Making sense of California and how its government works is essential to our journalism. Our stories and tools made government actions and decisions relatable, held leaders accountable and gave Californians the information they needed to engage with their government.
Our Voter Guide has been a powerhouse resource that has helped Californians figure out how they want to vote. This year, we reached our widest audience thus far, by meeting voters where they were.
We created TikTok videos and filters, inspired by our interactive proposition quizzes, to help GenZ Californians determine where they stood on statewide propositions.
For time-starved voters we launched an interactive ballot preview tool so users could see local and state issues in one place. We also partnered with local publications to show readers articles relevant to their ballot.
Our audience also asked for physical guides to help them vote. We created magazine-style quizzes that hundreds of Californians used at 40+ in-person events. We printed a Voter Guide zine. We added Chinese and Korean translations in addition to Spanish, and a version for English learners.
One in five California voters used our guide.
Our groundbreaking Digital Democracy platform launched in 2024 and made government accessible to everyone. Our project shows video and transcripts from every hearing, logs every vote, data on lobbyists and an easy way to track bills. We’ve also trained journalists in 20+ newsrooms on how to use our AI-generated tipsheets.
With the help of our tipsheets, CBS News partnered with us to reveal that California’s one-party supermajority legislature systematically avoids transparency and accountability by killing controversial legislation without voting on the record. Digital Democracy has two Emmy nominations and won the Poynter Institute‘s Punch Sulzberger Prize for Journalism Innovation.
We brought critical context. When the Palisades and Altadena fires ripped through Southern California, we already had real-time fire trackers. These historic fires called for more. Our data team created interactive maps to show if your home was at risk of wildfires and an additional map helped communities understand the devastating size of the burn scar. Newsrooms across the country, such as Mississippi Today and the Boulder Reporting Project, used the map to help their readers understand the true scale of the fires. People across the world posted social media screenshots of the map overlaid onto their city.
We focus on big issues and we don’t let go. The backbone for helping the unhoused population in California are shelters, many of which are publicly funded. But even when there are openings, people don’t want to use them. We asked why and found jails are often safer than shelters, and shelters are rarely regulated for safety or their efficacy in helping people find permanent housing. To ensure that our reporting resonated with audiences, we provided a guide on how to file complaints and individually emailed nearly 400 people — from nonprofit shelter board members to state leaders — to make sure they saw the investigation. A new bill in California, citing our reporting, proposed tightening oversight.
