AOL-Huffington might double its Patch force

Arianna Huffington, now the editorial voice behind AOL's news team, has announced the company will hire as many as 800 writers to work on its 800 or so Patch sites across the country, Bloomberg reported. From the story:

“Each site will now have its own team,” Huffington said in an interview. “It’s always greater and better to have a team.” Until now, content for each Patch website has been produced by a single full-time local editor and freelancers.

Teams also help prevent exhaustion from setting in. Individual Patch editors do almost everything necessary to publish their city-based sites. That is tiring and can lead to myopic story selection.

An extra body could also pick up slack for projects, since it's likely there will be Patchwide stories and series. For example, I'm told California's Patch sites paired up with California Watch to help localize the latter's series on earthquake safety in public schools - "sloppy" and "mess" were some of the words one Patcher used to describe the process. It may just be growing pains.

Here's more from the Bloomberg story:

“We are basically going to make Patch a lot more social,” said Huffington, 60. “It’s a great way to have people in the town, from the mayor to high-school kids, engaged.”

That sounds nice. I don't know what it means.

Four in the afternoon

1. Using social media to report on Egypt. Mashable

2. The Burbank Leader has followed through on its pledge to sue the city of Burbank for merit-based bonuses paid to city employees. Burbank Leader

3. The nonprofit California Watch has launched a new partnership with several newspapers across the state. CFIR

4. Facebook is making an aggressive push to get in the comments game on media websites - especially startups. CNET

Tipster in the Bell salary scandal was a cop

The Los Angeles Times was the first news outlet to report publicly the ridiculously high salaries being paid to city administrators and council members in the city of Bell, but it wasn't the paper's stories that prompted the District Attorney's Office to look into the mess. Indeed, the Times got the story after receiving a tip from the DA's office.

So who first brought the corruption to light? Former Bell police sergeant James Corcoran was the original tipster, according to a May, 2009 letter obtained by California Watch. In the letter, Corcoran described a pattern of corruption that served as the underpinning of the charges filed against 8 current and former Bell officials. Corcoran convinced then-Bell City Councilman Victor Bello to sign the letter as a way to attract more attention from prosecutors - ironically, Bello was one of the eight people charged in the case.

From California Watch:

Among other things, the ... letter from 2009 directly accuses [former City Manager Robert] Rizzo of corruption, bribery, "underhanded real estate deals," "unethical retirement arrangements," and facilitating police misconduct. From the letter:

The city, however, has been victimized by mismanagement, illegal activity, and corruption. THe City Manager, Mr. Robert Rizzo, has continuously and consistently abused the power entrusted to him. I have witnessed: 

• Public corruption
• Bribery
• Underhanded real estate deals
• Unethical retirement arrangements
• Police misconduct, including civil rights violations

-snip-

Although the letters were signed by Bello, they were written by a former Bell police sergeant, James Corcoran, who was investigating corruption issues in the city. Corcoran was forced out of the department earlier this year and has since filed a civil suit alleging that he was dismissed in retaliation for his investigation.

Corcoran said he presented the district attorney’s office with evidence of corruption in Bell about two weeks before the May 6, 2009, letter was filed, and an investigator told him that having an elected official sign a formal complaint would lend more weight to the allegations.

Bell's cops making money, too

California Watch takes a look at the salaries for Bell police officers and finds that they were pretty well paid, too. From CW:

According to a salary list provided to California Watch, 18 of the 33 officers carried on the city’s books as “safety employees – patrol” are projected to earn more than $90,000 this year, overtime included.

The average pay of the 33 cops with OT is $118,900.

This is for a city of 37,000 people.

The Bell Police Officers Association is a big player in the government reform effort, having joined forces with the citizen group BASTA, which has called for the City Council to resign and opposes any effort to disband the city police force and bring in the Sheriff's Department.

(found via LA Observed)

The Goldman Sachs connection

Gubernatorial candidates Jerry Brown and Meg Whitman trade charges over their connections to Goldman Sachs, which is being sued for fraud by the SEC. Whitman had direct financial ties, Brown had a somewhat tangential relationship via his time as mayor of Oakland. The Los Angeles Times looks at Whitman; California Watch looks at Brown.

AG to investigate Palin's speaker fees

Attorney General Jerry Brown has agreed to investigate whether Cal State University, Stanislaus must turn over records that reveal how much former GOP vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin is being paid to speak at the Turlock campus.

The university claims the fee does not have to be disclosed because the money is coming out of a foundation funds rather than from the school. Open-government advocates argue that the public university cannot use a foundation to hide what should be public records, since the school is funded through taxpayer money. Also, University President Hamid Shirvani serves as president of the foundation.

The full story is at California Watch.

Texas oil looks to influence California law

California environmental laws are some of the toughest in the nation, and are often copied by other states, much to the consternation of energy and automobile companies.

Former LA Times reporter Robert Salladay reports that two Texas oil firms appear to be funneling money into California for an initiative that would undo the state's landmark greenhouse gas legislation, known as AB 32.

From California Watch:

Two Texas oil companies have been evasive about whether they are backing a California ballot initiative that would suspend the state's landmark global warming law, signed with fanfare by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in 2006.

But it wouldn't be surprising if Tesoro Corp. and Valero Energy Corp. were behind the initiative to delay AB 32.

The Texas companies – which operate refineries in Benicia and Wilmington, Martinez and Los Angeles, and hundreds of gas stations throughout California – have been well-known players in the fight to weaken global warming legislation at the federal level, and they are major donors to state politicians working for the same goals.

Read the rest of the story here.

Another nonprofit watching California

In September, the Center for Investigative Journalism unveiled California Watch, a nonprofit investigative journalism unit, with the stated mission of exposing "injustice, waste, mismanagement, wrongdoing, questionable practices, and corruption" in California.

The Pacific Policy Institute today launched it's own version of the nonprofit investigative team called CalWatchdog. The Pacific Research Institute is a think tank with strong libertarian-leanings. The group promotes smaller government and free-market ideology and is associated with such think tanks the Cato Institute. But the nonprofit, investigative arm promises to follow traditional media standards:

CalWatchdog’s mission is to uncover governmental waste and shine the light on the misuse of taxpayer dollars. As part of a new wave of nonprofit, Web-based journalism, CalWatchdog adheres to traditional journalistic standards and focuses on improving government transparency.

The featured investigation on the site concerns the state water policy and was written by Wayne Lusvardi, a vocal libertarian and former MWD employee from Pasadena who's made his opinions known about state water policy known.

CalWatchdog's board of advisers includes former LA CityBeat publisher Will Swaim, former Republican analyst and now head of USC's Jesse M. Unruh Institute of Politics Dan Schnur, Chapman University professor Tibor Machan, conservative columnist Deroy Murdock, and Cathy Taylor, editorial director for the Orange County Register.

The more eyes on government, the better. But the genesis of this investigative unit does point up the increasingly blurry line between traditional newsrooms and ones born of ideological agendas. As we saw in the row over the Washington Post's partnership with The Fiscal Times, the blurred line can expose traditional media sources to charges of partisan favor. Nonprofit does not necessarily mean non-ideological.

Four in the morning

1. I guess we now know what Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy thinks of prior restraint. NYT

2. California Watch and KQED's public radio program California Report have teamed up. CW

3. The LA Weekly has hired a new blogger. LAO

4. It's good to be a New Yorker: The magazine hasn't suffered the kinds of cuts that its sister publications have. NYO

Data camp

California Watch has teamed with several other media outlets, including the Sunlight Foundation and Craigslist founder Craig Newmark, to host a one-day seminar on database journalism. From the press release:

The one day gathering is open to developers, journalists, community organizers, policy wonks, students and others interested in working with government data to provide insights and information into California and its communities. A variety of issues will be tackled including computer-assisted reporting, data visualization, data access, data transparency, and data management.

The data camp will be held November 7 in San Francisco.

California Watch debuts

The first story from California Watch lands today, the eighth anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, and uses public records to evaluate how California's cities and counties spent the $1.9 billion in Homeland Security funds awarded to make them safer:

Under the state’s open-records laws, California Watch found scores of instances of wasteful spending, purchasing violations, error-prone accounting and shoddy oversight at agencies across the state during the years immediately following 9/11.

The complete article is here.

California Watch was started by the nonprofit Center for Investigative Reporting.