vaginal delivery. Johnson examined 253 birthing centers in California to produce the first-ever ranking of hospitals according to their C-section rates.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 versions of the story appeared in 21 different print, radio and television outlets. Translations of the story in Filipino, Korean, Vietnamese and Spanish appeared in the ethnic media including La Opinión.
Distribution
California Watch distributes its content through more than 50 collaborative relationships with local and regional news organizations - newspapers, online publications, television, radio and ethnic media. The organization also publishes original blog content on its website daily, publicizing these blogs through social media such as Twitter and Facebook to reach wider audiences.California Watch shares a radio producer with KQED San Francisco (public radio and television); distributes to ethnic media throughout California in partnership with New America Media; and is part of a pilot project with The Associated Press to distribute nonprofit investigative reporting through its AP Exchange Marketplace feature.
Criticism
State blog aggregator Calbuzz called a January investigation into Jerry BrownJerry Brown
Edmund Gerald "Jerry" Brown, Jr. is an American politician. Brown served as the 34th Governor of California , and is currently serving as the 39th California Governor...
's pardons during two terms as governor "an abuse of a technique called 'crowdsourcing
Crowdsourcing
Crowdsourcing is the act of sourcing tasks traditionally performed by specific individuals to a group of people or community through an open call....
'" The report featured a database of 403 people Brown had granted clemency or pardoned, encouraging readers to search the database for names they know to find what happened to those people.