Lookout Santa Cruz Wins 2024 Pulitzer Prize for Its Storm Coverage

KQED's Forum

KQED

Politics, News, News Commentary

4.6 • 656 Ratings

🗓️ 8 May 2024

⏱️ 56 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The 2024 Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News Reporting was awarded to the staff of Lookout Santa Cruz on Monday. The prize committee praised the tiny, digital-only media outlet for its “detailed and nimble community-focused coverage” of the catastrophic flooding and mudslides last year that did great damage to the Santa Cruz area. We’ll talk to the staff about the media outlet, which was founded in 2020, its coverage, and the future of local journalism. Guests: Ken Doctor, CEO and founder, Lookout Santa Cruz. Doctor writes regularly for Harvard's Nieman Journalism Tamsin McMahon, managing editor, Lookout Santa Cruz Christopher Neely, correspondent, Lookout Santa Cruz Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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0:00.0	Support for KQWED Podcasts comes from Landmark College, holding their annual summer
0:04.9	Institute for educators from June 24 through 26th.
0:09.1	More information at landmark.edu slash LCSI.
0:13.8	Greetings, boomtown.
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0:28.6	From KQED in San Francisco, I'm Alexis Madrigal. Local journalism across the country is in
0:49.2	crisis. The business models and operations that once work do not work any longer.
0:55.0	Hedge funds have bought up many papers and turned them upside down in search of the last pennies and the piggy bank.
1:01.0	Small digital upstarts haven't been able to fill the space left by the big daily newspapers.
1:05.0	But perhaps that's changing.
1:08.0	Lookout Santa Cruz, founded in 2020, won this year's Pulitzer Prize for
1:12.7	breaking news reporting. We'll talk with the staff about their award-winning coverage and
1:16.9	what's working in local news. That's coming up next after this news. Welcome to Forum. I'm Alexis Madrigal. Of the different kinds of news, it is perhaps breaking news that test the metal of a journalism outfit the most deeply. By nature, breaking news coverage is responsive and
1:45.2	unplanned. Anybody can cover a breaking news event, but the people who are usually the best
1:50.5	have a deep layer of local knowledge and sourcing that allows them to get the best information
1:55.4	in a chaotic time. All of which makes lookout Santa Cruz's Pulitzer Prize win this week even more impressive.
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