It can sometimes feel that journalists live a world apart from their readers. That shouldn’t be the case. To get a better sense of the people in our newsroom, I’m letting them do the honors.
First up this week is our managing editor, Laura Wingard.
Tell me about your early years as a journalist.
Being a reporter for 10 years at the start of my career was great fun. Some of my best beats included covering the environment and politics — especially in Las Vegas. Amazing news town. I’ve been to the top of Yucca Mountain, where politicians still want to store the nation’s nuclear waste, and I’ve been inside underground tunnels on the Nevada Test Site where the U.S. did nuclear testing.
What is one of your reporting highlights?
Interviewing Daniel Ellsberg of Pentagon Papers fame on the dusty desert road that leads to the Nevada Test Site. He arrived in a cab on his way to getting arrested at an anti-nuclear protest.
Best editing job?
Whenever I led a team of reporters — and that includes at inewsource, The San Diego Union-Tribune, KPBS, The Press-Enterprise and the Las Vegas Review-Journal. If you’re an editor and your reporters don’t delight and inspire you as they dig for stories, well, you should get out of the news business.
You’re a big sports fan. What teams do you root for?
Cincinnati Reds, Pittsburgh Steelers, Los Angeles Lakers and Ohio State football. Figure out that diverse list and you win a prize!
How can readers get in touch with you?
I’m on Twitter: @laura_wingard. Or, there’s email: laurawingard@inewsource.org.
What questions do you have about our newsroom? Reply to this email and let me know.
Have a good weekend, and thanks for reading.
Update: Maps of final primary election results in City Council races
Using the official election results, we updated on Friday our precinct-level voting maps for the four San Diego City Council races decided in the June 5 primary.
The maps are searchable and allow you to explore voting results by precinct or by address.
The precinct maps show the neighborhoods where candidates did well and where they might have trouble in November.
How to explore the maps
Select one of the four council races using the filters on the left. You can then use the address search to find your precinct or click-and-drag to explore each of the maps. Click on a precinct to see a breakdown of voting by candidate.
The county Registrar of Voters Office didn’t finish the vote tally for the primary until Thursday. Two of the council races came down to a few votes.
Continue reading…
City Council incumbent finishes second by six votes
The good news for Councilwoman Myrtle Cole is that San Diego incumbents almost always win re-election. None has lost since 1991.
But with Cole coming in second and losing by six votes to challenger Monica Montgomery, Cole appears to be an underdog in the District 4 race. The two Democrats are now headed for a runoff in November.
And in the race to replace Councilman David Alvarez in District 8, just three votes separated the second- and third-place candidates. This could lead to a recount, but if the vote count stands Vivian Moreno and Antonio Martinez will face off in November.
This could be why fireworks are banned in San Diego County
Fireworks are illegal in San Diego County. And there’s probably good reason. The state is bone dry and a perfect breeding ground for wildfires. (Case in point: The West fire that broke out in Alpine on Friday.) I wanted to know how many fires are sparked by fireworks in California, so I called Cal Fire and got the stats, including the property loss, acres burned and injuries caused by fireworks-related blazes.
By the numbers
From 2013 to 2017, fireworks started 3,125 fires in California — with 37 percent of them occurring on the Fourth of July.
Fireworks-related blazes also have been increasing annually since 2014.
Most of the damage in 2014 came from the Monticello fire when fireworks on the Fourth of July sparked a 6,488-acre blaze in Yolo County, injuring five people.
Continue reading for more stats…
Join us at Bivouac Ciderworks
If you haven’t signed up for our next meetup event, there’s still time. Come out to Bivouac Ciderworks Tuesday, July 17, from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. to hear a little bit about us, meet the owners of Bivouac, hang out with our staffers and ask us questions about our work.
State auditors found ‘sufficient evidence’ that two former top administrators in the San Ysidro School District may have engaged in financial fraud and misuse of district funds, according to a new report.
Tell your friends to sign up for The Weekender here.
We’ll let you know when big things happen.
