CALmatters

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CalMatters

CalMatters is an American nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that produces journalism to serve the public interest in California. Based in Sacramento, its award-winning enterprise projects and explanatory articles cover the following state-level issues: politics, education, environment, fiscal policy, housing, health and welfare. In 2018, it won an Online Journalism Award for its project “Californians: Here’s Why Your Housing Costs Are So High,”: which told the complex story of California’s affordable housing crisis and its origins, and an EPpy Award for its California election guide.

To address the declining news coverage of the state capitol due to the retrenchment of media organizations, Calmatters distributes its articles to media partners across the state for re-publication or broadcast to their regional and local audiences.

As of March 2020, CALmatters has 31 employees – 26 in Sacramento and five in Southern California – and more than 180 media partners.

History

CALmatters was co-founded in 2015 by civic-leader and retired public relations executive Simone Coxe; Dave Lesher, former director government affairs for the Public Policy Institute of California, a public policy think tank; and Chris Boskin, a veteran of magazine publishing with a career that includes senior positions with Worth Media, The New Yorker and Hearst Communications. Coxe had grown frustrated with the lack of news and information available for civic-minded citizens to stay informed and put up $1 million of her own money to help launch the news startup, telling Ken Doctor:

“There is so much complaining about how bad government is. I got fed up. Responsibility is a big thing. What is it that we could do about it? My background is information. I got into public relations with this crazy idea that citizens are responsible for themselves, but they need information from the media, when I got into this 40 years ago [at the University of California at] Berkeley … If the federal government is too big and too far away, then there’s got to be something we can do in California.”

CALmatters launched on July 21, 2015 with six articles examining California’s climate policy.

CALmatters had an initial news staff of four, including reporters Kate Galbraith, formerly of The New York Times and Texas Tribune; Laurel Rosenhall, formerly of the Sacramento Bee; Pauline Bartolone, an award-winning radio reporter at Capital Public Radio; and editor Gregory Favre, a former executive editor of the Sacramento Bee and vice president for news of McClatchy Newspapers. The editorial team has since grown to 18.

Its initial board of directors included Coxe, who still serves as chair and chief fundraiser; Campwala; Lesher; Chris Boskin, a member of the NPR national board who “is as connected in the Republican sphere as Coxe is among Democrats”; and former Los Angeles Times editor and reporter Leo C. Wolinsky.

CALmatters also launched with a journalism advisory board that included: Richard Tofel, president of ProPublica; John Thornton, founder of Texas Tribune; Ernest Wilson, then Dean of the Annenberg School of Communications; Douglas McGray, Editor-in-Chief of The California Sunday Magazine and Pop-Up Magazine; and Mekahlo Medina, Emmy Award-winning technology and social media anchor and reporter for NBC4 Los Angeles and then-president of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists.

In August of 2015, Lesher stepped down from the board to become the organization’s first CEO and Editor-in-Chief, as Favre moved to the board. “Dave Lesher’s vision was a driving force in the creation of CALmatters, and there is no better person to lead the organization,” Coxe said.

In February of 2017, digital media executive Marcia Parker joined CALmatters as its publisher and chief operating officer.

Neil Chase, a media and marketing veteran, joined CALmatters as CEO in January 2019, after Lesher relinquished the role to focus on the organization’s growing editorial operation. Chase had previously served as executive editor of The San Jose Mercury News and East Bay Times.

Funding

CALmatters is a 501(c)3 organization and had an operating budget of $2.18 million in 2017, according to the most recent publicly available 990. It is funded primarily through individual donors and foundation grants. Its most significant contributors include: Mary Anne and Leonard Baker; Simone and Tench Coxe; Kristine Johnson and Tim Dattels, managing partner for TPG Asia; Laurene Powell Jobs and the Emerson Collective; the Kerfuffle Foundation; the Knight Foundation; the College Futures Foundation, the James Irvine Foundation; and the Carrie and Greg Penner Fund of the Walton Family Foundation. In 2018, CALmatters launched individual, corporate and organization memberships, as well as product sponsorships.

Awards and recognition

2018

Online Journalism Award, Feature, “Californians: Here’s why your housing costs are so high”

EPpy Award, Best Innovation Project, California election guide

2017

California Latino Journalists News Media Association, 15 Most Influential Latina Journalists of the Year to health and welfare reporter Elizabeth Aguilera.

California Press Association, Jack Bates Award to publisher Marcia Parker for “distinguished service to the California Press.”

Notable reporting and projects

Please list and include description and, if possible, impact.

California Submerging: Rising Seas https://calmatters.org/project/rising-seas/

What Ever Happened to the California Dream ? https://calmatters.org/articles/category/projects/california-dream/

The California Divide, a statewide media collaboration to raise awareness and engagement about poverty and income inequality. https://calmatters.org/category/california-divide/

Board members

As of March 2020:

• Chris Boskin, Co-Founder; Director, NPR, Internews & Gladstone Institute
• Janet Clayton, former Senior Vice President of Corporate Communications for Southern California Edison
• Simone Coxe, Board Chair & Co-Founder; Director, KQED & Internews
• Gregory Favre, former Vice President of News, McClatchy; Executive Editor, The Sacramento Bee
• Jeff Klein, Executive Chairman, 1105 Media
• Richard Koci Hernandez, multimedia journalist, Associate Professor, UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism
• Leo Wolinsky, former Executive Editor, Los Angeles Times
• David "Mas" Masumoto, columnist for The Fresno Bee and the Sacramento Bee
• Paulette Brown-Hinds, founder of Voice Media Ventures and the second-generation publisher of The Black Voice News
• John Boland, former KQED president and chief executive officer, former first chief content officer of the national Public Broadcasting Service (PBS)

Advisory board

As of March 2020

• Tony Ridder, former Chairman, Knight Ridder
• Christy Chin, Venture Partner, Draper Richards Kaplan Foundation
• Ann Grimes, Associate Director, Brown Institute for Media Innovation, Stanford University
• Donna Lucas, Founder and CEO, Lucas Public Affairs
• Douglas McGray, Editor in Chief, The California Sunday Magazine and Pop‐Up Magazine
• Mekahlo Medina, former President, National Association of Hispanic Journalists
• John Thornton, Co-Founder, Texas Tribune
• Richard Tofel, President, ProPublica
• Carlos Watson, Co-Founder & CEO, OZY Media, Inc.
• Ernest Wilson, Professor of Communication and Political Science and founder and director of the USC Center for Third Space Thinking; former Dean, USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism

External links

• Official website
• CALmatters Internal Revenue Service filings, ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer

New article: CALmatters, nonprofit news organization

This article "CALmatters" is from Wikipedia. The list of its authors can be seen in its historical and/or the page Edithistory:CALmatters. Articles copied from Draft Namespace on Wikipedia could be seen on the Draft Namespace of Wikipedia and not main one.

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