Public Radio Creates California Newsroom
• Public radio stations across California are teaming up with NPR to create a regional newsroom to increase coverage of statewide issues and boost reporting from and for underserved regions across the state. Led by KQED/San Francisco, the public radio collaboration includes KPBS/San Diego, CapRadio, KPCC/Pasadena/LAist and KCRW/Santa Monica as anchor stations and NPR as the statewide newsroom’s national partner.
Joanne Griffith, a widely respected and deeply experienced reporter and producer, has been hired as the newsroom’s first Managing Editor. “California is at the heart of so many stories of national interest: immigration, technology, the environment, housing,” said Griffith, who most recently served as the Assistant Managing Editor of Digital for Marketplace. Before that she edited and produced for the BBC, NPR and Southern California Public Radio. She added, “The opportunity to work collaboratively with stations across the state to tackle these themes and more is one I’m very much looking forward to, especially during an election year.” Griffith will work out of the KPCC/LAist offices in Pasadena but will be leading daily collaboration and coordination between news outlets across California, including public media affiliates in Fresno, Chico, San Luis Obispo and beyond. Her initial focus will be on 2020 election coverage.
Nancy Barnes, SVP of News and Editorial Director for NPR, remarked, “We are thrilled to have such a strong news leader like Joanne serving as the managing editor of the California regional newsroom. Her appointment is a critical step in our effort to build out a national network that strengthens local news, covers our states from coast to coast, and serves the public.”
“As the media industry faces increasing economic and political pressures, working together collaboratively to deliver public interest journalism is more important than ever,” said Holly Kernan, Chief Content Officer at KQED and a key champion of this effort. “This collaborative effort will ensure California citizens have accurate, independent and important news from across the state, which can only improve our democracy.”
The California news hub is the second such collaboration in the country, joining The Texas Newsroom, which launched last year and produces six live, statewide newscasts each weekday that draw content from public radio stations large and small across Texas. [Griffith photo by Carlin Stiehl].
