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.

Media partners pool resources to fund bullet train trip

Mark Katches — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 13:50:03 +0000

Mark Katches

When Fresno Bee business reporter Tim Sheehan boarded a plane for Spain in November, his trip signaled a new chapter of collaboration for a growing group of California news organizations.

Sheehan spent eight days abroad, gathering string for a package of stories about Spain's 20-year-old bullet trains. Of all the high-speed rail lines in the world, experts say the Spanish system has the most in common with the one California officials envision. Sheehan wanted to find out what lessons we can learn from Spain's experience.

The reporting trip cost about $4,000. At a mid-sized regional newspaper like The Fresno Bee, that type of price tag might have put an international trip out of reach – especially in this economy. But The Bee wasn’t going it alone.

Twelve news outlets across the state pooled resources to fund the trip – most pitching in about $400. (The smallest organizations with less than 40,000 circulation chipped in half that amount.) Joining The Fresno Bee and California Watch were The Bakersfield Californian, The Sacramento Bee, the San Francisco Chronicle, U-T San Diego (formerly The San Diego Union-Tribune), The Orange County Register, The Modesto Bee, The (Riverside) Press-Enterprise, KQED Public Radio, The Tribune of San Luis Obispo and the Merced Sun-Star.

All of these partners will publish or broadcast Sheehan’s stories starting Jan. 15. California Watch, which is part of the Center for Investigative Reporting, produced a video with footage taken by Sheehan. We also created graphics for the group.

The trip was a major step forward in a growing collaborative effort by California news organizations to cover high-speed rail in a way that makes good business sense.

Three or four years ago, a collaboration such as this probably wouldn’t have happened – in large part because newsrooms had enough resources to do what they wanted. Those days are a thing of the past.

In the new media ecosystem, more pragmatic news leaders increasingly are looking for ways to maximize the talents of smaller staffs. And that means forming partnerships to accomplish objectives that might otherwise be out of reach.

No single news outlet from our group likely would have sent a reporter to Spain if we hadn’t joined forces. But when you divide by 12, it doesn’t look so daunting.

What makes the Spain collaboration even more unique is that the news organizations got involved in the early planning process and then trusted a small team from two newsrooms to execute. The Bee produced the text stories, photos and video. California Watch produced the multimedia and graphics and split the editing duties with Fresno. There was no meddling or micromanaging from other partners.

How did we get to this point?

The seeds for the high-speed rail collaboration were planted a year ago, when we launched the new California Watch Media Network. Members of the network subscribe to a set number of stories produced by the state’s largest investigative reporting team. Members also get our story lists so they know what we have in the works. The first members of the network included The Fresno Bee, The Sacramento Bee, The Orange County Register, The Bakersfield Californian and the San Francisco Chronicle.

But when we created the network, we hoped it would be much more than just a way to get our stories into news outlets across the state. We envisioned it as a way to bring newsrooms together to collaborate.

Fresno Bee Executive Editor Betsy Lumbye

Fresno Bee Executive Editor Betsy Lumbye wondered if high-speed rail would be a project best tackled by the larger network. The Central Valley is ground zero for the nearly $100 billion rail project, which would connect the Bay Area to Los Angeles in 2.5 hours on trains traveling up to 200 mph. Construction is supposed to start later this year on the first leg between Fresno and Bakersfield. Such an endeavor, if it actually occurs, would be the biggest undertaking here since construction started on the California Aqueduct nearly 50 years ago.

With an idea to rally behind, editors and reporters from about a half-dozen news outlets began jumping on conference calls and finding ways to share tips, ideas and finished stories about the planned rail system. It was a little bumpy at first. But we’ve doubled the number of participating newsrooms.

The news organizations in our rail group still work independently, unleashing their own reporters to find scoops and break news about the nation’s largest public works project. But we’re sharing those scoops and trying to limit duplication of routine daily news stories. We’ve also teamed up some reporters with complementary skills to tackle stories together. And we’ve found opportunities, such as the trip to Spain, to coordinate and plan story packages in a way that makes sense for all of us.

The result has been broader coverage than any one of us could probably produce on the topic. Our group has shared 38 stories since late May – written by 12 different reporters.

"I look back at the state of high-speed rail coverage in California a year ago, and I'm amazed and proud of what we as a network have accomplished since then,” Lumbye said. “The issue has gotten the scrutiny it deserves, thanks to all our efforts. None of our organizations could have done so much to raise the public awareness of this so quickly and so effectively on our own."

The idea of an international trip was first raised last summer. The group had been covering rail developments from every angle in California. But we hadn’t really done much to compare the planned California system with existing services abroad. If California is going to learn about high-speed rail’s challenges and possibilities, Spain's system might offer the most relevant lessons. Like California’s planned system, it connects major urban centers and cuts through verdant farmland. The system has completely transformed the travel patterns in Spain, as Sheehan’s stories will highlight.

Fresno Bee business reporter TIm Sheehan

The first paper to commit to helping fund the trip was The Bakersfield Californian.

Within 10 days, we had 12 partners agreeing to write a check.

"We thought this would be a worthwhile expense because the project was designed from the start to get behind the headlines and provide a real-world look at a bullet train system that operates in an environment that has many similarities to California," said Bakersfield Californian Executive Editor John Arthur.

It made sense that Sheehan would be the reporter to represent our group. He has covered high-speed rail since 2010 for The Fresno Bee. He also has photography and multimedia experience, which would help bring more depth to his reporting and allow the group to keep costs down by sending just one reporter instead of a reporter and a photographer.

Knowing that Sheehan had to produce work that satisfied a dozen newsrooms added a fair bit of pressure. But he was up to the task.

“I wasn’t so much in fear of screwing this up, but it was always at the back of my mind that these stories would be for a much bigger audience than just Fresno and the San Joaquin Valley,” Sheehan said. “Writing so much over the last year and a half on California’s plans helped me approach this from a broader perspective, both in my advance research and my interviews on the ground.

“One big thing I wanted to accomplish is giving readers a sense of what it’s like aboard the trains, to let people know what all the fuss is about,” Sheehan added.

Sheehan’s stories are free to the participating members, of course. But news organizations that are not part of the collaborative can buy the package. Proceeds will be split among our network members. Meghann Farnsworth, our distribution manager, is handling the content sales.

"The idea of other news organizations helping pay for our reporter's trip to Spain would have been unfathomable before California Watch put this together,” Fresno editor Lumbye said. “A lot of walls have come down. But it's about more than the overseas trip, although that's a very big deal. It's also the way we editors have made a routine of talking about what our newsrooms are working on, offering our work to each other and letting one take the point on one story while another works on something else. It's a terrific mix of generosity and practicality, and the people of California are the winners."

Later this month, the top editors from all our network news organizations will gather at the Center for Investigative Reporting’s Berkeley offices to discuss more ways we can help each other and serve our audiences. We hope our rail collaboration will endure. If the system goes forward, it will generate an endless supply of stories. But sharing rail stories may be just the first step of larger collaborative efforts to better serve readers, viewers and listeners across the state.

Precision journalism reveals patterns in government data

Stephen K Doig — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 08:08:33 +0000

Stephen K. Doig

Journalists find stories in all sorts of places. I have spent much of my journalism career, both in newsrooms and classrooms, finding stories in data.

That’s how I found myself crunching data for California Watch, a nonprofit investigative news operation that is part of the Center for Investigative Reporting.

Reporters Lance Williams and Christina Jewett have spent more than a year investigating the billing practices of Prime Healthcare Services. I was drafted to analyze millions of rows of Medicare patient data to look for patterns and trends that might emerge.

In the fall of 2010, I was living in Lisbon on a four-month Fulbright professorship, lecturing to students and journalism professionals all over Portugal. One day, I got an e-mail from Mark Katches, the editorial director of California Watch, asking if I could be persuaded to help the reporters with the Prime investigation and a couple of other investigative projects.

Mark and I had known each other since our days on the board of directors of the Investigative Reporters & Editors organization. He knew I had done some heavy-lifting data projects during my 20 years with The Miami Herald, before I started teaching at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University in 1996. And I certainly respected his stellar track record as the leader of numerous prize-winning newspaper investigative projects before he joined California Watch and the Center for Investigative Reporting.

I was delighted to accept Mark’s invitation. I’m a strong believer that journalism professors should remain active in the profession, both to keep skills sharp and to be a credible role model to students. And I also believe in the importance of watchdog journalism in our democracy as a way to expose problems and right wrongs. Working with California Watch was a great way to satisfy both needs.

My specialty in investigative reporting is the analysis of large government datasets. This technique, called precision journalism, involves using computer software to reveal patterns in the data. Before journalists began using such tools, investigative stories often relied on anecdotes and claims from sources. Precision journalism, on the other hand, can produce actual evidence from the patterns in the data. For example, as a reporter in Miami, I analyzed the damage patterns from Hurricane Andrew to prove how weakened building codes had magnified the disaster, and I studied thousands of arrest records to uncover major flaws in the criminal justice system.

The California Watch investigation of Medicare billing at hospitals in the state was particularly interesting to me for a variety of reasons. As a citizen and taxpayer – and a soon-to-be Medicare enrollee – I am as concerned as anyone that the nation’s medical system should remain solvent and be administered properly. As an investigative reporter, I was aware that many problems – from waste to outright fraud – had been found in Medicare billing in other states. And as a data analyst, I was eager to tackle the challenge of parsing tens of millions of records.

Much of the work I did for California Watch involved independent testing of tips about billing practices being passed by various sources to Christina and Lance. Sources always have their own reasons for talking with reporters, so Mark insisted on independent confirmation before publishing any stories based on such claims.

Luckily, California’s Office of Statewide Health Planning and Development has gathered an extensive and well-documented collection of public data about every hospital or emergency room patient seen. Great care has been taken to mask the identities of every patient, but the collective patterns in the database of all these anonymous records reveal a lot about how different hospitals are diagnosing and treating patients and billing insurers or the government.

The analysis was done with industrial-grade database software called SAS, which I have been using for such projects for more than 20 years. Using SAS requires writing programs that tell the computer how to read the raw data and how to produce answers to our questions.

Over the past year, I wound up writing about 120 SAS programs to plow through more than 50 million records, finding patterns that showed Prime hospitals were diagnosing certain conditions at rates significantly higher than most other hospitals. And in an effort to go beyond the specific conditions our sources were telling us about, I wrote a program that uncovered a number of other high-rate conditions that bear further investigation.

For one analysis, I used SAS to count how often more than 6,400 diagnosis codes were used in the cases of about 750,000 individual patients, creating a huge database of more than 14.6 gigabytes.

This kind of evidence would be impossible to gather from a warehouse full of file drawers filled with millions of pieces of paper; finding the telltale patterns in a mountain of documents is beyond the human attention span. But in this age of electronic public records, seasoned reporters who know how to use powerful computer tools can see not only the trees, but the whole forest. As an investigative reporter, it’s wonderful to use such tools to uncover problems that otherwise might remain hidden. But as a taxpayer, I often wish government agencies would be doing the same kind of analysis.

Stephen K. Doig is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter and the Knight Chair in journalism at Arizona State University’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication.

Read more California Watch coverage of Prime Healthcare

Video: Tapping into Medicare's gold mine?

Prime hospital bills for malnutrition, but patient says she wasn’t treated

Patient shares hospital records to illustrate kwashiorkor billing

Making money from Medicare

Prime response

Interactive graphic: Prime reports outsized rates of unusual conditions

Have you been treated at a Prime hospital?

Hospital chain, already under scrutiny, reports high malnutrition rates

Beyond the story: Impact

Robert J. Rosenthal — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 01:37:50 +0000

Robert J. Rosenthal

Since 1977, CIR has been on the forefront of nonprofit investigative reporting, telling thousands of stories on all platforms and through prominent outlets, reaching millions.

Over the years, these stories have sparked federal legislation, policy at all levels of government, United Nations resolutions, public interest lawsuits and changes in corporate practices.

Here are a few examples from the past year:

A Senate committee launches a probe after a CIR investigation found that the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Intelligence and Analysis has done little to improve the nation’s intelligence data.

A police chief resigns amid an FBI investigation and murderers are convicted following dogged reporting by The Chauncey Bailey Project, a collaboration of dozens of news organizations, including CIR, into the murder of Oakland Post editor Bailey by a corrupt group about which he was reporting.

California Gov. Jerry Brown signs two new bills following California Watch stories. One prevents unfair seizures of vehicles from immigrants, and the other removes lead-tainted products – many marketed to children – from store shelves.

A grand jury is convened following reporting by Stanley Nelson of the Concordia Sentinel in Ferriday, La., that identified a leading suspect in the unsolved 1964 murder of Frank Morris. Nelson is part of The Civil Rights Cold Case Project, a collaboration of award-winning journalists, documentary filmmakers, civil rights attorneys, universities and others working together to seek truth; create conditions for justice; and foster reconciliation connected with hundreds of unsolved, racially motivated murders from the Civil Rights era.

Bureaucratic shakeup, rule changes and two separate internal investigations at the California state architect’s office, plus the release of $200 million in bond funds for seismic safety of K-12 schools, follow a California Watch investigation that revealed the failure to fully enforce the state’s landmark earthquake safety law for public schools.

The U.S. State Department requests copies of “The Price of Sex,” the documentary film about international sex trafficking, to use for training at the Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons and in embassies around the world.

New laws and penalties are put in place for nursing homes after California Watch revealed that hundreds of homes took money from a taxpayer fund intended to hire staff and boost wages in the name of quality care, but actually cut staff and reduced wages.

The superintendent of public instruction in California calls for an immediate review of school textbooks and a community group gathers 20,000 signatures in opposition to a curriculum after our environmental reporter discovered that the American Chemistry Council directly provided textbook passages that downplayed the environmental risks of plastic grocery bags.

The state Department of Real Estate launches an investigation after we reported about a Southern California housekeeper who was scammed by an unlicensed mortgage lender. At least one reader was so moved by the housekeeper’s story that he donated money directly to her.

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In a sea of news aggregators, CIR creates hard-hitting work

Robert J. Rosenthal — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 01:37:41 +0000

Robert J. Rosenthal

In an age of aggregators, the Center for Investigative Reporting is a multimedia content creator. We invest our resources in covering underreported stories that traditional media can no longer afford to pursue.

While newspapers have continued to shrink, CIR’s staff has more than quadrupled since 2008, from seven to 32 people. Our highly skilled journalists have expertise that is increasingly rare in budget-strapped newsrooms. They cultivate deep sources, find hidden documents, make sense of complicated issues and develop this information into compelling stories delivered to the outlets you rely on for news.

Our data and digital teams plumb this research and create sophisticated data visualizations, interactive maps and tools that help you understand issues from the macro to the micro level. Our radio, video and digital producers work with our reporters to create engaging documentaries, web videos and even animations that demystify complex topics. Our distribution staff places the work and promotes it across hundreds of outlets. Our community engagement and social media team then works to actively engage the public and make sure our reporting gets to those most affected by it.

In today’s media landscape, much of what passes for “news” is in fact commentary, opinion or even invective. Many news organizations no longer report; they merely repost. CIR is different. We arm the public with thoroughly reported facts and with deep explanations of complex issues from the environment to immigration, government accountability, education, health, campaign finance and more – locally, nationally and internationally.

Rather than covering daily news, CIR reports on the larger systems, power dynamics and forces that shape our world. Our reporting enables people to demand accountability from government, corporations and others in power.

Our California Lost series explores communities that are neglected, disenfranchised, and lacking government services and protections. Recent reports have looked at worker housing conditions in the trailer parks of the Eastern Coachella Valley and environmental pollution in the Southern California town of Maywood. These stories don’t just examine one issue; they look at many of the factors affecting people in these communities and follow them back to the numerous parties responsible, from mobile home park owners to county transportation and land management agencies to California’s Department of Toxic Substances Control to a Utah-based soil recycling company that leases land from the Cabazon Band of Mission Indians.

CIR is committed to “story before glory”: Rather than compete with other news organizations, we bring media partners together to collaborate on big stories. We partnered with NPR for our investigation into intelligence gathering 10 years after the 9/11 attacks. In California, we are leading a collaboration of 12 media outlets to report on a proposed $98 billion high-speed rail system, which would be the most expensive public works project in the state’s history. These partnerships exponentially increase the reporting capacity, audience reach and potential impact of our reporting. Together, we are accomplishing goals that none of us could alone.

Now there’s something to tweet about.

Support Center for Investigative Reporting

Maywood residents facing pollution outline community goals

Ashley Alvarado — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 21:41:32 +0000

Ashley Alvarado

Ashley Alvarado/California WatchBottles hold water samples taken from Maywood residents' faucets.

The invite was a pleasant surprise. Janet Wilson’s excellent report on the severe health struggles of one Maywood family and the polluted conditions that envelop them had run recently, and I was doing research for “A Field Guide to Maywood Pollution Issues,” a downloadable directory of key players. I reached out to Héctor Alvarado (no relation), an activist with Padres Unidos de Maywood. And he invited to me to one of the weekly Comité Cívico del Agua meetings.

That I was the guest of honor came as a complete shock. One night this week, I walked into the Unión de Vecinos office space on East Slauson Avenue a few minutes before 6:30. I was early, and yet 20 people sat in a circle, waiting for me. Handwritten posters outlined goals for the community; two bookshelves stood crammed with bottles of polluted water. Héctor introduced me, and then, one by one, Maywood residents stood to introduce themselves.

Over the next hour and a half, I listened as people shared their Maywood stories. Some, like Cristóforo Castro, have lived in Maywood for more than four decades. All have been affected by its polluted water. They pay for water three times, they said: at the meter (with prices that rise and that residents are unable to monitor), large decanters for everyday water use and the bottles they drink. That does not include what they pay for all the health issues: “There is illness all over Maywood,” Cristóforo said in Spanish.

The group was appreciative of California Watch’s reporting on Maywood and Eastern Group Publication’s translation of that reporting. At one recent weekly meeting, they had screened California Watch’s video about the Martin family’s health issues.

“We watched that video, and we said there are three things that we can do,” Héctor said in Spanish. “We can go home, pack and move. We can just accept this as God’s punishment. Or we can fight.” In Maywood, they’ve decided to fight.

Ashley Alvarado/California WatchCristóforo Castro of Maywood holds a bottle of purchased, clean water (on the left) and a bottle of contaminated tap water.

During the course of the meeting, Gloria Alvarez, Eastern’s managing editor, and staff writer Gloria Angelina Castillo joined us. They came in time to hear community members outline their goals for Maywood.

In accordance with the City of Maywood Safe Drinking Water Act, the residents want to consolidate the three water companies that serve Maywood and have this be a public agency, accountable to the people. They’ve started a petition to do so, and in three weeks’ time, they collected more than twice the required number of signatures. Their goals are timed to the November 2012 election.

In the meantime, “we have to be patient and present. We can’t be desperate,” Héctor said.

I hadn’t come to talk; I came to listen. But I did want to know what role they thought California Watch and the media should have in Maywood. We talked about some great ideas, and I’ll be excited to share them with you as they develop. The collective response to my question depressed and inspired me: They just want the media to pay attention. Maywood is small, a little bigger than 1 square mile. Their issues are not sexy. And they say it’s hard to get people to take them or their concerns seriously.

Now, though, they said, they could hold Janet's story in their hands and demand to be heard and respected. On nights like this, I love my job.

If you live in Maywood or near sources of pollution, California Watch wants to hear your stories. Please click here to share your insights.

Conversation in Coachella sheds light on how to help communities

Ashley Alvarado — Sat, 19 Nov 2011 00:54:15 +0000

Ashley Alvarado

In “On edge of paradise, Coachella workers live in grim conditions,” California Watch contributor Patricia Leigh Brown details the hardships of Eastern Coachella Valley mobile home residents. Trailers are in shambles, parks unkempt. Water is contaminated with arsenic. Basic human needs – reliable electricity, sanitary conditions, clean air – too often go unmet.

On Tuesday night, a few dozen people joined me at the Mecca Library for a conversation on solutions and a screening of an original California Watch video about the issue.

Those who filled the room were strikingly diverse. There was Ana Sánchez, who had candidly discussed her living situation in our video and now sat alongside her family. Across from her, mobile home park owners prepared their case; they have done all they can, they said, to improve conditions at their parks but struggle in the face of county regulations, broken promises and lack of funds. Stakeholders continued to pour in: community organizer Sergio Carranza, representatives from California Rural Legal Assistance and a senior adviser to U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer among them.

We began with a screening of the original video by Carrie Ching, senior multimedia producer for the Center for Investigative Reporting. Then, over coffee and pan dulce, we began to talk.

Too often, newspapers and cameras appear in a town, produce a story and then take off. That’s not what we want to do with California Lost, a series meant to shed light on communities outside the mainstream and the struggles they face. We want an ongoing relationship. We want to become a trusted source for information. We want to tell the stories that have never been told. To do all that, we have to first listen and ask questions. And so, I opened with a quick question: What did we get wrong? Hands were initially slow to raise, but soon I had people from all sides of the issue weighing in.

Our article, one mobile home park owner said, seemed to blame the owners without looking enough at the roadblocks put up by Riverside County agencies. Others added that we ought to focus on the root of the problem: not enough low-income, family-friendly housing options. We shouldn’t be afraid, they said, to question the system, the government. We need to explain why raising rent on a person who owns the home, but not the land it’s on, is such a big deal. The video intermixed images of multiple parks, perhaps not making it clear enough that they were not one and the same. Our Spanish translation used words they would never say. Still others had more specific, immediate concerns. A young woman is named in the story. Her home is described in detail. She is not hard to find, and now she lives with some fear. She has no protection.

There was appreciation, too. People thanked us for providing a more in-depth, big-picture look into their living situations. Too many reporters, they said, come to sensationalize the poverty, to point at and make a spectacle of the “poorest of the poor.” One woman added: “It all comes back to the way that a journalist reports a story. Even though there are a lot of struggles, there is resilience. Even with the environmental injustice we experience, you have a great core of people who are working together to work against it. It’s a terrible thing you have to live with arsenic in the water, substandard housing conditions. But you have an amazing community that is coming together.”

Some who raised their hands were timid, but many, if not most, spoke with conviction. Carranza spoke passionately in Spanish: “The reporting that has been done is good, but it needs to be taken to the next level. What are we doing to solve the problems? How is the community getting involved? We can’t just let stories focus on how poor people are: Look how people are suffering. We’ve seen this.”

Others chimed in, suggesting we also take a look at all the beautiful aspects of their community.

On the issue of what the media, more specifically California Watch, needs to do in the Eastern Coachella Valley, people were adamant. “You need to ask the appropriate questions to the appropriate people,” one woman said.

Another added, “Social change happens only when there is pressure.”

“Please don’t be afraid to ask the tough questions to politicians.”

We stayed beyond the library’s closing hour. The conversation was too good, the issues too important. As we finally wrapped up, I was excited to have many come and ask for my card. Many, too, had signed up to become sources in our Public Insight Network. Through this meeting and more to come, through the Public Insight Network and already-in-the-works articles, they are set to inform our reporting. We’ll all be the better for it.

CIR adds technology leadership to its board

Christa Scharfenberg — Thu, 10 Nov 2011 19:32:41 +0000

Christa Scharfenberg

We are proud and delighted to announce today that Gabriel Stricker, director of global communications and public affairs at Google, and Joaquin Alvarado, senior vice president for digital innovation at American Public Media, have been elected to the Center for Investigative Reporting’s Board of Directors. Stricker and Alvarado bring exceptional experience in strategic communications and technology and a firsthand understanding of how technology is revolutionizing the journalism world.

CIR is the nation’s oldest, independent nonprofit investigative reporting organization. It is at the forefront of the reinvention of journalism and is a leader in the nonprofit investigative reporting field, which is filling the gaps left by the decline of traditional media.

“Stricker and Alvarado will be invaluable to CIR as we continue to build an innovative digital newsroom and work toward a sustainable future,” said board Chairman Phil Bronstein.

At Google, Stricker addresses everything from web search and other search properties to issues pertaining to partnerships, content, and the use of intellectual property. Stricker refined his expertise in strategic communications through his work in the electoral arena, having played an important role on campaigns for political and governmental clients around the world. Stricker is the author of the bestselling book on guerrilla marketing, “Mao in the Boardroom,” published by St. Martin's Press.

“I'm thrilled to work with CIR to ensure that high-quality, unique and credible journalism flourishes,” Stricker said. “The progress we make in the coming years will have a hand in transforming journalism’s path in the decades ahead.”

Alvarado oversees the digital portfolio for American Public Media and leads the Public Insight Network, a project that is central to CIR’s public engagement strategy. Previously, Alvarado was senior vice president for diversity and innovation at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. He has spearheaded numerous projects, including CoCo Studios, which promotes media collaboration and information sharing for fiber and mobile networks; the Institute for Next Generation Internet at San Francisco State University; and the National Public Lightpath, which advocates for high-speed fiber-optic networks.

“CIR exemplifies a truly networked newsroom with some of the most talented reporters and producers working today. I am excited and honored to join the board and look forward to doing my part to sustain and grow our impact,” Alvarado said.

Stricker and Alvarado join CIR at a critical time. The organization has undergone a renaissance over the past three years, growing from a staff of seven and budget of $1.7 million to a staff of 32 and budget of nearly $5 million. CIR’s editorial output in that same period has included more than 40 major investigations (most developed for multiple formats and published or broadcast in more than 300 outlets) and more than 1,400 blog entries and Daily Reports. The reporting has had real and lasting impact, leading to new legislation, the closing of legislative loopholes, congressional hearings, changes in corporate governance and significant community engagement.

CIR Executive Director Robert J. Rosenthal said: “We want to be on the forefront of delivering our unique investigative stories to audiences on platforms they are most comfortable with, and to engage them not only in the content of our stories, but also in distribution, information gathering and even the quest for solutions to solve the problems we reveal. Both Gabe and Joaquin can help us attain those goals.”

New data tool creates visual model of information from readers

Ashley Alvarado — Thu, 10 Nov 2011 08:05:04 +0000

Ashley Alvarado

How would you change marijuana laws?

That is a question the Center for Investigative Reporting and KQED posed to readers following the Obama administration’s letter to U.S. attorneys reminding them that the cultivation and distribution of marijuana is illegal under federal law. The answers we received were thoughtful and thought-provoking, but we struggled with the best way to present them. Then our partners at the Public Insight Network announced they’d created Skyline, an interactive visualization of responses from sources in the network, and were looking for a way to unveil it. I jumped at the opportunity.

To properly explain what Skyline is and why it is so cool, I asked its creator, Barrett Fox, to share a few words with you. Fox is a data visualization designer at American Public Media working on the Public Insight Network. He has worked throughout his career at the odd but thrilling intersection of video games, animation and information visualization:

To view the results of our query on Skyline, click here. For a handy instructional video on how to use Skyline, click here. Skyline can be viewed on a PC or Mac. First-time viewers will be prompted to download the Unity 3-D browser plug-in.

Every day, journalists at California Watch and the Center for Investigative Reporting and at newsrooms around the country ask the more than 130,000 sources in the Public Insight Network to share their knowledge and insight on any number of topics of public interest. The result is a formidable amount of largely unstructured data, and this huge info cloud quickly becomes overwhelming.

The goal is to synthesize this information quickly – to make sense of it in a way that adds context, depth and relevance. So, how to do that?

Sure, we can search it, but you'd have to scroll down web pages that are miles long to get a clear sense of it all. It’s easy to lose track of the most important themes and to get lost in the details. We believe there’s value in being able to quickly see the broad strokes of these conversations, to paint a portrait of what we’re learning as we learn it.

This is where the rapidly evolving and expanding field of data visualization or, as I like to call it, information visualization, comes in. Not many years ago, data visualization was a field of charts, graphs and, if you were lucky, some diagrams. But today, we can quickly transform mountains of data into the liquid medium of interactive computer graphics, presenting us a new palette of possibilities.

Skyline is an interactive visualization of responses from sources in the Public Insight Network. It’s intended to quickly show how many people responded to a PIN query, how much they had to say and then, when you "drill down" into the Skyline, to allow you to read those responses in detail. The joint CIR-KQED query about marijuana laws is the first Skyline visualization to go live, and as you'll see, people had a lot to say on this topic. Mind you, it’s a prototype – and we want your feedback to help us take it from a cool concept to the super-useful information explorer we want it to become.

Skyline is built on the Unity 3-D game engine that provides a world of new possibilities for interactively and visually exploring information. Instead of data about how many monsters you've clobbered or gold coins you've collected, we're feeding this game engine data from the PIN queries. And then we can design how that information gets displayed with all the tools that video game designers have at their disposal.

By creating a 3-D icon for each source, we can quickly see the size of the crowd of people who wanted to talk about this subject. And by stacking their actual responses above them, we can quickly see how much they all had to say. And we can group the source based on specific questions in our queries to reveal otherwise hidden qualities about the group of respondents. For this first example, we're grouping the responses by their ZIP codes, which in this case shows that we heard from people around the state.

We’re building Skyline to visualize any query in the PIN and create groups based on any questions in those queries. And what you're seeing here is our first experiment. But what's exciting is that now that we have these sources and their responses inside this interactive 3-D medium, we'll shortly be able to explore this data in many other interesting ways. We can discover other insights on these topics by placing the sources on maps, timelines, even good old charts and graphs. But you'll always be able to drill down and read what's important – the knowledge and insights of citizens who are helping make the news more credible, relevant and transparent.

Join California Watch, CIR for coffee and conversation

Ashley Alvarado — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 07:05:04 +0000

Ashley Alvarado

As the year slowly winds down, things are revving up at California Watch and its parent organization, the Center for Investigative Reporting. In recent weeks, we’ve released stories on issues ranging from the Latino achievement gap to aggressive billing at one California hospital chain. We debuted a new landing page for our California Lost series. And, alongside the San Francisco Film Society, we launched Behind the Story, a new quarterly event that will give audiences an insider's look at the backstory of some of our major reports.

On Monday, we host our biggest and most geographically diverse Open Newsroom to date. From 9 a.m. until noon, California Watch and CIR reporters will spread out at coffeehouses across California – and even in Texas – to meet one on one with our readers (and potential readers) and hear about the issues that matter most in your community. Got tips, complaints or questions? We are here to listen and learn.

Please stop by and say hello at any of the locations listed below, or follow our tweets with the hashtag #opennews.

To find out where each reporter will be, check out the list and map below. We’d also like to take this opportunity to thank the participating coffee shops:

Ashley Alvarado: As public engagement manager, I’m focused on identifying stories in neglected communities and ensuring that these stories reach both those affected and those who can make a difference. I’ll be in La Quinta for the Open Newsroom as we prepare for a community event nearby Nov. 15 (click here for details). Location: Old Town Coffee Company, La Quinta.

Agustin Armendariz: Agustin is an investigative reporter who focuses on data analysis. These days, he’s working on getting his hooks into various sources of stimulus data. Location: Royal Grounds, Berkeley.

Andrew Becker: Andrew covers the federal judiciary for CIR and is currently reporting on the immigration court system. Follow @ABeckerCIR on Twitter for updates on immigration, the U.S.-Mexico border and homeland. Location: Sacks Coffee House, Berkeley.

Carrie Ching: Carrie manages and produces multimedia reports for CIR projects, including California Watch, The Civil Rights Cold Case Project and The Price of Sex. Location: Sacks Coffee House, Berkeley.

Michael Corey: Michael, CIR’s digital innovations editor, specializes in front-end web development, interface design and online mapping. He was also co-leader of a regional Emmy-winning project commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Buddy Holly crash. Location: Actual Cafe, Oakland.

Chase Davis: Chase performs double duty at CIR as both director of technology and a contributing reporter. His interests include technology, money and politics. Location: Temple Coffee, Sacramento.

Will Evans: After traveling and freelancing internationally, Will is focused on settling into his new beat, money and politics. He’s working on government oversight and accountability projects, with a focus on the influence of moneyed interests. KGO News Director Kevin Keeshan will join Will at his Open Newsroom. Location: Jackson Place Café, San Francisco.

Serene Fang: Based in the Bay Area, Serene is a producer, editor and videographer for our digital team. She also directs and shoots a monthly web music series for PBS Arts. Location: Remedy Coffee, Berkeley.

Meghann Farnsworth: Meghann works with editors, reporters and multimedia producers to create comprehensive distribution strategies in print, radio, television and online media outlets, as well as blogs, online communities and social media. Location: Thunderbird Coffee, Austin, Texas.

Tia Ghose: A former Kaiser Family Foundation health reporting intern at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Tia now researches homeland security for CIR. Location: The Summit SF, San Francisco.

Christina Jewett: Health and welfare reporter Christina is working on a series of stories looking at hospital practices that have an impact on public money and patient care. Location: Broadacre Coffee, Sacramento.

Mark Katches: CIR and California Watch’s editorial director previously built and ran investigative teams at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and The Orange County Register. Now, Mark is focused on ramping up our distribution and engagement efforts. Location: Yali’s Café, Berkeley.

Monica Lam: Monica is a documentary film and television producer who has traveled on five continents producing, reporting and shooting for “PBS NewsHour,” “Frontline,” “FRONTLINE/World” and other PBS programs, as well as Swiss television and MSNBC. Location: Oakland Wonder Food Bakery, Oakland.

Erica Perez: A California native, Erica covered the K-12 beat at The Orange County Register. She moved on to higher education, first at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and now at California Watch. Location: Snappy’s Café, Hayward.

Stephanie Rice: A freelance reporter based in San Francisco, Stephanie works as a copy editor and reporter for California Watch. Location: Philz Coffee, San Francisco.

Susanne Rust: Environment reporter Susanne covers a wide range of important environmental issues that Californians face. Recent articles have focused on the plastics industry’s role in shaping a textbook curriculum and the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant. Location: Café Zoe, Menlo Park.

Robert Salladay: California Watch’s senior editor has covered California politics and government for more than a decade. Location: Literati Café, Los Angeles.

G.W. Schulz: Since joining CIR in 2008, G.W. has written primarily about homeland security. He also runs Perilous, a blog on security, privacy and the public interest. Location: Thunderbird Coffee, Austin, Texas.

La Toya Tooles: CIR’s associate web producer recently earned her master’s degree from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism; she considers herself a platform-neutral journalist. Location: Yali’s Café, Berkeley.

Lance Williams: Lance previously worked for the San Francisco Chronicle, where he helped break many of the newspaper’s exclusive stories on the BALCO steroid scandal. With Mark Fainaru-Wada, he wrote “Game of Shadows: Barry Bonds, BALCO and the Steroids Scandal that Rocked Professional Sports.” He now writes about hospital safety and campaign finance, among other issues. Location: Philz Coffee, San Francisco.

Ariane Wu: Ariane is the distribution assistant at CIR, where she has also produced multimedia, including this look inside California Watch. Location: The Summit SF, San Francisco.

Suzanne Yada: A graduate of San Jose State University, Suzanne is a veteran web producer and social media strategist. She’s previously worked at the San Francisco Public Press, the Silicon Valley/San Jose Business Journal and the Visalia Times-Delta. Location: Café 210, Visalia.

Bernice Yeung: California Watch’s newest reporter is looking at disparities in some of California’s most remote communities as part of our newly launched California Lost project. Location: Catahoula Coffee Company, Richmond.

Denise Zapata: Denise's newspaper experience began at The Bakersfield Californian, where she covered education and county government and was later named city editor. In 2000, Denise joined The San Diego Union-Tribune as an assistant metro editor, overseeing reporters focused on local government and education. And this year, she became an associate editor for California Watch and CIR. Denise will be joined by journalists from the San Diego Union-Tribune and 10News. Location: Caffe Calabria, San Diego

View Open Newsroom November 7th 2011 in a larger map