This is Sunshine Week, which pays homage to the principle that the public’s business should be public even though officials often try to keep us in the dark about their unsavory activities. By happenstance, last week provided Californians with four cogent examples of why independent journalism is a vital bulwark...
Sunnyside Teacher Surprised With Teaching 'Oscar,' $25,000 Prize
Sunnyside High School teacher Katie McQuone is used to being behind the camera as head of the school's Video Production Academy. So McQuone was startled Tuesday morning to find cameras suddenly pointing at her during an assembly in the packed school gymnasium, where she was named winner of a $25,000 Milken...
Cokie Roberts, Longtime Political Journalist, Dies at 75
NEW YORK — Cokie Roberts, the daughter of politicians who grew up to cover the family business in Washington for ABC News and NPR over several decades, died Tuesday in Washington of complications from breast cancer. She was 75. ABC broke into network programming to announce her death and pay...
TV Networks Beefing Up Staff for 2020 Presidential Election
NEW YORK — The competitive chiefs of ABC, CBS and NBC News found something to agree on Thursday: Each is hiring more staff to cover the 2020 presidential election than they have for any other election. That's partly due to growing digital operations at the three broadcast news organizations, as...
Should Google or Your Taxes Help Pay for Local News?
Whose job it is to revive local journalism in California? Our state’s elites have a clear, if dubious answer: themselves. Last year, Google announced it was putting $300 million into supporting local news. A few weeks ago, Facebook announced its own $300 million local news initiative. Philanthropists and foundations have...
California AG Becerra Wants to Keep Police Crimes Hidden
SACRAMENTO — California's attorney general is demanding that a university journalism program return a state list that includes law enforcement officers convicted of crimes in the past decade, saying the information wasn't meant to be public and shouldn't have been given out by another agency. Attorney General Xavier Becerra's office...