From the editor: How we will tell your stories in 2020, and how you can help
As Editor of The Sacramento Bee, I’d like to share an update on priorities and project plans in 2020, and provide an update on what your support helped us achieve in 2019.
There’s much to cover, so I’ll get right to it.
Tipping Point, a weekly reporting effort that explores how the Sacramento region is changing and evolving, will continue in 2020.
It’s been one of our most important and successful efforts, leading to outsized digital subscription growth and wide readership. The series has explored growth in our suburbs, the growing homeless population in Sacramento and how our dining scene continues to evolve, among other topics. You can stay up to date at sacbee.com/tippingpoint.
In 2020 and as part of Tipping Point we’ll launch a commuters column and daily afternoon traffic update, focusing on a major quality of life issue in the region as we continue to grow.
We recently announced a partnership with Sol Collective, a community-based arts education nonprofit/center, to elevate a diversity of writers and artists we have not previously shared.
In the spirit of celebrating what we love about Sacramento, we’ll also be adding more digital-first, daily Kings coverage in the home stretch of the 2019-2020 season. We hope that by adding more reporters to our team we can somehow help break the longest-running playoff drought in the NBA. I’m only half kidding.
Accountability reporting
Beyond Tipping Point, in 2019 our accountability work prompted change in how the city regulates cannabis dispensaries; within the UC Davis band system, where excessive drinking led to a student’s death; in police-use-of-force policies through continued coverage of Stephon Clark’s shooting and of police officers with criminal records; and in California’s jails where failure to enforce rules led to deaths across the state.
We also produced a powerful documentary, “S.A.C.,” which explored Sacramento’s impact on AB 392, the bill that changed police use-of-force policy.
In 2020, we’ll ramp up our watchdog work and publish multiple investigative projects on local, regional and statewide issues, which include law enforcement, children and teenagers, farmworkers, government corruption, business regulations and the environment.
We’ll also welcome more journalists. Jayson Chesler joined us in January as a Digital Storytelling Producer. Reporter Rosalio Ahumada arrives in February, bringing additional Spanish-language skills to our newsroom.
And as part of a collaboration with Report For America, we’ll soon welcome a Latino Issues Reporter to our Capitol Bureau to cover key issues ahead of the 2020 election.
Speaking of the Capitol, one of the most helpful tools for readers year-in and year-out is our state worker salary database. We remain committed to covering California’s many state workers and retirees, and will offer new features in 2020, including a state worker Q&A and regular “how-to” coverage that will help all navigate significant statewide systems.
As we engage in reporting in 2020, it’s critical we listen to you – via direct feedback in community listening sessions, through surveys and what story-level data tell us. One of our most important goals in 2020 is to deepen our relationship with readers.
This is because you are our single most important source of support.
The nonprofit Knight Foundation in late 2019 reported 86 percent of Americans say everyone should have access to local news, even if they don’t pay for it. And yet just 1 in 5 Americans have supported local news in the past year by subscribing to, donating to or purchasing a membership to a local news organization.
Our website, sacbee.com, had 70 million visits last year, and yet we have roughly 100,000 subscribers (print and digital). So, we have an opportunity to be better together.
Better at listening. Better at supporting a public benefit that is local, independent journalism. Better at doing more of the kind of reporting that makes a difference in your life and the lives of others.
How you can join us
Subscribe. Thanks, as always, to those who have for so long and to those who recently joined us.
Learn more about local journalism by joining us at an upcoming event. Photographer Paul Kitagaki Jr. will lead a discussion on Jan. 28 of his book on Japanese internment.
Sign up for the Tipping Point newsletter to receive regular updates on our changing region.
Support the Tipping Point Lab, an effort to add four journalists to The Bee to cover how the region is growing, through a tax-deductible contribution. Find me at lgustus@sacbee.com if you’d like more info.
To support local journalists and subscribe to The Sacramento Bee, please click here.
This story was originally published January 10, 2020 at 5:00 AM.