It’s not often that I get choked up reading an e-mail message from a fellow journalist.
But that’s what happened when I got a message from Pedro Rojas, executive editor of La Opinion, the Spanish language daily in Los Angeles.
I had asked him whether we could share the Spanish translation that La Opinion had given us of California Watch’s story on homeland security with other papers that were going to run the story the next day.
“Go ahead,” Pedro wrote. “We should learn to share in time of challenges.”
Pedro Rojas was an example of what the downsizing of the media, along with the imperative to work in multimedia formats, has wrought: a potentially game-changing shift from the media’s dominant ethos of competition to a much more collaborative one.
Earlier in the day, we had provided California Watch’s story on homeland security to La Opinion, with a customized LA angle; we waived our normal fee in exchange for a translation of the article, which Pedro provided us in an astonishingly swift three hours -- and we posted it on our web site. Our article appeared, in Spanish, on the front page of La Opinion the next day, 9/11.
La Opinion’s gesture underscored the power of collaborative journalism.
We encountered other similar ones as we assembled a story that ultimately ran simultaneously in over two dozen newspapers.
The lead paragraph of the story described homeland security equipment purchased years ago in Marin County that had never been used. The Marin Independent Journal sent a photographer to take a photo of the unused equipment -- and gave us permission to share it with all our other media partners, again without charge.
Dan Noyes, the investigative reporter at KGO TV in San Francisco, was simultaneously working on a television version of our story. He was able to convince Matthew Bettenhausen, the acting secretary of California’s Emergency Management Agency to speak with him. Bettenhausen had avoided talking to Schulz for months, despite repeated requests.
KGO placed the entire unedited interview with Bettenhausen on its website -- and allowed us to post it on our website. They also promoted our story in a news story that led KGO’s 11 p.m newscast, sending readers to our website for multimedia features on ours.
As we approached our deadline, California Watch reporter George Schulz wrote a memo on homeland security spending in San Joaquin County for the Lodi News Sentinel, which helped News Sentinel reporter Jordan Guinn write a detailed sidebar to accompany Schulz story.
These are the kinds of collaborations that California Watch is counting on happening in the months ahead: news organizations sharing resources, sometimes in surprising and unexpected ways.
Last week we distributed our first big package at California Watch to more than two dozen news organizations across the state. The project on homeland security spending by reporter G.W. Schulz found scores of cases of misspending, waste, questionable purchases and a glaring lack of oversight.
The story reached more than 1.88 million print subscribers, plus millions more online and on TV. We delivered the content to our partner news organizations for only a nominal fee. And we customized content for several newspapers.
The mission of California Watch is to distribute high-impact investigative and enterprise journalism. But we won’t last long if we give it away. Over the coming months we plan to explore all types of distribution models. The goal will be to develop an equitable payment structure that works for us and for our partners. No one knows exactly what that will look like.
We may ultimately ask newsrooms to pay subscription rates for our stories – based on their size, the frequency with which they publish our material, or both. I would imagine that we would charge a bit more to provide custom content to specific newsrooms. We were very happy to provide custom edits of the homeland security package because we were adding more relevant content to readers in select markets. We will probably consider a different rate structure for smaller organizations, ethnic media outlets and news organizations that participate in the content gathering process.
For instance, last week we provided our entire package at no charge to the Marin Independent Journal and to La Opinión because they helped put the package together. The Marin Independent Journal provided a great photograph and La Opinión translated the story into Spanish. And we would probably give our content for free to other nonprofit journalism organizations.
In the meantime, we’re building a new California Watch web site that we hope to launch on Nov. 1. We’re also going to be exploring other ways to generate revenue in the future. And we welcome ideas.
It remains to be seen how this all comes together down the road. Maybe a year from now, news organizations will buy one story from us a year. They could want everything we produce. Or maybe they won’t want to pay at all. It’s way too early to tell the type of demand we’ll experience. But if the first story is any guide, we believe the future is promising.
Today, newsrooms across the state are running the first project produced by California Watch, the largest investigative reporting team in the state.
The series of stories written by reporter G.W. Schulz focus on waste and mismanagement in the state’s homeland security grant programs. He had a lot to work with. Schulz, a staff member at the Center for Investigative Reporting, found scores of examples of waste, questionable expenditures and a lack of oversight. One agency bought a plasma TV with Homeland Security funds. Another bought a Segway. One agency tried to use Homeland Security money to buy a lawnmower. (It was eventually blocked.) Millions of dollars went toward projects that weren’t competitively bid or broke other federal rules.
We pegged the release to the eighth anniversary of 9/11. The response has been phenomenal. In addition to running the package on our Web site at californiawatch.org, parts of the package ran in more than two dozen news organizations from San Jose to San Diego with a combined reach well in excess of 1 million people. One of our partners, La Opinión, translated the story into Spanish.
It’s been a wild ride getting to this point.
The goal was to distribute the package to as many news outlets as we could. To make it as painless as possible, Schulz and I worked together to edit the story three different ways – a full-length version that measured more than 100 inches and two shorter versions, one about 30 inches and the other about 45 inches long.
We figured that very few, if any, news organizations could accommodate the full-length version, which is available exclusively on our website. Even the 45-inch version would be a stretch for some smaller newspapers. The shortest version was tailored to these news organizations.
Several newspapers asked us to add local examples. We couldn’t accommodate everyone. In some cases, we provided source documentation to help newsrooms find their own examples. In other cases, Schulz combed through his notes and documents to identify more cases of misspending. He then did some more reporting, enabling us to customize versions of the story for some of the state’s largest newspapers. We did this for the Orange County Register, the San Jose Mercury News, the Contra Costa Times, the Sacramento Bee, the Los Angeles Daily News, La Opinión and the Bakersfield Californian. In the end, we produced 14 versions of the same story.
And it has paid off. Almost everyone we approached said they would take the story. We offered the package for a small fee – far less than we probably could have charged. We were more eager to reach a larger audience than raise revenue on our first big story. A special thanks goes to Schulz, who didn’t flinch when we decided to create so many different versions. Carrie Ching, Lisa Pickoff-White and Agustin Armendariz built the multimedia presentation, including an audio slideshow and an interactive map. Let us know what you think.
Ten years ago, the state Capitol was teeming with reporters, myself among them. More than 80-full-time journalists were based in Sacramento. Today, the number covering the statehouse has dwindled to fewer than 25 full-time reporters.
The retrenchment is a sign of the times. Across the board, newsrooms have taken big hits as circulation and revenues plummet. Investigative reporting teams haven’t escaped the carnage.
The dramatic decline in resources creates huge challenges for newsrooms that are struggling to fulfill their role as watchdogs.
Into that growing void comes California Watch, a new investigative reporting team started this summer by the nonprofit Center for Investigative Reporting.
Over the past few months we have assembled the largest investigative reporting unit operating in California today. Our final batch of reporters arrived this week. We are now fully deployed with a staff of 12 reporters, editors and multimedia producers. Our first big project will land Friday. It’s about waste and misspending in the state’s homeland security grant programs. If all goes as planned, the story will be distributed to more than a dozen news organizations across the state at a minimal charge. Those newspapers, Web sites and TV stations are paying for an early jump on the story.
We’ve built this formidable new reporting team thanks to generous contributions from the James Irvine Foundation, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. Our goal is to produce scores of high-impact investigative stories each year. California Watch reporters will juggle quick-turn investigative stories and more ambitious, time-consuming projects.
And not a moment too soon. Investigative reporting resources have taken one hit after another in mainstream newsrooms up and down the state.
Consider what has happened at the Los Angeles Times, the state’s largest newspaper. When former editor John Carroll presided over the newsroom earlier this decade, the Times reached new heights, winning a string of Pulitzers. Carroll’s newsroom built two investigative reporting units – one in California and another in Washington, D.C. The combined investigative teams included about 20 journalists. Today, the Washington team is less than half the size. The Los Angeles team has shrunk to four reporters.
The Times is by no means the exception. Across the state, investigative teams are smaller than they used to be. The San Francisco Chronicle’s investigative team peaked at around six reporters and editors earlier this decade. Today, it no longer exists. The Chronicle’s last man standing, Lance Williams, came to work for California Watch a few weeks ago.
That doesn’t mean the Chronicle and the L.A Times aren’t capable of doing outstanding investigative reporting. The Times, in fact, continues to produce top-rate in-depth work. The paper won a Pulitzer last year in explanatory reporting, and reporter Paul Pringle was a finalist in the investigative reporting category. This year, the paper’s Sacramento bureau has detailed how state officials are using taxpayer funds to pay for personal travel and other perks. There have been other strong watchdog stories. Although the Times no longer has as many full-time investigative reporters, the newsroom still devotes a lot of resources to watchdog journalism, mostly from beat reporters who are given time to pursue project work. Still, a great deal of the experienced, dedicated resources are gone.
And there’s no denying that at newspapers throughout California, there has been a sharp decline in the reporting ranks. In many small and medium-sized newsrooms around the state, reporters pursuing investigations today are typically beat reporters trying to juggle breaking news and other demands. They may not have the time to fully explore stories that require deep dives. Some newsrooms buck this trend. The Sacramento Bee has actually increased its investigative reporting resources, according to editor Melanie Sill.
High-impact investigative journalism takes considerable time and resources. Story for story, it’s by far the most expensive type of journalism any newsroom will produce. I’ve been involved with stories that have taken reporters years to complete. Before joining California Watch as editorial director, for instance, I oversaw a project at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that ran more than 22 months and cost, by my conservative estimate, close to $500,000 in salaries, news gathering and production costs. The series about the failures of federal regulators to protect the public from dangerous chemicals was worth every penny. The reporters Susanne Rust, Meg Kissinger (both mostly full time on the project) and Cary Spivak (who worked on the initial stories for about six months) generated one jaw-dropping story after another. The top editors in Milwaukee, Managing Editor George Stanley and Editor Marty Kaiser are committed to this kind of journalism, no matter the costs. Sadly, not every newsroom sees it the same way.
So what can California Watch do about an industry-wide problem?
We believe we can help other newsrooms publish important stories about critical issues with minimal expense to them. We don’t view ourselves as a competitor of other newsrooms. Far from it. With our reporting resources, we can help the state’s newsrooms that want to publish more high-impact stories but may no longer have the resources to go it alone.
In some cases, we will work side by side with newspapers, TV or radio stations, online publications or other nonprofit start-ups. In other cases, like our homeland security package, we will deliver finished stories that we complete on our own.
Ultimately, we believe our projects represent the type of journalism sorely needed – stories that spark debate and generate solutions in a state facing immense fiscal and governance challenges.
After several weeks of sketches, designs and meetings California Watch has a new logo! The big, bold font paired with the watchful sun visualizes our commitment to investigative journalism and keeping a watchful eye over the people and issues that shape the state.
As designer of the California Watch logo, I was initially asked to submit some ideas about what the logo should look like. The proposed logos used a wide variety of layouts, both bold and understated fonts, and several icons, including an outline of the state, an eye, a pair of binoculars, a magnifying glass and a sun.
The logo also had to scale well for our social networking pages on Twitter and Facebook.
Eventually we decided that the sun, which is symbolic of our watchdog role and to shining a bright light on topics and issues that have been previously shrouded in secrecy, encapsulated what we wanted to communicate to others. The sun also symbolized a ray of hope, which is what the best investigative journalism can be. Rather than simply pinpoint problems and walk away, California Watch wants to encourage a debate that can lead to better solutions.
Last week, we posted a few logo designs, including various iterations of the sun, on our blog and Facebook page and asked for your feedback. Some commenters asked why we limited the choices, but we were determined to use a particular font and wanted your feedback on what were our final choices for the logo. The comments helped shape our final selection and we thank you for your feedback.
The concept most everyone loved — both readers and our staff alike — included a “C” embedded inside the sun. The final result is an iconic logo that we believe best represents the goals and values of California Watch. Again, we thank you for being a part of this process and would love to hear any additional feedback you may have.
Creating the perfect logo is a seemingly small, but important task. A logo must encapsulate everything that the company stands for and appeal to a wide range of people, in addition to being unique and visually interesting.
The California Watch staff agreed that the logo should communicate openness, trust and authority and at the same time be modern and edgy. As we build our news organization from the ground up, we believe in sharing what we are doing with the public -- essentially opening a window into our newsroom. In that spirit of transparency, we are seeking your feedback for our final candidates for the California Watch logo. We look forward to your comments.
Logo 1
Logo 2
Logo 3
