California Watch, part of the nonprofit

Center for Investigative Reporting The Center for Investigative Reporting (CIR) is a nonprofit news organization based in Emeryville, California. It was founded in 1977 as the nation’s first nonprofit investigative journalism organization, and has since grown into a multi-plat ...

, began producing stories in 2009. The official launch of the California Watch website took place in January 2010. The team was best known for producing well researched and widely distributed investigative stories on topics of interest to Californians. In small ways, the newsroom pioneered in the digital space, including listing the names of editors and copy editors at the bottom of each story, custom-editing stories for multiple partners, developing unique methods to engage with audiences and distributing the same essential investigative stories to newsrooms across the state. It worked with many news outlets, including newspapers throughout the state, all of the ABC television affiliates in California, KQED radio and television and dozens of websites. The

created California Watch with $3.5 million in seed funding. The team won several industry awards for its public interest reporting, including the George Polk Award in 2012. In addition to numerous awards won for its investigative reports, the California Watch website also won an Online Journalism Award in the general excellence category from the Online News Association in its first year of existence.

History

In 2009, the California Watch team began creating reports on statewide issues. The team's mission was to highlight stories related to education, immigration, the environment, politics, public safety, and other areas of public interest. At the time of its launch, California Watch had seven reporters, two multimedia producers, and two editors. Robert J. Rosenthal hired Mark Katches as the editorial director and Louis Freedberg as director. Katches had led investigative reporting teams at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, where he edited two Pulitzer Prize winning projects and at the Orange County Register. Freedberg was previously a reporter, Washington correspondent, editorial board member and columnist at the San Francisco Chronicle, and had reported for a wide range of outlets in both radio and print. The reporting team included Lance Williams, who uncovered the

BALCO The Bay Area Laboratory Co-operative (BALCO) (1984–2003) was an American company led by founder and owner Victor Conte. In 2003, journalists Lance Williams and Mark Fainaru-Wada investigated the company's role in a drug sports scandal later re ...

steroids in sports scandal while an investigative reporter at the San Francisco Chronicle. California Watch started with offices in Berkeley and Sacramento, California. California Watch hired three additional reporters in mid-2010. Among them was

Ryan Gabrielson Ryan Gabrielson is an American investigative journalist. He has won a George Polk Award, and Pulitzer Prize for Local Reporting. Education He graduated from the University of Arizona. Career Gabrielson began his career in journalism at '' The M ...

, who won a

Pulitzer Prize The Pulitzer Prize () is an award for achievements in newspaper, magazine, online journalism, literature, and musical composition within the United States. It was established in 1917 by provisions in the will of Joseph Pulitzer, who had made ...

for his reporting on abusive practices in the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office. California Watch shares its editors, TV producers, multimedia producers, news applications developers, data analysts and radio production with the Center for Investigative Reporting. In March 2010, California Watch launched the “Politics Verbatim” website created by Chase Davis. The site tracked the statements and promises of the state's candidates for governor,

Meg Whitman Margaret Cushing Whitman (born August 4, 1956) is the US ambassador to Kenya, an American business executive and former gubernatorial candidate for California. She is a board member of Procter & Gamble and General Motors. Whitman was previously ...

and Jerry Brown. The site featured search tools, and users could sort statements by topic and geographic location. Reporting targeted at younger audiences includes age-specific media, such as coloring books and finger puppet videos.

Investigations

* Majority of California's Largest Districts Eye Shorter School Year, by Louis Freedberg. * More Women Dying from Pregnancy Complications; State Holds On to Report, by Nathanael Johnson. * Death at San Jose Nursing Home Leaves Family in Search of Answers, by Lisa Pickoff White, in partnership with the Orange County Register, the San Jose Mercury News, Sacramental Bee, KQED and others. * Nitrate Contamination Spreading in California Communities, by Julia Scott. * Car Seizures at DUI Checkpoints Prove Profitable for Cities, Raise Legal Questions, by Ryan Gabrielson. * Prime Healthcare's Treatment of Rare Ailments Stands Out, by Christina Jewett and Stephen K. Doig. * On Shaky Ground, a three-part California Watch and KQED-TV investigation. * Broken Shield, a series of investigations into police failures and abuses. * Spain's High-speed Rail System Offers Lessons for California, by Tim Sheehan, part of a joint series with the

Fresno Bee ''The Fresno Bee'' is a daily newspaper serving Fresno, California, and surrounding counties in that U.S. state's central San Joaquin Valley. It is owned by The McClatchy Company and ranks fourth in circulation among the company's newspaper ...

and news outlets around the state, on the peril and promise of bullet trains in California. * Scrutiny of Oakland Church School Grows, by Will Evans.

Operations model

The

, which runs California Watch, depends largely on foundation grants and individual donors. It also charges for its content. California Watch publishes content on its website and also distributes content to other news outlets, such as The

San Francisco Chronicle The ''San Francisco Chronicle'' is a newspaper serving primarily the San Francisco Bay Area of Northern California. It was founded in 1865 as ''The Daily Dramatic Chronicle'' by teenage brothers Charles de Young and Michael H. de Young. The pa ...

San Diego Union Tribune ''The San Diego Union-Tribune'' is a metropolitan daily newspaper published in San Diego, California, that has run since 1868. Its name derives from a 1992 merger between the two major daily newspapers at the time, ''The San Diego Union'' and ...

Sacramento Bee ''The Sacramento Bee'' is a daily newspaper published in Sacramento, California, in the United States. Since its foundation in 1857, ''The Bee'' has become the largest newspaper in Sacramento, the fifth largest newspaper in California, and the 2 ...

Orange County Register ''The Orange County Register'' is a paid daily newspaper published in California. The ''Register'', published in Orange County, California, is owned by the private equity firm Alden Global Capital via its Digital Fiest/Media News subsidiaries. ...

, KQED, all of the ABC TV affiliates in California and

National Public Radio National Public Radio (NPR, stylized in all lowercase) is an American privately and state funded nonprofit media organization headquartered in Washington, D.C., with its NPR West headquarters in Culver City, California. It differs from other n ...

. California Watch has an agreement with New American Media to help distribute translated versions of the team's reports to ethnic news outlets. Distribution is important for the success of California Watch's efforts. In the case of the story on school-district budget cuts, California Watch had 20 media partners for the story. It was distributed in print, on TV, the web, and radio. California Watch has experimented with new ways of distributing its work. To spread the word on a story about earthquake safety at public universities, the team produced fliers. They handed out these fliers on the

UC Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant uni ...

campus, which has more unsafe buildings than any other California university. As part of the investigation into the seismic safety of K-12 schools in California, California Watch produced and distributed more than 30,000 coloring books in multiple languages, to help children learn about earthquake safety. In 2012, it partnered with the UCSF Children's Hospital to distribute 50,000 more at San Francisco's Fleet Week.

Awards and recognition

In 2012, California Watch won the

George Polk Award The George Polk Awards in Journalism are a series of American journalism awards presented annually by Long Island University in New York in the United States. A writer for Idea Lab, a group blog hosted on the website of PBS, described the awar ...

for medical reporting. Its investigation exposed fraudulent medical billing at

Prime Healthcare Services Prime Healthcare Services is a United States privately held healthcare company. It was established in 2001, by chairman and CEO Prem Reddy, MD, and operates 45 hospitals in 14 states. It is affiliated with the nonprofit Prime Healthcare Foundation ...

. California Watch was the only nonprofit organization on the list of winners. Lance Williams and Christina Jewett were the lead reporters on the investigation. In 2010, California Watch initiated the “Open Newsroom” project. The team works from coffee houses and other public areas with free

Wi-Fi Wi-Fi () is a family of wireless network protocols, based on the IEEE 802.11 family of standards, which are commonly used for local area networking of devices and Internet access, allowing nearby digital devices to exchange data by radio waves ...

. Director Mark Katches envisioned the open newsroom as a way to engage with the local community. In June 2012, California Watch partnered with KQED to hold a series of five open newsrooms around the San Francisco Bay Area. The far-reaching “On Shaky Ground” investigation was a finalist for a

in 2012. In 2011, the story earned the Roy W. Howard Award and a $10,000 grant from the

Scripps Howard Foundation The Scripps Howard Fund is a public charity that supports philanthropic causes important to the E. W. Scripps Company, an American media conglomerate which owns television stations, cable television networks, and other media outlets. The goal of ...

. The Northern California Chapter of the

Society of Professional Journalists The Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ), formerly known as Sigma Delta Chi, is the oldest organization representing journalists in the United States. It was established on April 17, 1909, at DePauw University,2009 SPJ Annual Report, letter ...

awarded California Watch a Journalism Innovation award in 2011. In the previous year, the society named the group Journalist of the Year. The Broken Shield series of investigations into police failures and abuses picked up the

Online News Association The Online News Association (ONA), founded in 1999, is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization located in Washington D.C., United States. It is the world's largest association of digital journalists, with more than 2,000 members. The majority of ON ...

’s

Gannett Foundation The Freedom Forum is the creator of the Newseum in Washington, D.C., which it sold to Johns Hopkins University in 2019. It is a nonpartisan 501 (c)(3) foundation that advances First Amendment freedoms through initiatives that include the Power Shif ...

Award for Innovative Investigative Journalism in 2012. California Watch was nominated for four ONA awards in 2011.

References

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External links

California Watch

Center For Investigative Reporting
Investigative journalism Non-profit organizations based in California American journalism organizations Organizations based in Berkeley, California 2009 establishments in the United States