2020 California Fellowship Projects

2020 California Fellowship Projects (as of December 2020)

Angelika Albaladejo, a reporter for Capital & Main, an online outlet in Los Angeles, investigated a pattern of medical negligence on flights operated by ICE Air Operations, a transportation service operated by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to transfer immigrant detainees from one detention center to another or to deport them to other countries. For her story, which was also published in The Guardian, Angelika reviewed thousands of pages of documents obtained through public records requests and interviewed immigrant detainees to document her findings, which included heart attacks, a miscarriage of triplets and even a death during ICE AIR flights.  Capital & Main also released a podcast version of her story. Angelika's story received a “Sidney Award” from the Sidney Hillman Foundation in October for outstanding investigative journalism that fosters social and economic justice. “Albaladejo challenged ICE’s notorious secrecy and won,” said Sidney judge Lindsay Beyerstein. “She litigated to obtain critical documents that the agency wanted to keep hidden.” 

Matthew Brannon of the Redding Searchlight and the USA Today Network published a four-part data-based investigation of county jail deaths in California, Dying Inside, with a focus on those in Shasta County, where his paper publishes. In his first story, he reported that his analysis of statewide data found that between 2005 and 2019, Shasta County ranked second in total deaths among California’s 10 county jail systems with 10,000 to 18,000 annual bookings. Twenty-five prisoners have died in the county jail since 2006, 16 in the past six years, compared with nine in the previous six years. And 65 of the deaths were from suicide, compared with about 13% in Los Angeles County. County. Experts don’t know why Shasta County has a disproportionately high jail death rate, but among the reasons for jail deaths in general are existing health problems and drug addiction among many inmates, inadequate training of correctional officers and systemic challenges around staffing and funding, Matt reported. In his second story,  he reported on rates for deaths in custody in every California county. For his third story, he looked at what other counties might learn from San Francisco County reduction in jail deaths. For his final piece, he looked at two of the reasons for the county jails disproportionately high number of inmate deaths: improper medication and suicide.  In that piece, he also provided tips to relatives of inmates about how to arrange visits and provide funds for the inmate's commissary account, as well as organizations that provide legal help. Matt received an engagement grant and six months of engagement mentoring. Among his engagement tactics were launching a call-out over Facebook, one of the primary ways people in his region share news, in which he asked people to share their or relatives’ experiences with county jails. Matt heard from over 90 people, some of whom became sources for his stories. He was able to ask the sheriff's department tougher questions based on points raised by call-out respondents and identified several frequently asked questions that he answered in his final story and in a guide that he’s producing for inmates and their loved ones. Since Matt’s Fellowship series published, an attorney is suing the Shasta County jail in connection with a death, and the suit links to and quotes Matt’s project for background context. In addition, the Shasta County jail’s commander told Matt he wants to create a review board for in-custody deaths by the end of 2021 and intends to submit a draft proposal around mid-June. He also said he’s talking with county health officials about making crisis intervention trainings mandatory for correctional deputies by the end of the year. Matt won two first-place awards from the California Newspaper Publishers Association in the local government coverage and in-depth reporting categories.  One of the judges described his articles and analysis as “first-class accountability reporting with impressive statewide sweep.” “The findings are shocking, and the stories of families who lost loved ones in places that have a legal and moral obligation to keep them safe were heartbreaking,” the judge said, adding: “Congratulations on journalism that should prompt some much needed changes.” 

In a three-part series for his Fellowship project, Keith Burbank, a reporter for Bay City News and Local News Matters, analyzed the causes of deaths of homeless people in Santa Clara over the last two decades. His first story revealed that the annual number of deaths almost quintupled in 20 years, despite a decline in the homeless population. The death toll was 1,201 between 2000 and 2018. Experts attribute the increase to the aging of the homeless population and the extreme stress of homelessness, including the exposure to violence. For his second story,  he mapped the deaths of all the homeless people who died in those 18 years, which showed that most of them died in the county's poorest ZIP Codes. His analysis also found that nearly 800 died on the streets and rearly 400 died in hospitals. In his final story,  he reported on how by adopting a "housing first" policies, counties can reduce the number of people who die on the streets.  He cited research showing that “financial assistance and comprehensive housing support programs improve housing stability and prevent homelessness.”

Iridian Casarez, a reporter for North Coast Journal in Humboldt County, took an in-depth look at the prevalence of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) in Humboldt County and efforts by school officials to mitigate them. In her reporting, she found that 30 percent of adult residents in Humboldt and Mendocino county reported experiencing four or more ACEs, such as childhood sexual, physical or emotional abuse, parental substance abuse or incarceration of a relative, leaving them with lasting emotional problems, and often chronic health conditions. Trauma in childhood can also lead to intergenerational trauma, with parents repeating the mistakes on their own parents and putting their children at high risk of adverse childhood experiences as well.  Educators in Humboldt County persuaded county supervisors Humboldt County Board of Supervisors and asked the county to allocate a portion of marijuana cultivation tax revenue toward maintaining and improving county mental health services for children and families, and, as a result, several Humboldt County community organizations and schools have begun offering new trauma-informed program. Iridian received a First Place Award for Public Service Reporting from the California Newspaper Publishers Association for her project.

Kate Cimini, reporting for The Salinas Californian, CalMatters and the USAToday Network started reporting her Fellowship project on the intersection between slum and overcrowded housing and poor health, which a focus on farmworkers, even before the official start of the Fellowship. Her first story, which ran two days before the Fellowship began, reported that state officials were exempting agricultural workers from the "shelter in place" mandate, leading advocates for farmworkers to warn that that would put them at higher risk from the COVID-19 pandemic. Kate’s reporting for the 2020 California Fellowship built on her earlier reporting on the health effects of housing, which was supported by one of the Center’s 2019 Impact Fund grants (funded by The California Wellness Foundation).  In her second Fellowship story, she examined the precautions farmworkers are taking in the fields – wearing face masks and maintaining a safe distance from each other – but the perils they face when they return home on crowded buses to motel rooms shared with three other farmworkers, making social distancing impossible. In her third story, she looked into the possible impacts on the nation’s food supply of the Trump administration’s proposal to cut the hourly wages of temporary agricultural workers in the United States on H2A visas. In her fourth story, she calculated the disproportionate toll of COVID-19 on farmworkers in Monterey County, where as of late April they comprised nearly a quarter of all cases in the county. Her next article examined the economic impact on growers of the loss of business from restaurants, school cafeterias and corporate food programs related to the COVID-19 shelter-in-place mandates, as well as growers’ difficulties in obtaining personal protective equipment (PPE) for their workers.  In another story, she looked more closely at the overcrowded living conditions that many of California’s low-income workers live in.  According to her analysis of housing and health data, the poorest ZIP codes with the most people living in crowded housing are suffering the most from the coronavirus. In another story, she reported that evictions have continued in Monterey County during the pandemic, despite a formal moratorium, which puts the people who are being evicted at higher risk for contracting COVID-19. For her final article, she focused on solutions and described how other agricultural counties in California had addressed the housing challenges of farmworkers, either by providing incentives to developers to build affordable housing, providing loans to growers to build new housing or update existing units and encouraging the constructions of accessory dwelling units (ADUs) as residences for farmworkers' families. In a sidebar, she gave housing advocates and county agricultural leaders the opportunity to lay out their ideas for solutions. Besides her reporting grant, Kate also received an engagement grant and six months of engagement mentoring. Kate was tired of reporting on symptoms of the housing crisis for low-income residents and wanted to focus on solutions to build more farmworker housing in the county. She organized an advisory cohort of agriculture business leaders, housing advocates, and family resource center leaders to talk frankly about the way forward for expanding farmworker housing in the county, which will result both in a solutions-oriented story and standalone recommendations from advisory cohort members themselves. As a result of The Californian's membership in the USAToday Network and its partnership with CalMatters, many of Kate's Fellowship project stories have run in newspapers around the state, including the San Jose Mercury News, the Desert Sun and the Visalia Times-Delta. 

Astory in Kate's series about an 87-year-old woman who was evicted during the pandemic inspired California state Sen. Anna Caballero (D-Salinas) to write an extension to SB 3, the Tenant, Homeowner, and Small Landlord Tenant Relief Act of 2021, later enacted, which extended the moratorium on eviction of tenants for nonpayment of rent during the pandemic. One of Kate’s Fellowship project stories, “Close Quarters,” earned her a first place award for explanatory journalism from SPJ NorCal and a second place award in in-depth reporting from the California Newspaper Publishers Association. Other Fellowship project stories earned her a second-place award in agricultural coverage and a third-place award in COVID-19 coverage. 

Renée Fabian, a reporter for The Mighty, an online outlet focused on people with disabilities, reported a magazine-length piece on why it’s so hard for people to find therapists who will accept insurance as payment for therapy. Renée received an engagement grant and engagement mentoring, and to gather points of view from both patients and therapists she created a six-person advisory cohort of patient advocates, therapists and a mental health insurance denial attorney, who met monthly over Zoom. Their feedback persuaded Renée to focus on the providers’ points of view, a perspective that's rarely covered in the mainstream media, and inspired her to create a patients' guide to navigating insurance, a key need that both patient advocates and therapists highlighted throughout the reporting process. Renée published her guide to using health insurance to get mental health care in English and Spanish.

Brenda Gazzar's Fellowship project, "Eye of the Storm," ran in the Southern California News Group papers. Her first story, ‘This isn’t a drill’: How LA’s Motion Picture home battled coronavirus," described how one nursing home took precautions to prevent the spread of the novel coronavirus in its 225-bed facilities, but, even so, by late April had had 17 skilled nursing residents and 17 staff members test positive, and six residents die. Her sidebar profiled the six residents who lost their lives, Her second story analyzed why Los Angeles County accounts for 64% of all the reported COVID-19 deaths from skilled nursing homes in California, despite having just a quarter of the state's population. Among the reasons, she reported, was that the county has some extremely large nursing homes; because more employees come in and out of them every day, there’s more opportunity for infection. Fellow Fellow Beau Yarbrough, a staff reporter for the Southern California News Group, teamed up with Brenda for her third piece, plus a sidebar. For the main piece, they looked into why some nursing homes had highest percentages of COVID-19 deaths per than others and found that the common denominators were previous inspection problems, including below-average staffing ratios; fewer minutes spent by registered nurses with residents each day; larger capacities; and poor infection control practices. In a sidebar to that piece, they profiled Karen Johnson, 77, who died of COVID-19 eight days after being found with a fever. Three out of four residents at her facility tested positive for COVID-19, and almost a quarter of the residents died of COVID’19. In another piece,  Brenda reported on the toll that social isolation was taking on nursing home residents, particularly during the holidays, followed by an article questioning how prepared nursing homes would be for the next pandemic, given how they were caught short for this one. In her  final Fellowship piece, which also ran in the Bay Area News Group papers, Brenda reported on several new California laws that aim to better prepare the state and health care facilities, including nursing homes, for future infectious disease outbreaks. Unfortunately, even as the state faces a new surge of infections, some of the provisions won’t go into effect for nearly a year or longer. Brenda is continuing to cover the disproportionate impact of COVID-19 on nursing home residents.  Her latest piece for the Southern California New Group focused on how nursing homes in southern California were preparing for mass vaccinations of residents. Brenda collaborated with USC Graduate Student Elissa Lee on a piece that focused on the more than 165 health care workers from California nursing homes who die from COVID-19 as of mid June. Their piece told the story of Eyvette Pascascio, 45, a single mother who worked as a nursing assistant at a nursing home and died after contracting COVID-19 at work, leaving two daughters, 23 and 19.  Advocates say the nursing home industry overall needs to better protect its workers by ensuring adequate amounts of personal protective equipment, training and compensation. Eight months after their first piece detailed health and safety problems at the Monterey Palms Health Care Center in the Coachella Valley that may have contributed to the high death toll from COVID-19, the state of California and four district attorneys sued its parent organization, Mariner Health Care Services, accusing it of “trading people for profits at every turn.” Brenda’s and Ben’s coverage received a fifth place award in the CNPA’s “COVID-19 pandemic fallout category.”

Nicole Hayden, a reporter for The Desert Sun and the USA Today Network, produced a package of stories on homelessness issues in Riverside County, as well as results of a statewide analysis of who benefitted from Project Roomkey, Governor Gavin Newsom’s program for housing homeless people temporarily during the COVID-19 pandemic.  In her first story, she reported on efforts by advocates for the homeless in Riverside County to arrange for them to be given free tests for COVID-19 because many have underlying health conditions that make them likely to have severe complications if they get the virus. For her second story, she reported on the inadequate number of beds for homeless people in the Palm Springs area of Riverside County, where just 15% of the western Coachella Valley’s nearly 320 homeless individuals were geting a bed on any given night. In early October, she reported that western Coachella Valley's three overnight homeless shelters had closed because of lack of funding, sending nearly 100 people back onto the streets amid the COVID-19 pandemic and no housing for the homeless in Palm Springs. In her final Fellowship project story, which ran in newspapers around the state, she reported on what is likely to happen to nearly 12,000 Californians who are housed under Project Roomkey when all state funding ends December 30.  She analyzed records from most of California county’s to report that more than 28,000 previously unhoused people — 17% of the state's homeless population —had received shelter under the $150 million program, but that 16% had since returned to homelessness and 39% had left the program, with their current housing status unknown. Only 5% of Roomkey clients had found a permanent home. The person she profiled in that story received a $500 check from an anonymous reader to help pay for apartment application fees. And a few weeks after publication, Newsom issued additional funding to keep people housed in hotels. This time, though, he designated half the funding too pay caseworkers. Her story had identified a shortage of caseworkers as a key challenge to getting people housed.

Katherine Kam reported three stories on COVID-19-related issues and a fourth story on a new twist in partner abuse. Her first story, for WebMD, reported on the rising levels of anxiety, depression and emotional distress as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic -- levels so high that experts warn of a looming national mental health crisis.  “Our society is definitely in a collective state of trauma,” Jonathan Porteus, PhD, a licensed clinical psychologist, told Katherine.  Her second story, also for WebMD, revealed that Asian American students were reporting increased incidents of bullying because the coronavirus originated in China.  Her third story, for NBC News Asian America, reported on an upsurge in calls for advice from Asian American women to advocacy groups for victims of domestic violence. A fourth story, for WebMD, described how abusers are using technology to try to harm current or former romantic partners -- installing spyware on victims’ phones, impersonating them on social media to humiliate them, posting revealing photos online or installing tracking devices on children's electronics that can reveal the location of an abused parent who is hiding. Some companies have sprung up to help domestic violence victims scan their electronic devices for spyware

Nicole Karlis, a reporter for Salon, produced a package of five stories on homelessness issues, with a focus on how well the state’s Project Roomkey was working in the Bay Area. In her first story, published in early April, she reported on a COVID-19 outbreak at one of San Francisco’s largest homeless shelters, which was tied to a lack of personal protective equipment for residents and staff members. For her second story, she reported on concerns among public housing officials and housing activists about a likely rise in homelessness as a result of people being unable to pay their rent due to income loss as a results of COVID-19. In her third story, she documented the slow pace at which Project Roomkey was moving unhoused people in Alameda County into housing and the inadequacy of the number of units secured – 641 – in the face of the county’s population of 8,022 homeless people. San Francisco, with an estimated 8,000 homeless people, did better, acquiring 2,532 units. For her fourth story, she visited a city-sanctioned RV park on Pier 94 in San Francisco’s Bayview neighborhood, where formerly homeless people live in 120 trailers leased or purchased by the city and receive delivered meals and on-site health care. In her final story, she looked in the effect of smoke from northern California’s number wildfires on the health of homeless people, and found that many with asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease or heart disease were having trouble breathing.

For his Fellowship project, Jeremy Loudenback reported on how the COVID-19 pandemic affected families involved with California's foster care system for The Imprint (formerly known as The Chronicle of Social Change). In his first story, he reported on how the shutdown of state and county agencies and social distancing mandates as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic were interfering with efforts to reunify children in foster care with their parents, with possibly grave results for the families, given the strict deadlines they must meet to regain their children. For his second piece, he wrote about a range of effects of COVID-19 on foster care, including removals from stable foster homes because of foster parents' fears and the lack of suitable placements for children infected with COVID-19. In one case he reported on, Los Angeles County removed two sisters from a foster home where they had lived for three years because the foster parents feared that elderly family members might catch COVID-19 from them. The two of them and another sister, who lived in a stable foster home nearby, were instead sent home to their biological parents, even though they told their caseworker they didn't feel safe there. The sisters fled temporarily to the home of an older brother in Sacramento and don’t know what the future holds. In another case, a youth with mild symptoms of COVID-19 was turned away by a foster home and ended up at LAC + USC Medical Center -- even though he didn't need hospital care -- until an emergency placement could be found.  The piece also explored plans by the county foster care agency to isolate infected youth from group homes in rented trailers on the homes' grounds. In his final piece,  he chronicled the increase in the number of Los Angeles County children -- 4,000 -- in foster care or under court supervision since the pandemic started in March because visitation and court hearings necessary to end child welfare cases were delayed for months. “This number should disturb every single one of us who works in this system,” Judge Michael Nash, director of the Los Angeles County Office of Child Protection, told him.

Noe Magana, a reporter for BenitoLink, an online outlet that covers San Benito County, reported a three-part series on the social and emotional health issues of students in Hollister, the largest community in the county, and lapses in its special education program. In his first story, Noe reported a higher than average suspension rate for Hollister schools, as well as a higher suspension rate for students in special education.  He also reported that the district failed to evaluate students for their suitability for special education or to complete individual education plans for all those in special education, as required by law. In his second story, he looked at the efforts the Hollister School District has made to provide social and emotional support to students at risk of being suspended or dropping out. And in his final story, he looked into the reasons for the falling graduation rate for the district's special ed students, a trend he attributed to the district's failure to provide services that could help them academically.

Jacob Pierce, an editor for Good Times, a weekly in Santa Cruz County, reported a five-part series on health issues related to homelessness in his county.  In his first piece, he explored the concept of “harm reduction” – efforts undertaken by community organizations to minimize harm from illegal drug use by distributing clean needles and overdose antidotes like Narcan. In his second piece, he examined the threat to Santa Cruz’ homeless people from the COVID-19 pandemic.  In his third piece, he looked at several innovations aimed at improving the circumstances of homeless people, as well as safeguarding the public, including an authorized homeless encampment overseen by the city of Santa Cruz and the County and the planned expansion of a needle exchange program run by the Harm Reduction Coalition of Santa Cruz County. In his fourth piece, he wrote about the increase in homelessness in the county caused by the loss of more than 900 local homes in the CZU Lightning Complex Fire in early October, which is likely to lead to more competition in the county for affordable rentals. For his final piece, he talked with Greg Pepping, executive director of the Coastal Watershed Council, about the human health and environmental problems associated with unsanctioned encampments of homeless people along the San Lorenzo River.

In a 29-minute radio documentary for Making Contact, an internationally syndicated public affairs show, Paulina Velasco interviewed activists in the Latinx immigrant community of Los Angeles about how they take care of their mental health. While organizing rallies to support a path towards citizenship for undocumented immigrants, many are themselves grappling with fears of deportation. Yet they are willing to publicly identify themselves as undocumented people because they believe in the cause. With progress on the issues they care about slow to come, many are at risk of burnout and compassion fatigue. Activists told Paulina that they see self-care as a “selfless act” because it enables them to continue their work.  Making Contact is carried by 140 radio stations in the United States, Canada, South Africa and Ireland.

Joshua Yeager of the Visalia Times-Delta originally planned to report on how well the state’s regulations on heat were protecting farmworkers. But within days of completing the Fellowship training, it became clear that the pandemic was killing residents of Central Valley nursing homes at an alarming rate, and in consultation with his Senior Fellow and his editors, he decided to focus on the reasons for that and what was being done to reduce the death toll. He produced seven stories about the impact of COVID-19 on local nursing homes.  He initially focused on the Redwood Springs Healthcare Center, which for a time had the most serious outbreak of any of the 260 nursing homes in the state, with two-thirds of residents and one-third of staff members testing positive. Then he turned his attention to the Lindsay Gardens Nursing and Rehabilitation Facility and Linwood Meadows Care Center, the latter owned by the same parent company that owns Redwood Springs. By May, COVID-19 was still spreading in nursing homes, but it had also infected 107 workers who labor in close quarters at two food warehouses, he reported. In his final piece, he reported on concerns of nursing home workers about their own safety, given problems accessing protective gear, and their unmet demand for hazard pay.