California Watch debuts Spanish-language children’s video

Ashley Alvarado — Mon, 07 May 2012 07:05:03 +0000

Ashley Alvarado

It’s a fact. We serve a multilingual state. The issues we cover at California Watch do not know language boundaries, and our efforts to engage community members around a story should not either. In an ideal world, every California Watch article would be available in multiple languages. As it is, many already are. We also have made an effort to provide supplemental information in languages other than English.

Most recently, we debuted English- and Spanish-language Community Toolkits that arm readers with information about California Watch and our stories, as well as tips for working with media on issues they care about. Now I’m excited to premier the Spanish-language version of our children’s video about the need for clean water. Click here to view it in our kids' section, or watch below.

Every video we do in this occasional series will be made available in English and Spanish.

California Watch staff named Pulitzer finalists

California Watch — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 23:36:19 +0000

Erica Perez/California Watch Reporter Corey G. Johnson and his colleagues at California Watch spent months sifting through tens of thousands of pages of state records.

The staff of California Watch and the Center for Investigative Reporting was named today as a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in the local reporting category for exposing regulatory breakdowns in the way seismic safety standards are met at public schools.

The local reporting prize went to Sara Ganim and members of The Patriot-News staff in Harrisburg, Pa., for their coverage of the Penn State sex scandal involving former football coach Jerry Sandusky. It was one of 14 journalism awards announced today by Columbia University, which administers journalism’s most prestigious awards.

The other local reporting finalists were A.M. Sheehan and Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling of the Advertiser Democrat in Norway, Maine, a weekly newspaper that exposed problems with a federally supported housing program.

At California Watch, roughly 50 staff members and contributors helped produce an initial 19-month series “On Shaky Ground” and follow-up reporting in 2011. “Being part of the Pulitzer conversation is a great honor, considering we haven’t been around that long,” said Editorial Director Mark Katches.

Corey G. Johnson was the lead reporter on the project. He began work on it shortly after arriving at California Watch in September 2009. Johnson was assigned by his editors to write an update on seismic safety at schools pegged to the 20th anniversary of the Loma Prieta earthquake. But he soon began to untangle issues with the way regulators had overseen billions of dollars in public school construction.

With his colleagues at California Watch, Johnson went on to find that thousands of school buildings were being occupied even though they did not meet seismic safety requirements. Bad inspectors missed major defects or falsified reports – while being rewarded with more work. And the state made it practically impossible for schools to get much-needed seismic repair money.

Over the course of a year, Johnson took three vacation days off from the project, mostly to sleep, he said. He spent so much time digging through the documents that insiders began to notice his diligence and leaked him information. One source sent him a hard-drive brimming with internal e-mails and data. But he began to also notice that as he asked for documents, some government records were being changed. His investigation had touched a nerve and everyone, it seemed, knew this was going to be an explosive story.

Johnson identified schools with missing wall anchors, dangerous lights poised above children, poor welding, slipshod emergency exits and malfunctioning fire alarms. All these problems had been red-flagged by regulators and then lost in a swamp of paperwork. In many cases, local school officials overlooked warning signs in a race to complete new facilities during an unprecedented school building boom.

The initial “On Shaky Ground” series published in April 2011 and appeared in more than 150 news outlets across the state, including many of California’s largest daily newspapers. Last month, the series also was named the winner of the national Scripps Howard Award in public service.

“Media outlets typically jump all over disasters after the fact – to understand what went wrong,” said CIR Executive Director Robert J. Rosenthal. “Our staff detailed systemic regulatory shortcomings before the next big quake, leading to swift and far-reaching reforms that may help California avert future tragedies.”

Johnson, Erica Perez, Kendall Taggart and Agustin Armendariz obtained and reviewed more than 30,000 documents. The staff compiled a first-of-its-kind interactive database featuring every public K-12 school in the state. Parents have been able to use that database to see if their child attends school near seismic hazards or if schools have seismically unsafe buildings. Robert Salladay, CIR’s senior editor, and Katches served as primary editors on the project.

Forging unique partnerships to broaden distribution of “On Shaky Ground,” California Watch contacted news outlets across the state about a month before publication and provided data we compiled. Major newspapers and hyper-local websites were encouraged to pursue local angles with the data provided by California Watch. Many did.

CIR’s in-house broadcast team produced segments that that aired in every major California media market. The main text stories were translated into Spanish, Korean, Chinese and Vietnamese. With KQED Public Radio, which helped report the series, the project was broadcast on public radio.

The staff also went to great lengths to raise awareness about the importance of earthquake preparedness. For young schoolchildren, a coloring book was created and produced in five languages with help from KQED, Patch and American Public Media’s Public Insight Network.

More than 36,000 books were distributed at no charge to schools and nonprofits. Safety packets with whistles and ID cards were handed out at community events across the state. An iPhone app enabled users to pinpoint quake faults near them. The app, which is available for free through the iTunes store, includes preparation checklists and a flashlight.

After the initial series ran last April, reporters continued to mine records. In December, Taggart and Johnson exposed problems at two school districts that served as case studies of a broken system. In both places, serious structural flaws were identified by inspectors and then buried under concrete or behind drywall by contractors who had fallen behind schedule and didn’t want to incur more delays.

On Shaky Ground: A look at seismic safety in California schools

California Watch introduces children’s section

Ashley Alvarado — Mon, 09 Apr 2012 07:05:02 +0000

Ashley Alvarado

Gather 'round, Junior Watchdogs!

This month, California Watch debuts a section of our website dedicated exclusively to children. As a rule, we want to reach the Californians most affected by any given matter and equip them with the knowledge they need to better understand and address the issue. Sometimes – as with last year’s series on earthquake safety at California schools – that means engaging children.

To that end, and with help from our readers, we created Sunny the California Watchdog, a furry and friendly mascot, to explain complicated issues to kids. For our “On Shaky Ground” series, we produced about 36,000 “Ready to Rumble” earthquake safety coloring books in English, Spanish, Vietnamese, and traditional and simplified Chinese.

Now, Sunny is back as the star of our Junior Watchdogs section, which features an interactive version of “Ready to Rumble” (which kids can color online), a map of Sunny’s travels and an occasional video series in which Sunny and friends help children understand the issues we report on, like lead in jewelry and the need for clean drinking water.

So, click on over and tell us what you think.

Kids: Explore our Junior Watchdogs section

Community Toolkits put investigations, info in readers’ hands

Ashley Alvarado — Fri, 06 Apr 2012 07:24:23 +0000

Ashley Alvarado

From its inception in 2009, California Watch has emphasized in-depth, high-impact reporting that delves not only into the issues Californians face, but also potential solutions. We understand that problems do not begin and end with a story’s publication, so we’re always trying to offer tools and resources that will allow our readers to become their own advocates. We’re especially focused on the communities that are immediately affected by an issue and those who are in a position to effect change.

To that end, we have created a React & Act feature for most of our larger investigations. These supplemental resource guides include contact information for key players and break down issues to make them easier to understand. We’ve even gone so far as to create coloring books for children. But we want to do more.

So we’ve taken a cue from our readers. At multiple community events, people asked for printed versions of our stories (also distributed through our California Watch Media Network) and DVDs of multimedia elements. In Maywood, residents said that even though they had been living with contaminated water for years, it was hard to get people to take them or their concerns seriously. That changed, though, when they held a California Watch report in their hands and demanded respect.

Inspired by these requests, we have created California Watch Community Toolkits.

These packets, which are in English and Spanish, include a copy of the investigation, a primer on the issue, a DVD loaded with multimedia components, a guide to working with the media and an introduction to California Watch and our parent organization, the Center for Investigative Reporting. And, starting today, you can also download or order them online. To learn more, click here.

Neglected for decades, unincorporated communities lack basic public services

Download and print our information toolkits

California Watch, KQED win IRE medal for 'On Shaky Ground'

Mark Katches — Mon, 02 Apr 2012 19:08:16 +0000

Mark Katches

We are proud to pass along more good news today at the Center for Investigative Reporting.

Our California Watch investigation produced in collaboration with KQED, "On Shaky Ground," was honored this morning with a rare, prestigious medal from Investigative Reporters and Editors.

The 19-month series detailed major regulatory shortcomings in the way the state protects children and teachers from seismic threats, and it has prompted sweeping reforms that will help make schools safer.

“Despite devastating cutbacks across the news business, investigative reporting is alive and well, and really making a difference in our society,” Lea Thompson, contest committee co-chairwoman, said in a statement. “The judges not only saw superb digging, but also perseverance in the face of what often seemed insurmountable odds by large and small news organizations working in print, TV, radio and online.”

The series earlier won a national Scripps Howard Award in the public service category.

IRE honored California Watch and KQED in the multi-platform reporting category and named Corey G. Johnson, Erica Perez, Kendall Taggart, Agustin Armendariz, Michael Montgomery, Anna Werner and Krissy Clark for their outstanding work.

The judges said:

"On Shaky Ground" was an extraordinary effort examining seismic safeguards in place to protect California’s schoolchildren from earthquakes. Reporters dug through more than 30,000 pages of documents, created online maps and databases and visited schools throughout the state to get the story. It took 19 months, but the reporters found California officials abrogated their oversight duties and allowed more than 42,000 children to attend schools with serious safety issues. The project had astonishing breadth, depth and creativity. The stories were published in more than 150 news outlets and translated into four languages, and video segments appeared in every major California media market. California Watch created an iPhone app to show local residents their proximity to fault zones and even a coloring book explaining it all to schoolchildren. The hard work paid off: State lawmakers ordered audits and investigations, and new state standards were created to allow schools to more easily tap into a fund to repair seismic hazards.

Additionally, California Watch’s series "Decoding Prime," about aggressive billing practices at a Southern California hospital chain, was also a finalist in the multi-platform category.

Merger offers chance to weave journalism, entrepreneurial spirit

Robert J. Rosenthal — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 20:49:23 +0000

Robert J. Rosenthal

The opportunities that lie ahead for everyone at the Center for Investigative Reporting are energizing and exciting. And the challenges are daunting.

Our merger with The Bay Citizen announced today puts us in a unique position as journalists, innovators, technologists and, yes, entrepreneurs. I worked in newspapers for decades, starting as a copy boy and ending up as the top editor. No one ever strung those four words together to describe what we were as an organization.

But to survive, thrive and evolve, the journalism, the innovation, the technology and the entrepreneurial vision all have to be intertwined in the new model.

CIR as an organization is driven by creativity, passion, teamwork, candor and an understanding that the basis of our value and credibility will always grow from the journalism.

That will not change. When I came to CIR in January 2008, we had a staff of seven. We launched California Watch in September 2009. At the beginning of 2012, CIR and California Watch had a combined staff of 40. With the merger, we will have a staff of 70.

We will be an organization in which those who understand the power of technology and have the ability to tell stories and reach audiences in new and different ways will exist in a symbiosis with the journalists.

The accelerating age of technology that we live in is creating forces that demand that you change, adjust, pivot and move with alacrity. Harnessed appropriately, technology is liberating, and at CIR, it will be in alignment with the journalism and all of our strategies. That is tremendously exciting, and in a small but growing organization, creating and forging that culture of symbiosis is easier than in a larger organization where practices tied to the past are deeply rooted.

With the addition of The Bay Citizen, we will have the ability with a good portion of our staff to focus on a local market, the Bay Area, and also have the staff and infrastructure to implement and manage strategies for sustainability, audience growth, engagement and membership around our work that can help us create a model that can be emulated elsewhere.

Adding The Bay Citizen’s staff, skills and resources and ensuring that we are all working toward the same goals will not be easy. But it will be essential. When I joined CIR, it was clear that risk-taking, vision and fresh ideas come from the gut as much as from the brain.

That doesn’t mean that the process isn’t without fear. Leadership is about weighing risks and making decisions that are best for the organization, its staff and, in our case, the public we serve.

Today is a day I never envisioned even six months ago. We know there are difficulties and challenges ahead for all of us here at CIR. We are thrilled to join with The Bay Citizen. Together, we will be an organization in which everyone has value, is invested in our future, and feels pride in who we are and in our work.

Journalism and investigative reporting, the role of the press, is crucial to democracy.

We intend to hold on to and cherish the highest standards of journalism and build an even stronger foundation for the future.

+ Read the full press release

Help us name our new children’s section

Ashley Alvarado — Wed, 21 Mar 2012 17:39:10 +0000

Ashley Alvarado

It’s an especially exciting time to work at California Watch and the Center for Investigative Reporting. In recent weeks, we’ve been honored with the MacArthur Award for Creative and Effective Institutions, the Scripps Howard Award for public service and the George Polk Award. Merger talks continue with The Bay Citizen. And soon, we will unveil a new section of the website dedicated to kid-friendly material.

Wee ones will be able to color our “Ready to Rumble” book on earthquake safety right on the site; parents can order or download a copy for home use. Plus, we’ll launch an occasional series of videos featuring Sunny, the California Watchdog, as he helps children understand the issues we report on, like lead in jewelry and the need for clean drinking water.

There’s just one thing we’re missing: a name for the kids’ section. We’ve narrowed down our list to three favorites and need your help to decide what we’ll call it. Voting will remain open through Friday. Thank you!

California Watch wins Scripps Howard public service award for seismic series

Mark Katches — Fri, 16 Mar 2012 13:05:02 +0000

Mark Katches

It is an honor and privilege to announce that the Center for Investigative Reporting's California Watch today won a Scripps Howard Award in the public service category for our 19-month series “On Shaky Ground,” detailing a breakdown in the way the state protects children and teachers from the threat of a major earthquake.

The Roy W. Howard Award for Public Service honors news organizations whose journalism makes a difference. It’s terrific national recognition, especially considering that the reporting for the series actually began just days after California Watch opened for business. It started with one determined reporter asking the right questions. Ultimately, the project mushroomed to include contributions from just about everyone on our staff.

Reporter Corey G. Johnson was given a simple assignment soon after becoming one of the first reporters to arrive at our offices in Berkeley in August 2009. We asked him to write about seismic safety at schools – pegged to an upcoming quake anniversary. New to California, Johnson saw what scores of reporters had overlooked for decades.

With his colleagues at California Watch, he went on to detail a staggering regulatory failure. We found that thousands of school buildings were being occupied even though they did not meet seismic safety requirements. Reporter Erica Perez and Johnson found that bad inspectors missed major defects or falsified reports – while being rewarded with more work. And the state made it practically impossible for schools to get much-needed seismic repair money.

Erica Perez/California WatchReporter Corey G. Johnson, shown at the office of the Division of the State Architect, and his colleagues at California Watch spent months sifting through tens of thousands of pages of state files.

Johnson became a virtual embed inside the state architect’s offices, spending months sifting through long-forgotten documents and using a hand truck to move around 30 boxes of case files. It paid off. We identified schools with missing wall anchors, dangerous lights poised above children, poor welding, slipshod emergency exits and malfunctioning fire alarms. All these problems had been red-flagged by regulators and then lost in a swamp of paperwork. In many cases, local school officials overlooked warning signs in a race to complete new facilities during an unprecedented school building boom. It was a dangerous roll of the dice.

“Who loses here?” said Roger Smith, an inspector who urged construction be shut down on projects at one Central Coast school district. “The people who lose are between 6 and 12 years old.”

Nineteen months after we began our probe, “On Shaky Ground” appeared in more than 150 news outlets across the state, including many of California’s largest daily newspapers.

Media outlets typically jump all over disasters after the fact – to understand what went wrong. We detailed systemic regulatory shortcomings before the next big quake, leading to swift and far-reaching reforms that might help California avert future tragedies. Among the changes:

Regulators vowed to adopt every safety recommendation contained in a December audit that confirmed weak state oversight had put children in harm’s way. State lawmakers had ordered the audit days after our series appeared last April.
Within weeks of publication, new state standards were created making it possible for 7,000 schools with known seismic hazards to tap a $200 million repair fund.
Regulators and building officials launched an immediate review of the safety status of tens of thousands of school buildings that had previously fallen through the cracks.
A series of policy changes ensured more safety oversight of school projects and created more accountability measures for safety inspectors.
School officials in at least two districts took matters into their own hands. Superintendents began to shut down buildings after learning about potential dangers as a result of our reporting.

The series stands as a testament to relentless shoe-leather reporting. Our reporters won the release of previously confidential inspector evaluations. Reporters Johnson, Perez, Kendall Taggart and Agustin Armendariz reviewed more than 30,000 documents. We compiled a first-of-its-kind interactive database featuring every public K-12 school in the state. Parents have been able to use that database to see if their child attends school near seismic hazards, or if schools have seismically unsafe buildings.

Forging unique partnerships to broaden distribution of “On Shaky Ground,” Distribution Manager Meghann Farnsworth contacted news outlets about a month before publication, handed over our embargoed data and distributed a reporting primer. Major newspapers, hyper-local websites and network-affiliated TV stations jumped on conference calls with our reporters and editors. We encouraged partners to pursue local angles with data provided by California Watch. Many did. Our senior editor, Robert Salladay, served as the primary editor of "On Shaky Ground."

We published on every platform. Our in-house broadcast team, led by reporter Anna Werner and producer David Ritsher, produced segments that ran on our website and in every major California media market. The main text stories were translated into Spanish, Korean, Chinese and Vietnamese. We produced stories for public radio, too, with our partners at KQED Public Radio.

We also went to great lengths to engage the public, reach new audiences and raise awareness about the importance of earthquake preparedness. For young schoolchildren, Public Engagement Manager Ashley Alvarado created and produced a coloring book in five languages. More than 36,000 books were distributed at no charge to schools and nonprofits. We assembled safety packets with whistles and ID cards and handed them out at community events across the state. Our tech gurus Chase Davis and Michael Corey built an iPhone app enabling users to pinpoint quake faults near them. The app includes preparation checklists and a flashlight.

And we didn’t stop reporting. In December, Taggart and Johnson exposed problems at two school districts that served as case studies of a broken system. In both places, serious structural flaws were identified by inspectors and then buried under concrete or behind drywall by contractors who had fallen behind schedule and didn’t want to incur more delays.

We are deeply proud that our series will better prepare California’s schoolchildren, teachers and staff for the next big quake – and that schools will be made safer because of our work.

California Watch 'Decoding Prime' series honored with Polk award

Robert J. Rosenthal — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 05:56:25 +0000

Robert J. Rosenthal

I am privileged and honored to write today that the Center for Investigative Reporting’s California Watch has won the George Polk Award for our multi-platform series on aggressive billing practices at a Southern California hospital chain, Prime Healthcare Services.

Our reporting team of Lance Williams, Christina Jewett and contributor Stephen K. Doig uncovered a pattern at Prime of billing Medicare for rare ailments that generate lucrative bonus payments to the chain.

The Polk award, one of the most prestigious in journalism, was named after a CBS newsman murdered while covering the Greek Civil War in 1948. A total of 15 winners were announced today by the contest administrators at Long Island University. Other recipients include the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, the Boston Globe, and ABC News 20/20. Williams, Jewett and Doig won in the category of medical reporting. In announcing the award, Polk administrators cited our reporters for their "groundbreaking" investigation that "offered a glimpse into the broader problem of waste, fraud and abuse within the nation's $2.5 trillion health-care system."

It is a great honor and deeply gratifying. The work of our reporters was painstaking, thorough and courageous. We have produced our yearlong series amidst a barrage of criticism from Prime, which has waged a PR campaign against our small nonprofit newsroom, as we stood by our reporting.

Our reporters analyzed data containing more than 51 million patient records from 2005 through 2010 and reviewed thousands of pages of documents to uncover billing patterns at Prime that stand apart from other acute care general hospitals in the state.

The series “Decoding Prime” also prompted heightened scrutiny of the Southern California hospital chain by state and federal investigators. The FBI began questioning former Prime billing administrators and patients after first seeing these sources quoted in our stories.

Earlier this month, Prime abandoned its efforts to acquire a New Jersey hospital. Health regulators there had begun asking questions about the chain's billing methods raised in our series.The chain also lost its bid last fall to acquire another hospital in California when the state attorney general ruled it wouldn't be in the public's interest. This week, a legislative committee will hear testimony about patient-admission practices that we detailed in our series.

Our reporters relied heavily on data and documents to tell these stories. But our series came to life because of the courage of several former Prime workers and patients who spoke to us on the record about their experiences.

Recognition is not what drives journalists. It is passion, creativity, the rush to get your story out. Above all, it’s the chance to make a difference.

In today's world journalists around the country are being buffeted and challenged by upheaval laced with opportunities that not all can see. It is a new moment but the old values of investigative reporting, accountability journalism, whatever one likes to call it, are more needed than ever.

Last Thursday the Center for Investigative Reporting was honored by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation as one 15 organizations in six countries to receive the MacArthur Award for Creative and Effective Institutions.

The MacArthur award recognized the innovation, creativity, and fortitude CIR has shown in growing and evolving in the face of daunting obstacles. It also cited the role of investigative reporting "in changing the world." It was truly an award for everyone at CIR.

The Polk award recognizes journalistic excellence. Lance, Christina and Steve were named in the award. But their recognition is not only about the work but about a culture and a value we are nurturing and building that we believe is important everywhere. This is the first Polk award for our California Watch operation, which we launched at the Center for Investigative Reporting less than three years ago. Some of you may recall that CIR won its first Polk award in 1992 for "The Great American Bailout," co-produced with Frontline.

We hope our recent success can inspire and lead others to emulate what we are doing. And we are here to help.

Onward.

If an elected official talks loudly in public, should reporters tweet?

Meghann Farnsworth — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 22:15:27 +0000

Meghann Farnsworth

When California Watch's senior editor Bob Salladay took the train from Sacramento to Oakland on January 19, he didn't think he would be in a place to break news. But it's hard to ignore an Assembly candidate when she is talking loudly on her cell phone in a public space.