We're airborne, and this is a jamming little office here at California Watch. Jamming and cramming in our too small digs. Thankfully, we are moving in two weeks. Another disruption for us but our new home looks great, and we will have some breathing room.
Meanwhile this week has been exhilarating for all of us here. There has been no let up in the pace. It has only intensified as our California Watch site went live. Our blogs and Data Center have been excellent, if I don't say so, and our next California Watch story about stimulus spending is set for a bunch of newspapers and other media partners across California this coming Sunday.
We will have strong major investigative stories every week this month and more are in the pipeline. We spent a chunk of this week looking at the site and thinking of ways to make it more user-friendly and accessible. We will be tweaking, and we welcome feedback from you. The positive feedback we have seen from bloggers and media commentators has given us more fuel to go forward.
Seeing editorial commentary off our story last weekend on both the Democrats and Republicans moving money around the state feels good, and the decision by the Fair Political Practices Commission to look into some of the money movements Chase Davis detailed is the type of scrutiny we hope to provoke regularly. And we're mostly having fun, which is what journalists in the day were also about.
So there's something old, but something very new happening at California Watch.
I first learned about the Pentagon Papers while xeroxing copies of documents stamped TOP SECRET and FOR YOUR EYES ONLY. I was 22 years old, less than a year out of college. The Vietnam War was raging, the country was in turmoil, and I was a copy boy at The New York Times.
One evening in early 1971, I got a phone call while at a friend's house. The caller asked for me and my friend handed me the phone. "Who's this?" I wondered, and how had they found me? "Robert?" someone whose voice I did not recognize, asked. "Yes?" I replied. "Come to Room 1111 at the Hilton Hotel tomorrow, bring enough clothes for a few weeks, and don't tell anyone where you're going." "What? Who the hell is this and what are you talking about?" I demanded.
It turned out the caller was a Times editor. I went to the Hilton, where a team of Times editors and reporters were secretly working on the Pentagon Papers project. I had been chosen as an editorial assistant for the project and within a few hours, after the publisher's office was closed for the day, I was xeroxing the Pentagon Papers, keeping track of them in two five-foot tall metallic green filing cabinets in a Manhattan hotel room.
Nearly thirty-seven years later, after working at The Times, The Boston Globe, The Philadelphia Inquirer, and San Francisco Chronicle I joined the Center for Investigative Reporting as its Executive Director in January of 2008. Since then, I've met Daniel Ellsberg, and the time we've spent swapping stories about those days has helped me realized that my early exposure to those documents, that historic story, and the reporting team of which I was a small part, helped frame my journalistic values.
Individuals like Dan Ellsberg who, from inside government or corporations, come forward to help expose wrongdoing can make all the difference. They do so at potentially huge personal risk, because they believe that the truth must be told. When sources like Ellsberg are willing to come to journalists, their actions can lead to important and powerful change.
The Most Dangerous Man in America is a reminder of a tumultuous time. The facts have changed but the issues the film raises certainly exist in today's even more complicated world. On a personal level, the film is a stirrer of emotion and memory. It made clear to me that I had a ringside seat to a unique moment in our history and was a reminder of how life's journeys and often fragile strands are interwoven in unexpected webs. On a journalistic level, the film is a powerful reminder of the crucial role watchdog reporting plays in our democracy.
If you're in the Bay Area, I hope you will join us for the Mill Valley Film Festival screenings of The Most Dangerous Man in America on Sat. October 17, 6:45PM at the Christopher B. Smith Rafael Film Center, or Sun. October 18, 3:15PM at CinéArts @ Sequoia 2. Click here for more information.
The announcement that Warren Hellman is funding a new San Francisco-based nonprofit news organization is a huge shot in the arm for journalism and for the Bay Area. At the core of this new endeavor, according to key Hellman advisor Susan Hirsch, will be collaboration with news organizations large and small.
This could not be happening in a better place or at a better time. The Bay Area historically has been a breeding ground for innovation, risk taking and creativity. There is great opportunity here to put those qualities to work to develop new, sustainable journalism models.
As Hellman recognizes, the future of journalism will rely on collaborations, something we are championing here at the Center for Investigative Reporting, and especially with our new California Watch project. We look forward to working with the new group and its partners (and longtime CIR collaborators) KQED and the Graduate School of Journalism at UC Berkeley.
The business model for journalism has fallen apart in the last decade, a decline heightened by the recession. There are journalists throughout the country struggling to create new models that will fill the void created by downsized legacy media. Whether blogging or deploying reporting teams focused on specific communities or regions, they all need financial help.
Hellman, a substantial donor to CIR, joins other philanthropists who believe in the essential role that journalism plays in our democracy, including Buzz Wooley with the Voice of San Diego, Herb and Marion Sandler with Pro Publica, and John Thornton with the Texas Tribune.
The last decade has been brutal for those of us who have spent our careers working in traditional newsrooms, but there is now an excitement, energy and passion in these new models that reflects the start of a great new adventure. It is clear now that the Bay Area will play a big part in this.
Last week, we launched California Watch, a new department within the Center for Investigative Reporting, with a story about waste and a lack of oversight surrounding homeland security spending in California. It was a good story and we will continue to follow the issue. We have received tips from potential sources after publication and through documents we have obtained have many other leads.
The launch got a lot of attention, from Editor and Publisher to San Antonio News-Express blog. But the truly remarkable thing about the story was that it appeared on the front page of 25 newspapers throughout California and on TV and radio. The story was also published on news websites, along with an interactive-map and slideshow.
The announcement Monday that CIR and California Watch are now part of Google's Fast Flip offers the hope that our work will reach a wider audience. We, along with a range of news organization big and small, for profit and non-profit, are part of an experiment with this new search tool that allows users to a flip through websites, much as you would turn the pages of a book or magazine. We also have the opportunity to share ad revenue through Fast Flip.
We are a nonprofit, and investigative reporting is time consuming and expensive. We will be exploring many ways to bring in revenue in the months and years ahead, to help pay for our work and hopefully, down the road, create opportunities to hire more journalists. We want to be as innovative with revenue opportunities as we plan to be with our journalism. There is a tremendous amount of energy, ambitious thinking and opportunity around creating new business models so that growing audiences can be reached with high quality reporting.
Developing the strategies to fund the work is as challenging and crucial as the work itself. New models of sustainability must be tested, so that journalism that is a crucial part of our democracy can not only continue, but thrive. We believe the public will have a role in creating these new models and we welcome your ideas, feedback and perspectives along the way.