Lookout Santa Cruz

Last updated

Lookout Santa Cruz
Type Digital newspaper
Founder(s)Ken Doctor
Managing editorTamsin McMahon
Opinion editorJody K. Biehl
Founded20 November 2020;3 years ago (2020-11-20)
Language English
City Santa Cruz, California
Website lookout.co

Lookout Santa Cruz is a digital newspaper launched in November 2020 that covers Santa Cruz-area local news. It was created by Ken Doctor, a media analyst who had studied the decline of local newspapers in the United States. [1] Its parent company is Lookout Local. Lookout Santa Cruz receives philanthropic support, advertising revenue, and online subscription revenue. [1] Lookout won a Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News Reporting in 2024 for its coverage of the 2022–2023 California floods. [2]

Contents

History and operations

Lookout Santa Cruz launched in October 2020 with about $2.5 million raised from philanthropy from organizations including the Knight Foundation, the Google News Innovation Challenge, and the Silicon Valley Community Foundation. [1]

During its first year, it suffered from high turnover. Its three top editors and chief revenue officer left to work in other cities, and in February 2023, only two original staff members remained from the organization's October 2020 start. [1] In April 2022, Doctor wrote that Lookout had a team of 13 people, ten in the newsroom and three in business. [3] Most employees are paid $65,000 to $70,000 per year. [1] The editorial staff at Lookout outnumbers that of the Santa Cruz Sentinel , which had seven in early 2023, a decline from the 40 newsroom employees it had in the early 2000s. [1]

Ken Doctor, the newspaper's founder, frequently writes about the operations of Lookout Santa Cruz in his column for Nieman Journalism Lab. In early 2023, Doctor said the company was on track to make a profit in 2023 and had 8500 paid subscribers. [1] Ken Doctor attended University of California, Santa Cruz in the 1970s, and after a career in journalism that included an alternative weekly paper in Oregon and the defunct Knight Ridder media company, he returned to Santa Cruz in the early 2010s. [1]

Lookout Santa Cruz won the 2024 Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News Reporting for its community-focused coverage of the 2022–2023 California floods that destroyed more than 1,000 homes and businesses. [2]

See also

Related Research Articles

<i>The Christian Science Monitor</i> News outlet owned by Christian Science church

The Christian Science Monitor (CSM), commonly known as The Monitor, is a nonprofit news organization that publishes daily articles both in electronic format and a weekly print edition. It was founded in 1908 as a daily newspaper by Mary Baker Eddy, the founder of the new religious movement Christian Science, Church of Christ, Scientist.

<i>Los Angeles Times</i> American daily newspaper in California

The Los Angeles Times is a regional American daily newspaper that started publishing in Los Angeles, California in 1881. Based in the Greater Los Angeles area city of El Segundo since 2018, it is the sixth-largest newspaper by circulation in the United States, as well as the largest newspaper in the western United States. Owned by Patrick Soon-Shiong and published by California Times, the paper has won more than 40 Pulitzer Prizes.

<i>The Mercury News</i> Daily newspaper published in California

The Mercury News is a morning daily newspaper published in San Jose, California, in the San Francisco Bay Area. It is published by the Bay Area News Group, a subsidiary of Media News Group which in turn is controlled by Alden Global Capital, a vulture fund. As of March 2013, it was the fifth largest daily newspaper in the United States, with a daily circulation of 611,194. As of 2018, the paper has a circulation of 324,500 daily and 415,200 on Sundays. As of 2021, this further declined. The Bay Area News Group no longer reports its circulation, but rather "readership". For 2021, they reported a "readership" of 312,700 adults daily.

<i>The Salt Lake Tribune</i> Daily newspaper in Salt Lake City, Utah

The Salt Lake Tribune is a newspaper published in the city of Salt Lake City, Utah. The Tribune is owned by The Salt Lake Tribune, Inc., a non-profit corporation. The newspaper's motto is "Utah's Independent Voice Since 1871."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nieman Foundation for Journalism</span> Journalism institution at Harvard University

The Nieman Foundation for Journalism is the primary journalism institution at Harvard University.

<i>The Orange County Register</i> Daily newspaper in Orange County, California

The Orange County Register is a paid daily newspaper published in California. The Register, published in Orange County, California, is owned by the private equity firm Alden Global Capital via its Digital First Media News subsidiaries.

Voice of San Diego is a nonprofit news organization focused on issues affecting the San Diego region.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">The Center for Investigative Reporting</span> Non-profit organisation in the US

The Center for Investigative Reporting (CIR) was a nonprofit news organization based in San Francisco, California. In 2024, it merged with Mother Jones

ProPublica, legally Pro Publica, Inc., is a nonprofit organization based in New York City dedicated to investigative journalism. ProPublica states that its investigations are conducted by its staff of full-time investigative reporters, and the resulting stories are distributed to news partners for publication or broadcast. In some cases, reporters from both ProPublica and its partners work together on a story. ProPublica has partnered with more than 90 different news organizations and has won several Pulitzer Prizes.

Dan Pulcrano is a journalist, editor, publisher and newspaper group owner in Northern California. He is CEO and executive editor of Metro Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley's alternative newsweekly, as well as its sister publications around the Bay Area; Good Times, the North Bay Bohemian and the Pacific Sun and East Bay Express. The group also publishes ten community newspapers, as well as magazines and related digital titles.

California Watch, part of the nonprofit Center for Investigative Reporting, began producing stories in 2009. The official launch of the California Watch website took place in January 2010. The team was best known for producing well researched and widely distributed investigative stories on topics of interest to Californians. 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. The team won several industry awards for its public interest reporting, including the George Polk Award in 2012. 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.

MNG Enterprises, Inc., doing business as Digital First Media and MediaNews Group, is a Denver, Colorado, United States-based newspaper publisher owned by Alden Global Capital. As of May 2021, it owns over 100 newspapers and 200 assorted other publications.

The Institute for Nonprofit News (INN) is a non-profit consortium of nonprofit journalism organizations. The organization promotes nonprofit investigative and public service journalism by supporting its members and the nonprofit news industry as a whole.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Media in San Diego</span> Overview of mass media in San Diego, California, United States

San Diego is one of the major cities in California. The following is a list of media outlets based in the city of San Diego. People in San Diego are also able to receive media from Tijuana, Mexico.

The Marshall Project is a nonprofit news organization that seeks to create and sustain a sense of national urgency about inequities within the U.S. criminal justice system. The Marshall Project has been described as an advocacy group by some, and works to impact the system through journalism.

<i>Malheur Enterprise</i> Weekly newspaper in eastern Oregon, United States

The Malheur Enterprise is a weekly newspaper in Vale, Oregon. It was established in 1909, and since October 2015 has been published by Malheur Enterprise Pub. Co. It is issued weekly on Wednesdays. Early on, it carried the title Malheur Enterprise and Vale Plaindealer. As of 2018 its circulation has been estimated at 1,207 to 1,277.

Mississippi Today is the state's flagship nonprofit newsroom based in Ridgeland, Mississippi, and winner of the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for Local Reporting. It was founded in 2016 by former Netscape president and CEO Jim Barksdale and his wife, Donna, alongside former NBC chairman Andrew Lack. It is focused on watchdog journalism related to Mississippi's state and local government, health, economy, environment, public schools and universities, and the justice system.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Alden Global Capital</span> American hedge fund

Alden Global Capital is a hedge fund based in Manhattan, New York City. It was founded in 2007 by Randall D. Smith, and is a division of Smith Management LLC. Its managing director is Heath Freeman. By mid-2020, Alden had stakes in roughly two hundred American newspapers. The company added more newspapers to its portfolio in May 2021 when it purchased Tribune Publishing and became the second-largest newspaper publisher in the United States.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Julia Angwin</span> American investigative journalist

Julia Angwin is an American investigative journalist, author, and entrepreneur. She co-founded and was editor-in-chief of The Markup, a nonprofit newsroom that investigates the impact of technology on society. She was a staff reporter at the New York bureau of The Wall Street Journal from 2000 to 2013, during which time she was on a team that won the Pulitzer Prize in journalism. She worked as a senior reporter at ProPublica from 2014 to April 2018, during which time she was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.

States Newsroom is a left-leaning non-profit news organization with outlets or partner outlets in all 50 U.S. states. It began as a sponsored project of the Hopewell Fund, a left-leaning nonprofit that does not disclose its donors. In 2019, it spun off to become its own non-profit. It accepts no corporate donations, and publicly shares the sources of all contributions above $1,000. It grew out of NC Policy Watch, a progressive think tank in North Carolina founded by Chris Fitzsimon in 2004. Fitzsimon is States Newsroom's director and publisher.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Rainey, James (February 5, 2023). "Santa Cruz 'news desert'? An industry guru's digital startup challenges local rivals". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved May 6, 2024.
  2. 1 2 LaForme, Ren (May 6, 2024). "Here are the winners of the 2024 Pulitzer Prizes". Poynter. Retrieved May 6, 2024.
  3. Doctor, Ken (April 14, 2022). "Ken Doctor: 18 months after launching a local news company (in an Alden market), here's what I've learned". Nieman Lab. Retrieved May 6, 2024.