As California Watch ramps up distribution of its work, we are experimenting with different ways to reach the California public.

Our goal is to distribute our stories as widely as possible, in as many media formats as possible – in the hope that we will be able to spark a conversation on critically important issues affecting many Californians.

Typically, we like to give media outlets interested in running a story a heads up of a week or two – or more –  so they will have an opportunity to supplement our reports with their own local reporting. They may even collaborate with us in the reporting.

This week, however, we had to shorten our distribution time frame considerably on a story Nathanael Johnson had been working on for weeks – the near tripling of maternal mortality rates in California over the past decade.

Nathanael discovered that California's Department of Public Health had been sitting on a report written in 2008 detailing this trend.

On January 26, a nonprofit health organization published an alert pointing to similar distressing trends nationwide. The alert was beginning to attract press attention. A story could break at any time that would take the wind out of all the work Nathanael had already done. So we felt that we should release our story quickly to provide a strong California perspective on a breaking national story.

We knew we could put the story on our Web site and hope that it would go "viral."  We considered that as an option but decided even with late notice, we would reach out to other news organizations.

Imagine trying to coordinate publication of a major story with a dozen news outlets, encompassing print, broadcast and online media. With just a day's notice, several media partners responded rapidly, and ran the story on their front pages, including the San Francisco Chronicle, Sacramento Bee, Bakersfield Californian, Santa Rosa Press Democrat and Orange County Register.

Michael Montgomery, who works jointly for California Watch and KQED, prepared a report for KQED's the California Report, which aired on 28 public radio stations around the state. KGO-TV in San Francisco aired a report on its 11 p.m. newscast. New America Media distributed the story to ethnic media outlets. The issue was the subject of a one-hour discussion on KQED's Forum, hosted by Michael Krasny. Alternet also carried the story.

This heartbreaking issue is likely to get even wider attention in the days ahead, as it should. While we would far prefer to give our media partners adequate time to localize our stories, there will be times that we will have to throw out preconceived timetables, and we will have no choice but to move rapidly to get a story into circulation. Being nimble is the name of today's game.

California Watch is a project of the Center for Investigative Reporting and is now the largest investigative reporting team operating in the state. Visit the Web site at www.californiawatch.org for in-depth coverage of K-12 schools, higher education, money and politics, health and welfare, public safety and the environment.

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.

California Watch is a project of the Center for Investigative Reporting and is now the largest investigative reporting team operating in the state. Visit the Web site at www.californiawatch.org for in-depth coverage of K-12 schools, higher education, money and politics, health and welfare, public safety and the environment.

If you're sipping your mocha at a coffee shop somewhere in California on Thursday, keep an ear out for the furious tapping on the keyboard. It could be one of us blogging or tweeting, building multimedia packages or pounding out the next big story.

Members of the California Watch and Center for Investigative Reporting staffs will be fanning out around the state and working in coffee shops with WiFi access on Jan. 21 as part of our first "Open Newsroom."

Here's how the idea came about: For most of this week, our operations are being disrupted by an office move. We’re packing up and transporting the whole shebang from our existing location on Newbury Street to a beautifully remodeled landmark building on Center Street in downtown Berkeley. Our Internet connection went down Friday at our old location, and we don't have a place to sit in the new space. If you're trying to call right now, our phones are unattended, if they're plugged in at all. After the holiday today, we're mostly going to be working from home until Jan. 25 when the doors open at our new digs.

We figured we should turn this temporary inconvenience into an opportunity. So we decided to set up shop on Thursday at various WiFi hotspots.

The Open Newsroom concept is part of a goal to connect with readers and get out of the office. We’re hoping it will be a regular part of what we do. On Thursday, please stop by to say hello. We're looking forward to meeting you. And if you have any great story tips, we'll be there to listen. 

The locations and hours to find us are on the map below.

California Watch is a project of the Center for Investigative Reporting and is now the largest investigative reporting team operating in the state. Visit the Web site at www.californiawatch.org for in-depth coverage of K-12 schools, higher education, money and politics, health and welfare, public safety and the environment.

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 complemented 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.

And we’ve also broken the traditional mold of story crediting by adding the names of our editors who work on each of our major stories. (One reader "tweeted" that it was her favorite thing about our new site.) We think it’s a way to increase accountability and credibility – and also to give props to the traditionally nameless and faceless journalists who partner with our reporters and multimedia producers on stories.

Since our site went live on Jan. 2, we've heard excellent criticisms as well. Some have worried that we’re allowing anonymous commenting, which can encourage the lunatics to dominate discussion boards (although that, thankfully, hasn't happened here). Others have expressed hope that we would allow some type of rating system of comments as a way to encourage responsible commenting. We couldn’t agree more, and we want to make this a top priority to add soon. We hoped to tackle that before our launch, but we set it aside. Too many other things needed to get done first.

We’ve also had readers tell us it's way too difficult to register to comment and to e-mail our staff. We agree. Our site was set up so that you have to be logged in as a registered user to connect with our reporting, editing and multimedia teams. We’re going to try to figure out a way to break down those barriers during the next phase of our site's development. And we're not wasting any time. We're planning to start moving ahead with a slate of enhancements and refinements in the coming weeks.

So if you would like to see changes on our site, now is a perfect time to share your thoughts.
 

California Watch is a project of the Center for Investigative Reporting and is now the largest investigative reporting team operating in the state. Visit the Web site at www.californiawatch.org for in-depth coverage of K-12 schools, higher education, money and politics, health and welfare, public safety and the environment.

In my first job as a crime and legal affairs reporter for the Daytona Beach News-Journal, I spent many days searching through dusty records in courtrooms, police headquarters and the newsroom's library to create extensive news reports based on statistics and data. I hadn't yet heard of "multimedia journalism" and even though I was computer savvy, I didn't know how computers could be used to elevate my work. Fast forward a few years later and I am combining my love of online technology and software with my passion for hardcore news reporting.

There are many ways for investigative reporters to use multimedia and digital journalism tools to give the reader a better understanding of the story at hand. The web serves as an all-encompassing platform for publishing interactive maps, multimedia stories built in Flash or other software, video, audio and other forms of media besides text.

As this blog post from Journalism.co.uk about my transition to California Watch points out, news audiences digest stories in several different ways. If investigative reporters tell a single story using various media or use visual media to quickly convey information, the more readers and viewers the story is likely to attract.

My current position at California Watch allows me to help shape investigative reports using several forms of media and visualizations. The responsibility, however, requires the judgment to know which media is appropriate for a particular story. For example, interactive maps are great, but they aren't appropriate for every story.

At the very least, investigative reporters should be knowledgeable about the tools that can help elevate their reporting with web producers or other newsroom staff to create stories that have the greatest impact possible.

California Watch is a project of the Center for Investigative Reporting
and is now the largest investigative reporting team operating in the state.
Visit the Web site at www.californiawatch.org for in-depth coverage of K-12
schools, higher education, money and politics, health and welfare, public
safety and the environment.

We’ve published more than 80 blog posts on our two blogs, and our new site isn’t even two weeks old. But one question I’ve been asked lately is how often we will be publishing big investigative stories on our site – stories that will also be distributed to news outlets throughout California.

Nailing down publication dates can be tricky. Years of managing investigative projects has taught me how wildly unpredictable these complex, high-stakes stories can be.

But our sincere hope is to have at least one strong enterprise or investigative story each week. We’ve hit that mark so far this month. Reporter Chase Davis analyzed contribution data for a story about local party committees that funnel campaign money to individual candidates in a way that sidesteps state campaign finance laws. It ran January 3 in the San Francisco Chronicle, the Sacramento Bee, the Modesto Bee, the Stockton Record, the Ventura County Star, the Voice of San Diego and the Bakersfield Californian. Last weekend, we distributed a story by freelancer and former Center for Investigative Reporting staffer Will Evans about stimulus grants going to large corporations despite records as environmental polluters and other problems. The Chronicle and Ventura County Star also took that story, as did the San Diego Union Tribune, the Orange County Register, the Los Angeles Daily News and La Opinion, which translated the story into Spanish. We have an exciting environmental-themed story ready for this weekend. We're working now to shore up our distribution partners for that piece. We should have another strong story the week after that.

And the week after that.

Our philosophy is to distribute and publish stories when they are ready, and not to worry about trying so hard to hit a once-a-week target. Some stories will need more time to cook. When we collaborate with news partners on joint reporting projects, it adds a whole new set of moving parts to the machine. And we have to coordinate with our partners to make sure the machine is both well-oiled and moving in the right direction. It's not as easy as it might look.  

But when I scan the list of our upcoming stories, I see a lot of machines humming along, nearing the end of the tunnel. So I feel pretty confident we'll be releasing a regular dose of the big story.

That’s on top of the aggressive daily blogging. Our target is to generate eight to 10 new blog posts each day. We'll be using the blog to break news. (We posted details and quotes from the governor's press conference on the budget last week before he had left the podium.) We'll also be updating readers on the status of our investigations, offering up nuggets from our notebooks and providing more insights on our two blogs – the California WatchBlog and the Inside the Newsroom blog.

Additionally, we’ll be adding searchable databases in our Data Center – many of them connected to stories we’re producing along our priority topic areas: money and politics, K-12 schools, higher education, health and welfare, public safety and the environment.

It all adds up to a site that will be active – a dynamic place we hope readers will want to visit multiple times a day.

California Watch is a project of the Center for Investigative Reporting
and is now the largest investigative reporting team operating in the state.
Visit the Web site at www.californiawatch.org for in-depth coverage of K-12
schools, higher education, money and politics, health and welfare, public
safety and the environment.

One of my favorite things to do each morning is to go through the nonprofit Newseum site to check out front pages around the world. It’s especially fun to do when so many of the California papers carry our work. The combined daily circulation of newspapers that ran California Watch content today was in the neighborhood of 1.2 million.

We had two stories out there today. One by Will Evans about stimulus funds going to environmental polluters and other companies with legal woes ran on the front pages of the San Francisco Chronicle, the Orange County Register, the San Diego Union Tribune, Monterey Herald, Los Angeles Daily News and La Opinion.

Here are links to PDF versions of the front pages of the papers that carried our story today:

Los Angeles Daily News
La Opinion
San Diego Union Tribune
Orange County Register
San Francisco Chronicle
Monterey Herald

Meanwhile, the Stockton Record and Bakersfield Californian ran versions of our story released last week about party central committees routinely funneling campaign cash to candidates around the state in a way that sidesteps individual candidate contribution limits.

Check out the PDFs below:

Stockton Record
Bakersfield Californian

No better way to enjoy the morning coffee.

California Watch is a project of the Center for Investigative Reporting and is now the largest investigative reporting team operating in the state. Visit the Web site for in-depth coverage of K-12 schools, higher education, money and politics, health and welfare, public safety and the environment.

The best watchdog journalism exposes problems. But it can be frustrating for readers when investigative stories leave them feeling hopeless – like nothing can be done about a bad situation.

At California Watch, we hope that our stories will be the starting point – a catalyst for discussion debate and change. We want to facilitate that to the extent that we can by providing a venue or forum about the key topics we’re writing about. We want readers to feel engaged and empowered to be part of the solution. We’re going to try to make that as easy as possible with our React and Act features that will accompany most of our stories. You can find the feature on the right rail of our story pages.

We plan to give you the names, numbers and e-mail addresses of major stakeholders who can make a difference. We used React and Act on our story about stimulus funding going to companies with histories of environmental pollution and other legal woes. We also used React and Act for our story about party central committees sidestepping campaign limits. Check out the way we did it. I think it's pretty cool.

We’ll also be hosting chats with key players – a sort of "virtual round table" discussion set around important issues. After the chats are completed, I'd like our chat moderators to review the chat transcripts and develop talking points from those conversations that policy leaders can use as a roadmap for reform. We’ll also make it easy for you to track the changes that come as a result of our investigative reporting. And we’ll be exploring other ways to help readers engage.

As always, let us know how we’re doing. We’re going to count on feedback from our readers to make refinements and improvements.

California Watch is a project of the Center for Investigative Reporting and is now the largest investigative reporting team operating in the state. Visit the Web site for in-depth coverage of K-12 schools, higher education, money and politics, health and welfare, public safety and the environment.

More than 40 media partners have carried California Watch stories – a pretty extraordinary number given that we haven’t been around that long. You can see the names of all our partners if you scroll about half way down our About page.

Here’s the scoop on how we partner up with news organizations. First we look for geographic symmetry. If a story has a strong tie to say, Ventura County, it’s a no brainer for us to approach the Ventura County Star. That's just one example. Newsroom leaders up and down the state have told us they are especially interested in our content provided the stories have a strong local hook.

We also know that stories about statewide politics will appeal to the Sacramento Bee and the San Francisco Chronicle. Other newsrooms have told us they like these stories too, but without a local connection, they probably won’t bite.

Some newsroom leaders have told us that environment and higher education top their lists of topics of interest. Others say public safety and health and welfare coverage matter most.

That works for us. We have plans to cover all of these topics.

Our goal is to reach as broad an audience as we can. But we also understand that individual stories we produce will not appeal to every news outlet in the state. We can live with that. The trick is to find the news outlets that do want the work we’re trying to place. We have a lot of balls in the air and couldn’t be happier with the response we’re receiving from newspapers, TV and radio and online outlets.

Collaboration can take many forms. In some cases, we will partner early with news organizations to tailor our project to regional interests. With the largest investigative team in California on our staff, more often we hope to develop stories that are ready to publish.We are also working in unique ways to partner with ethnic media outlets. So far, our stories have been translated into four languages.

In most ways, my job is no different than the last two places I worked and where I built investigative teams. I manage and edit projects and prepare them for publication. But where things change radically is toward the end of the process. That can mean editing multiple versions of a story and then working with my boss Robert Rosenthal and colleague Louis Freedberg to distribute the stories and find partners who want our work. Each stage of the process has its thrills and its frustrations. But it’s a new world we’ve embraced here at California Watch – a new world with enormous possibilities.

California Watch is a project of the Center for Investigative Reporting and is now the largest investigative reporting team operating in the state. Visit the Web site for in-depth coverage of K-12 schools, higher education, money and politics, health and welfare, public safety and the environment.

Freelance reporter and Center for Investigative Reporting veteran Will Evans came on board with California Watch in October to look specifically for a focused, compelling story having to do with the awarding of stimulus grants and contracts in California.

And he found a barnburner.
 
Evans combed through a database of stimulus funding in California, looking specifically at some of the biggest recipients. He also reviewed public records and other databases to find details about stimulus recipients that may surprise you.
 
Stay tuned. We’ll be posting our story on this site Saturday night by 10 p.m. Several newspapers – including the San Francisco Chronicle, San Diego Union Tribune, Los Angeles Daily News, Ventura County Star, the Orange County Register and La Opinion – are planning to run our story Sunday.

And if you want to check out our database on stimulus recipients to find your own nuggets, have at it. We have $18.5 billion in stimulus spending on our Data Center site, and we’ll be updating it every quarter.