Maybe you heard about the earthquake that struck The Bee a few days ago.
Long-time executive editor and veteran McClatchy employee Rick Rodriguez resigned.
It was a sudden and unexpected jolt on both a personal and professional level.
He and the publisher, Janis Heaphy, came to a parting of the ways over what was described as a disagreement over the paper’s long-term direction.
That’s all they said. There were no other details. Some readers and newsroom staff have asked whether I can provide more information.
I can’t, because I’m not privy to any. Anything from me would be speculation, and that serves no purpose.
What I do know is what should be apparent to everyone: Rodriguez has left a legacy of hard-nosed, watchdog enterprise reporting that, year by year, has steadily evolved into the paper’s hallmark.
Heaphy has pledged to the newsroom to continue “strong public service journalism,” which she re-emphasized to me when I spoke with her later.
Speaking more generally, the commitment to such reporting is sometimes lost in the dark clouds of bleak financial news parked over the newspaper industry, including The Bee.
Just last week, for example, The Bee’s owner, Sacramento-based McClatchy Co., reported poor third-quarter financial results, followed a day later by a major credit rating agency threatening to lower the company’s credit rating.
The decline in advertising revenue, the drop in circulation, the competition from the Internet are staples of industry blogs and news stories reporting on the industry’s plight.
And it’s all true.
But what is equally true but often obscured by the attention and headlines given those alarming reports is that it isn’t the complete story.
Here’s another piece: The commitment through planning, vision, hiring, courage and refusal to dumb down to elevate investigative reporting at The Bee.
This has occurred despite cutbacks, hiring freezes, voluntary buyouts, etc.
It is about the role we play as a newspaper, about going out and doing the hard work of finding original stories, of holding government officials and others accountable, of creating a culture of watchdog reporting.
As a reader you may ask why is this important.
The answer is because such reporting makes our community better and because no one else not TV, radio or the Internet can do such work consistently. They don’t have the resources. Some don’t have the will.
It’s this kind of reporting, mainly focused on regional and local issues, which makes The Bee different from its competitors.
Here are a few examples of what I’m talking about that have appeared in the paper in recent months:
An investigation that led to allegations that the security chief at the Sacramento Public Library had financial interests in two companies run by his wife that overbilled the library $650,000 for maintenance work.
The Sacramento County District Attorney’s office is investigating and other agencies are involved as well, including the county grand jury, the Internal Revenue Service, the FBI and the Contractors State Licensing Board.
Reporting that led to a story about how 16 Sacramento city firefighters together received $50,000 in extra pay after using bachelor’s degrees bought from phony online diploma mills to receive education incentive raises.
Fire department officials became suspicious only after a dozen more firefighters applied for the 5 percent raises using the phony diplomas.
The story raised questions about why the department allowed the firefighters to keep the money and why no one was disciplined.
A story about former NBA All-Star and local philanthropist Kevin Johnson and how many of the properties owned by him or companies and organizations he founded have been cited 73 times and fined by the city for dilapidated and deteriorating conditions.
The story marked the first time Oak Park residents questioned Johnson’s ability to follow through on his ambitious development plans to revitalize his old neighborhood.
The saga of how Sacramento State President Alexander Gonzalez tried to help a prominent local couple who were potential million-dollar university donors by asking the government of Tanzania to give them permission to hunt dozens of exotic animals.
The couple needed special permission to hunt because the animals weren’t covered by the standard Tanzanian hunting license. Three of the listed species were nearing or at high risk for extinction.
The college president took the action as part of a now-abandoned effort to build a natural history museum.
The story of the Natomas Unified School District buying 41 acres of farmland from a prominent local developer for a record $13.4 million.
Turns out the appraised value of the unincorporated land may have been inflated by millions of dollars and that school board members weren’t told by a district employee that the law firm who advised them also did work for the developer who sold them the land.
A look at the same school district found the former head of facilities gave five no-bid contracts worth almost $434,000 to the construction management firm he founded.
And the list goes on and on.
When you step back and take a look at the big picture, it is a remarkable record, one that has created its own momentum.
Best of all, it is now part of the paper’s identity, part of its DNA.
More than anyone, Rodriguez made it happen. He placed watchdog reporting at the paper’s core. As a leader, he transformed words into tangible results.
That isn’t easy to do in any environment, more so when financial pressures are bearing down and forcing change in others parts of the paper.
Rodriguez made the paper better.
That’s a legacy of which to be proud.
