Hi there. It’s Jennifer Bowman, inewsource’s assistant editor and proud South Bay resident.
This year, we again saw early on how powerful reporting can be when we focus on providing news not just about, but for communities.
Our San Diego Documenters program sent trained citizens to nearly 160 public meetings across the region in 2024, many of them held by lower-level committees that see little attendance — and news coverage — but where major decisions are discussed for the first time.
Then we teamed them up with our experienced reporters.
The results? Dozens of hyperlocal stories that followed the money, kept on top of housing discussions and shed light on elected officials’ proposals across San Diego County.
We paid special attention outside of the city of San Diego limits this year, too, writing 60-plus stories about South Bay communities, many with help from the Documenters.
2024 proved to us that with our investigative and accountability journalists and our growing Documenters program, we have a dream team on our hands.
Here’s what news coverage we made possible.
Missing meetings
Our coverage found some public meetings were getting canceled at noteworthy rates. Take reporter Crystal Niebla’s November story on the city of San Diego’s Independent Rates Oversight Committee — the official advisory body to the mayor and councilmembers met fewer than a handful of times this year, even as residents face rising water rates. The story came in part from notes taken by San Diego Documenter Simon Mayeski.
Another Documenter, Paloma Villavicencio, also contributed to Greg Moran’s story in March that found the city’s Citizen Advisory Board on Police/Community Relations hadn’t held a meeting for nearly a year.
Both stories showed the city’s ongoing struggle with filling vacancies across its many committees and boards.
An abandoned proposal after inewsource’s reporting
It wasn’t just meeting notes that helped us spot a story — it’s the well-connected Documenters staying connected with the community and checking out agendas early on, too.
That’s what happened in July, when Documenters teamed up with Crystal Niebla to be the first to report that Sean Elo-Rivera had proposed eliminating virtual comment at council meetings.
After her story published, hundreds of public comments showed vocal opposition. Elo-Rivera ultimately pulled his proposal.
Hyperlocal in the South Bay
The Documenters allowed us to keep tabs on some of South Bay’s most pressing issues, from housing to health to the environment.
In National City, an area already impacted by industrial pollution, reporter Philip Salata reported on protests against a proposed fuel transfer station.
In Chula Vista, intern Emily Ingco teamed up with Documenters to track the latest decisions on how officials in one of San Diego County’s fastest-growing cities are addressing their housing issues, from whether to allow accessory dwelling units on single-family properties or consideration of rezoning commercial land to residential.
Following the money
The growing Documenters program also tracked how millions of dollars of spending decisions were happening at lower-level meetings.
Because Documenter Vincent Outlaw attended a Board of Library Commissioners meeting the day after the November election, we learned that the city of San Diego was bracing for as much as a 10% cut to its library department budget if Measure E failed. (It did.)
We also reported on San Diego Association of Governments grants, from the Metropolitan Transportation System’s return of underused buses that were funded by SANDAG to the latest plans for a $45 million program to fund local public infrastructure projects.
We have bold plans to continue and expand community-powered reporting with the help of our Documenters program. We’d love your help to make that happen.
See you in 2025,
Jennifer
Type of Content
Blog: Updates from the newsroom on philanthropy, awards, staff and more.