Inside the Newsroom

In Switzerland, children attend school for 228 days a year. In South Korea, it’s 220 days.

By this measure, California looks like a slacker.

The typical California school year lasts about 180 days – and it's shrinking. California Watch Senior Reporter Louis Freedberg recently surveyed the 30 largest K-12 districts across the state and found the majority are slicing deeper into the school year – cutting to as low as 175 days to help balance their budgets.

La Opinion's Spanish version of the story.

The story went live on our website July 15. So far, nearly 20 media partners have published or broadcast versions of the story. It aired on TV. It played on public radio. And with the help of New America Media, it appeared in five languages, including Korean, Spanish, Vietnamese and Chinese.

This broad distribution strategy helped California Watch reach well over 1 million readers, viewers and listeners – considerably more than we would have reached if we had partnered with any single news organization, even the largest in the state...

Thanks to everyone for joining California Watch senior reporter Lance Williams for Thursday's live video chat about his investigative story about unsupervised San Francisco workers accused of cheating taxpayers out of hundreds of thousands of dollars. If you missed the chat, you can watch it in the video embedded below. If you have a question about the story or want to discuss it, feel free to share your comments here.

Our newsroom is growing so fast we may need nametags. Today we’re announcing another hire – our first public engagement manager. She’s Ashley Alvarado, a talented young journalist who has been working at Los Angeles and Los Cabos magazines.

Ashley is set to start July 6. She joins other recent hires, Susanne Rust and Joanna Lin, who will be joining us a in few weeks. We also landed Pulitzer Prize winner Ryan Gabrielson, who won’t officially start until Sept. 1.

This wave of hiring brings our California Watch newsroom to 16 people, including 11 reporters. That doesn't even count support, administrative and leadership staff we share with the Center for Investigative Reporting.

So what exactly is a public engagement manager? It’s an innovative, new job that combines the skills of a reporter, editor, web producer and community manager. And Ashley is the perfect person to fill that role.

Since it’s a new job, we expect it to evolve, and Ashley will play a key role helping to shape it. The main aim of the public engagement manager will be to help identify stories in neglected, forgotten and voiceless communities throughout California. Once we tell these stories, Ashley’s job will be to make sure we’re reaching the people who need to know about our work – both the affected parties and those who can make a difference.

We expect that Ashley also will help bring community stakeholders together for town hall-style round table forums or live chats online. She will work collaboratively with reporters and multimedia producers inside our newsroom while building relationships and networks with...

The Center for Investigative Reporting’s California Watch announced new additions to its reporting team today.  Three new staff members, including a Pulitzer Prize winner, will help strengthen and expand the largest investigative reporting team operating in the State. New reporting beats will include the environment and public safety.  California Watch will add an enterprise reporter focused on public health issues and a third education reporter to its team. Joining the reporting staff are:

Ryan Gabrielson, Public Safety investigative reporter

Gabrielson, a Pulitzer Prize winner in 2009, will be joining California Watch at the end of August. He is currently a 2009-2010 investigative reporting fellow at the University of California, Berkeley.  Previously, his reporting for the East Valley Tribune in Mesa, Arizona exposed that immigration enforcement by the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office undermined criminal investigations and emergency response; scholarship charities that were committing tax fraud; and widespread academic and financial malfeasance at the nation's largest community college district. Besides winning the Pulitzer Prize for local reporting, Gabrielson’s work has received numerous national and state honors, including a George Polk Award, a Sigma Delta Chi Award and an Education Writers Association Award. He began his career at The Monitor in McAllen, Texas and studied journalism at the University of Arizona.

Susanne Rust, Environment...