California Watch

California Watch
FoundedAugust 2009
DissolvedMay 29, 2013
FocusInvestigative journalism
Location
MethodFoundation and member-supported
Key people
Robert Rosenthal, Executive Director of CIR
Mark Katches, Editorial Director
Christa Scharfenberg, Associate Director of CIR
Louis Freedberg, Founding Director
Website[1]

California Watch, part of the nonprofit Center for Investigative Reporting, began producing stories in 2009.[1] The official launch of the California Watch website took place in January 2010.[2] The team was best known for producing well researched and widely distributed investigative stories on topics of interest to Californians.[3] 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 Center for Investigative Reporting created California Watch with $3.5 million in seed funding.[2][4] The team won several industry awards for its public interest reporting, including the George Polk Award in 2012.[5][6][7][8] 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.[9]

  1. ^ Pete Basofin (5 January 2010). "California Watch launches with investigations and data". The Sacramento Bee. Archived from the original on 2010-01-08. Retrieved 10 January 2013.
  2. ^ a b Martin Langeveld (5 January 2010). "California Watch: The latest entrant in the dot-org journalism boom". Nieman Journalism Lab. Retrieved 10 January 2013.
  3. ^ Ken Doctor (23 March 2010). "3 Reasons to Watch California Watch". Newsonomics. Retrieved 10 January 2013.
  4. ^ "CIR History" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 25 June 2012. Retrieved 10 January 2013.
  5. ^ Kelly Carr (10 February 2012). "ASU professor wins George Polk Award for Medical Reporting". BusinessJournalism.org. Archived from the original on 27 September 2012. Retrieved 10 January 2013.
  6. ^ Julie Moos (21 February 2012). "Polk Awards honor Sara Ganim, Anthony Shadid, California Watch, Advertiser Democrat". The Poynter Institute. Archived from the original on 14 October 2012. Retrieved 10 January 2013.
  7. ^ Matthew Fleischer (20 February 2012). "California Watch Wins the George Polk Award for Medical Reporting". FishBowlLA. Archived from the original on 4 May 2012. Retrieved 10 January 2013.
  8. ^ Kevin Roderick (19 February 2012). "Kudos to California Watch for Polk Award". LA Observed. Retrieved 10 January 2013.
  9. ^ "2010 Online Journalism Awards Winners". Online Journalism Awards. Retrieved 2019-12-20.