Politics can divide us. Fact-based local news unites us.
We are relying on readers like you to support this crucial election coverage. Give today and your donation will be doubled.
Or sign up for our email list.
Twenty-one researchers from the University of California San Diego were involved in a study performed on babies in China that has been called unethical, risky and misleading. Experts say the experiment likely would not have passed an ethics review in the United States.
The experiment was a new surgical treatment for infants with cataracts and involved an eye incision in the hopes that the lens would regrow and work properly. Dr. Kang Zhang, the former UCSD chief of eye genetics who resigned this month, helped design the study. The results of the research were published three years ago in Nature, one of the premier scientific journals in the world.
Why this matters
Volunteers in research studies accept potential health risks in order to contribute to a growing bank of scientific knowledge.
As China becomes a growing force in the world’s medical and technological development, some scientists in the U.S. worry the country has not properly protected research participants from harm.
Since then, 26 eye doctors from around the globe have decried the study in two open letters to Nature, and three of the physicians explained their concerns to inewsource.
One of the most troubling offenses, they said, is that the surgeries were tested on infants in both of their eyes, rather than just one. That means if the experiment went wrong, the researchers could have caused the babies to lose their vision. And despite the researchers’ claims that the new surgeries were a success, these eye doctors say the results were no better than treatments already in existence.
“If this had happened in the U.S., I would have sued,” said Demetrios Vavvas, an associate professor and ophthalmology chair at Harvard Medical School. “I would have sued on behalf of the families.”
Craig Klugman, a bioethicist at DePaul University, said this kind of reaction to a research paper is unusual.
“When you have that many people jumping at the same time to be on there, they are concerned and they are worried that people will be harmed by following this,” he said.
Nature says all articles it publishes go through a rigorous review process, but Vavvas and other ophthalmologists have questioned how thorough that process was for this study. They’ve also been frustrated by the journal’s slow response to their complaints — it took more than 20 months to publish their letters. Nature has not retracted the article, which has been cited at least 24 times by other researchers studying lens regrowth and the potential of stem cells.
The study by Zhang and others calls attention to several ongoing problems affecting human research, including gaps in the way scientific articles are reviewed before publishing, conflicting ethical principles around the world and the role universities play in regulating their researchers’ work outside of school.
Zhang resigned from UCSD on July 4 as inewsource was reporting on his undisclosed connections to foreign businesses and a Chinese government program. He had been on leave since April, when our investigation found he had put research subjects in harm’s way for years.
UCSD would not comment for this story.
Zhang told inewsource in an email last week the study was not unethical or misleading, followed international research standards and underwent a proper ethics review in China.
“It is not unusual for groundbreaking research involving innovative treatments to invite criticism, especially from persons who are wed to the pre-existing treatments,” Zhang said, adding that the surgery “revealed an immense potential for alleviating suffering and improving the quality of life for countless people well beyond the field of ophthalmology.”
Blind hope
Vavvas became an ophthalmologist 16 years ago because his father was born with congenital cataracts, the eye problem Zhang and the team were studying.
“It was a paper on a subject that is near and dear to my heart,” Vavvas said.
The condition is present from birth and creates a cloudy lens — the part of the eye that focuses light so a person can see clearly. If the cataract is not removed, the child can develop amblyopia, also known as “lazy eye,” and lose vision.
The standard treatment in the U.S. for children under 2 years old is to remove the lens while leaving tissue behind that allows it to regrow naturally. It’s not a flawless procedure – lenses that regenerate don’t always stay clear, and the children often require additional surgeries and thick glasses.
The researchers, including those from UCSD and China, wanted to try a different approach. They made a smaller incision in a different part of the eye, hoping the lens would regrow properly.
They tested the new surgery on rabbits and monkeys — and then a dozen babies up to the age of 2.
Their resulting article in Nature claimed every child regrew clear, functioning lenses with the new treatment and the babies had fewer complications than the 25 children who received the standard treatment for comparison.
“Therefore, our new study provides a novel approach to lens regeneration,” the research paper says, “and results in improved outcomes.”
When he first saw the results, Vavvas said he was excited and hopeful that scientists had found a better solution. But as he scrutinized the details, he realized the study was “both scientifically not sound and ethically unjustifiable in the U.S. and the world.”
“I could not believe what I was reading,” he said. “Immediately I contacted other colleagues, preeminent people in the field, chairmen of departments in the U.S. and Europe and Japan, and everybody was also appalled to the same level I was that this thing was done and that it was even published in Nature.”
One of his biggest concerns was that the surgeries were tested on infants in both of their eyes. Although the study didn’t report any major complications from the new treatment, making incisions in both eyes meant any negative effects could have occurred twice in each child and led to a loss of vision.
The researchers have defended their procedure. Zhang told inewsource surgeries were performed in both eyes “to prevent an imbalance of vision and increased risk” of complications, including vision loss. Yizhi Liu, a researcher at Sun Yat-sen University in China who helped oversee the study, said in an email that “a smaller group of patients underwent the procedure to establish acceptable safety and efficacy, before proceeding to a full study.”
But Vavvas believes that doesn’t eliminate or outweigh the risk of possibly blinding children. And he’s not the only one with those concerns. Vavvas and his Harvard University colleague Deborah VanderVeen told inewsource they believe this experiment would not have been approved by an ethics review board in the U.S.
“Perhaps this is acceptable in China, but it’s not here,” in the U.S., said VanderVeen, an associate professor at Harvard Medical School and a full-time associate in the ophthalmology department at Boston Children’s Hospital. “I don’t think it was ethical.”
Statements to inewsource
Read emails sent to inewsource by researchers Kang Zhang and Yizhi Liu, as well as comments by Nature and its publisher, in response to our questions.
VanderVeen noticed inconsistencies between what the researchers said they accomplished and what the details actually showed.
Images of the infants’ eyes show their lenses were not clear and normal like the study claimed, VanderVeen said, and in one case, a photo of a baby’s eye showed no lens regrowth at all. Plus, the study didn’t take place over a long enough time to see how many of the children would need more surgeries. Overall, the results were no better than what one would expect from existing treatments in the U.S., she said.
The experimental surgeries seemed successful, VanderVeen said, because the infants who received the standard treatment had much worse outcomes than normal. Almost half had complications including inflammation, swelling, pressure and lens cloudiness — a much higher rate than she typically sees.
In one of the responses written to Nature, three ophthalmologists from the United Kingdom wrote that the average baby’s vision after surgery was “the threshold for the legal definition of blindness, an outcome that would lead most ophthalmologists, and probably most parents, to question the value of this new proposed intervention.”
Even so, since the paper was published, other eye doctors have begun testing the new treatment. A group of three ophthalmologists from Russia studied how the procedure affected a 1-year-old girl with cataracts. Their results have not been published yet.
Despite the concerns, Liu said the study was following the principle of “first do no harm” by developing a new technique to improve treatments for babies with cataracts. He and the other researchers are currently conducting a follow-up study to learn more about the long-term safety of the treatment, which he said will show the babies have a “very good prognosis.”
Zhang added that the babies’ eyesight was close to normal for their age and the researchers’ results were not inaccurate.
“This is wishful thinking at its best. We all wish their findings were true,” Vavvas said. “If true, we would be the first to adopt it.”
Ethics in practice
Over the past four decades, the U.S. and other Western countries have struggled to come to an understanding with China — a growing force in the world’s scientific and technological development — on the best standards and principles to follow in research.
The Chinese government spends more than $250 billion a year on research, and that number is rising. More than 800 new drugs enter human trials in the country annually, which are tested on about 500,000 research participants.
The country is quickly catching up to the U.S., which spent 2.8% of its gross domestic product on research and development in 2016, compared to 2.1% in China.
Western countries have been pressuring China to create policies around research ethics and set up institutional review boards, which approve studies in advance and can shut them down if they are not properly protecting participants.
The first review board at a Chinese university was established in 1996, when Peking University wanted to work with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to examine the effects of folic acid on pregnancy. Since then, the Ministry of Health and the Food and Drug Administration in China have established standards for how the increasing number of boards around the country should review research.
But in 2016, three Chinese scientists found that the country’s review boards are not consistent, efficient or well organized. That followed a study by a Chinese researcher who revealed nearly a third of articles published in one of the country’s key academic journals were plagiarized. China’s standards for research ethics also continue to draw criticism from the West.
“I don’t think (China is) necessarily adopting Western values when it comes to research,” said Klugman, the bioethicist at DePaul. “I think what they’re doing is adopting the Western process for research. But when you’re doing that without the underlying philosophy of the importance of the individual making decisions, then it’s kind of a meaningless system.”
Chinese researcher Dr. He Jiankui shocked the world in November when he proudly announced that he had taken embryos from an HIV-positive parent and made them resistant to the virus, then implanted them in a female volunteer.
He claims his experiment was a success — that the woman gave birth to healthy twins without HIV — but the incident sparked international outrage. Scientists feared the procedure had not been studied enough to understand the potential long-term health effects for the children, and they worried about the possibility of “designer babies,” which would be gene edited for non-medical traits like eye and hair color.
“There’s a concern that some of the research we’re seeing out of China, it’s happening fast,” Klugman said. “They move from computer to animal to people models very quickly. And that makes sense from an economic standpoint, because if you get something that’s marketable which you can sell, you can make a lot of money.”
Differing ethical expectations around the world can create complications during international projects. The infant cataract study was performed in China, but it involved researchers from San Diego, Boston and Dallas.
The published article in Nature said the study was approved by a review board at Sun Yat-sen University. UCSD policy also requires “clinical trials and other human subject activity” conducted by its researchers be approved by the school’s institutional review board, or IRB. That’s true even when the studies are not performed on campus, “unless UCSD has entered into an agreement with an ‘outside’ IRB to provide review.”
inewsource could find no evidence in UCSD documents that the cataract study was ever brought before the university’s review board. UCSD wouldn’t answer questions about whether that violated procedures, but Zhang said he followed the university’s rules.
UCSD put out a news release the day the Nature article published. It quoted Zhang describing the new procedure as “a paradigm shift in cataract surgery” that offers “a safer and better treatment” for patients.
Lax ethics review boards can affect what becomes published research. Scientific journals don’t typically do their own ethics reviews of studies before publishing them. Instead, they require studies be approved in advance by these boards, which are supposed to guarantee the researchers protected the rights of participants.
Because a Chinese university’s review board approved the cataract study, Nature considered the study ethical and the research was published in one of the world’s foremost scientific journals, which reaches more than half a million people.
Research and review
About 6,000 miles away from where the cataract study was performed, eye researcher Chris Hammond picked up a copy of Nature and read about the new treatment. He was astonished and fascinated.
Hammond is the Frost chair of ophthalmology at King’s College London and holds degrees from Cambridge and Oxford universities. He told inewsource he was so interested in what he was reading that he brought it up during a lab meeting the next week.
But as he and his colleagues discussed the findings, they developed some of the same concerns as Vavvas and VanderVeen. Hammond worried that someone superficially reading the study might conclude that the new surgery was as good as existing treatments, which may not be the case.
How, Hammond wondered, could this not have been caught by Nature’s review process before it was published?
“We are used to the concept that only the best research is published in Nature,” Hammond said, and therefore it must have been properly reviewed by the journal. “But on reading the manuscript, there are questions about who reviewed it from the clinical side, because those are the areas that we questioned.
“Clearly in our view, peer review of those aspects wasn’t thorough enough.”
Nature publishes less than 8% of the 200 papers submitted to the journal each week. If the paper isn’t immediately rejected, it is sent to one or more independent reviewers familiar with the subject to provide feedback. Nature relies on tens of thousands of these peer reviewers, or “referees,” each year.
“Referees are expected to identify flaws, suggest improvements and assess novelty,” Nature’s peer review policy states. “If the manuscript is deemed important enough to be published in a high visibility journal, referees ensure that it is internally consistent, thereby ferreting out spurious conclusions or clumsy frauds.”
Although Nature offers guidelines for reviewers, training is not mandatory. The peer review process scientific journals use has been the subject of many complaints and news stories questioning its efficacy.
“Peer review can be quite a toothless watchdog,” said Ivan Oransky, vice president of editorial at Medscape and co-founder of Retraction Watch, a website that covers scientific integrity and fraud.
“It doesn’t actually do a lot of the things that journal editors like us to think it does,” Oransky said. “Peer reviewers are volunteers — it’s something you’re expected and have to do as part of your academic service. There’s never enough time, and more and more papers are being published. Why are we surprised that things slip through?”
When articles are published in journals like Nature, they are more likely to be picked up by news outlets and considered high-quality science, Oransky said.
In 2014, Nature Neuroscience, a related journal, published a study showing cocoa supplements could improve cognition in old age, which faced criticism from other scientists on many aspects of the work. Even so, news sites reported it as evidence that chocolate could someday cure Alzheimer’s disease.
Ophthalmologists worried they were witnessing a similar problem with the cataract study in 2016. The results were picked up by The Guardian, WebMD and scientific websites such as STAT and Science Daily. They were also touted by UCSD, one of the top research universities in the world.
Hammond had never written a letter with concerns about a study before, but in this case, he wanted to make his doubts known. He said he believes the surgery was novel and is worthy of more research, but it should still be considered experimental until the long-term impacts have been tested.
Hammond partnered with two other eye doctors in the United Kingdom to draft and submit a response to Nature. At the same time, Vavvas at Harvard University led a group of 22 other eye doctors in drafting a separate letter.
The two letters were submitted one month after the eye study appeared in Nature. It took more than 20 months for the journal to publish them, along with a response from the original research team led by Zhang.
“There is a forum for such criticism of peer-reviewed articles, and the response, in the academic journals in which the research is published,” Zhang told inewsource. “Please note the comments published by these two ophthalmologist groups and our response have been rigorously adjudicated and approved by a panel of the world’s top experts in this field invited by Nature, who also reviewed and approved our initial publication.”
As he waited for Nature to review his letter, Vavvas said other doctors reached out asking for his help — parents were coming to them, hoping their children with cataracts could receive the new surgery. The doctors wanted to know when Vavvas’ letter would be published, so they could explain concerns about the new treatment to the parents.
Vavvas said his response to Nature was “delayed unnecessarily.”
When asked about the delay, a spokeswoman for Springer Nature, Nature’s publisher, told inewsource in an email that the letters needed to be closely reviewed.
“Ensuring that the scientific record is accurate is always our highest priority and we will update the literature when appropriate,” said Rebecca Walton, head of communications for Springer Nature. “We take all concerns raised about papers we publish seriously and look into them carefully. It is important that all material is scrutinised by experts in the field — the process of peer review — before any conclusions are drawn and any comments made.”
A spokesperson for Nature said that “for confidentiality reasons, we cannot discuss specific cases.”
Days before this article published, Zhang sent an email to inewsource that said he “was not involved in the human subject study in any way,” and his role was only to analyze the data after the surgeries were completed. Zhang said he was the front man because he was a better English speaker than Liu, the researcher in China who oversaw the experiment.
The Nature article specifically states Zhang and two others “designed the study and wrote the paper” and, according to Nature’s policies, he confirmed the study’s integrity. Plus, the Guardian, WebMD and at least two other news organizations describe Zhang as the study’s lead author and quote him explaining the new treatment’s success and potential.
Zhang is also the lead author on the response addressing other eye doctor’s concerns about the study. That response includes a note stating authors who contributed to it were “involved in clinical investigation of lens regeneration,” meaning they were involved in the experiments and not just data analysis. Zhang told inewsource “the entire clinical trial, including design, execution, and follow-up, was performed by Dr. Liu’s clinical team” in China.
- Editorial Standards Page
- Ethics Policy
- Diversity Statement
- Diversity Staffing Report
- Corrections Policy
- Ownership Structure, Funding
- Founding Date
- Masthead
- Mission Statement with Coverage Priorities
- Fact-checking Standards
- Unnamed Sources Policy
Editorial Standards Page
- Our Mission
- Ethics Policy
- Diversity
- Ownership Structure, Funding and Grants
- Financial Documents
- Fact-checking and Verification Standards
- Unnamed Sources
- Corrections and Clarifications
- Actionable Feedback and Newsroom Contacts
- Masthead
- Byline Policy
- The Trust Project
- Privacy Policy
Our Mission
inewsource is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom dedicated to improving lives in the San Diego region and beyond through impactful, data-based investigative and accountability journalism.
Our Vision
Betrayals of the public trust are revealed and rectified, wrongdoing is deterred, and inequities are illuminated thanks to inewsource’s deep, dogged, fact-based reporting.
Our Values
Truth: Above all else, we value the importance of a free and credible press. Truth is the cornerstone of democracy and the core value for inewsource.
Transparency: We build trust with our readers by adhering to the highest standards and ethics, and to reporting with facts, precision and context.
Collaboration: Our newsroom prioritizes collaboration over competition. We regularly partner with media outlets on reporting projects and to share content.
Community: Our reporting serves the San Diego region, and we strive to build relationships with our audience by getting out into the community to listen and engage.
Ethics Policy
inewsource will conduct its business with the highest standards of decency, fairness and accuracy. These standards shall apply equally to inewsource employees, freelancers and all others engaged in gathering information on behalf of inewsource. All receive a copy of these ethical standards.
In the course of our reporting, we will consistently:
● Identify our organization and ourselves fully and avoid false representations of any kind to any source.
● Obtain consent from all parties before electronically recording any interview or conversation except in extraordinary cases authorized by the Managing Editor and Editor. If a source refuses to be taped, that must be honored; no recordings are to be made without consent.
● Respect the individual’s right to privacy. inewsource will never manipulate or barter private, personal, health, financial or other extraneous information in the course of preparing its reports.
● Any source we describe or write about in any significant manner must be contacted. The employee should document all efforts to contact the source, and if unsuccessful, should summarize these efforts at contact in the body of his/her writing.
In addition, inewsource follows the Code of Ethics of the Society of Professional Journalists. The latest version, revised in 2014, can be found here.
Editorial Independence Policy
We subscribe to standards of editorial independence adopted by the Institute for Nonprofit News (INN) as follows:
Our organization retains full authority over editorial content to protect the best journalistic and business interests of our organization. We will maintain a firewall between news coverage decisions and sources of all revenue. Acceptance of financial support does not constitute implied or actual endorsement of donors or their products, services or opinions.
We accept gifts, grants and sponsorships from individuals and organizations for the general support of our activities, but our news judgments are made independently and not on the basis of donor support. Our organization also may consider donations to support the coverage of particular topics, but our organization maintains editorial control of the coverage. We will cede no right of review or influence of editorial content, nor of unauthorized distribution of editorial content.
Our organization will make public all donors who give a total of $1,000 or more. We will accept anonymous donations for general support only if it is clear that sufficient safeguards have been put into place that the expenditure of that donation is made independently by our organization and in compliance with INN’s Membership Standards.
Diversity
Diverse Voices
Inclusiveness is at the heart of thinking and acting as journalists, and it supports the educational mandate of inewsource. Race, class, generation, gender, sexual orientation, ability, and geography all affect point of view. inewsource believes that reflecting societal differences in reporting leads to better, more nuanced stories and a better-informed community.
inewsource is committed to employment equity and diversity.
Diverse Staffing Report
Below is a breakdown of staffing data at inewsource. We determine the composition of our staff by asking them to self-identify. It is based on a newsroom of 11 and a total staff of 15 as of August 2020. Percentages are based on 15 total survey responses. The numbers include full-time and part-time staff, full-time fellows and full-time and part-time interns.
| All Staff Percentages are based on 15 total survey responses. The numbers include full-time and part-time staff, full-time fellows and full-time and part-time interns. | Newsroom Percentages are based on 15 completed survey responses to this question. | Business Percentages are based on 15 completed survey responses to this question. | |||
| Gender Identity | Gender Identity | Gender Identity | |||
| Women | 80% | Women | 82% | Women | 75% |
| Men | 20% | Men | 18% | Men | 25% |
| Sexual Orientation | Sexual Orientation | Sexual Orientation | |||
| Straight | 87% | Straight | 82% | Straight | 100% |
| LGBTQ-identifying | 7% | LGBTQ-identifying | 7% | ||
| Not specified | 7% | Not specified | 7% | ||
| Speak a language beyond English at home | 33% | Speak a language beyond English at home | 18% | Speak a language beyond English at home | 75% |
| Race/Ethnicity | Race/Ethnicity | Race/Ethnicity | |||
| White | 67% | White | 73% | White | 50% |
| Hispanic or Latinx | 20% | Two or more races | 18% | Hispanic or Latinx | 50% |
| Two or more races | 13% | Hispanic or Latinx | 9% | ||
| Age | Age | Age | |||
| 20-29 | 40% | 20-29 | 45% | 20-29 | 25% |
| 30-39 | 47% | 30-39 | 45% | 30-39 | 50% |
| 60 or older | 13% | 60 or older | 9% | 60 or older | 25% |
* The percentages in the charts have been rounded and may not add up to 100.
Ownership Structure, Funding and Grants
inewsource is a nonprofit organization, whose legal name is Investigative Newsource. It does business as inewsource. The business was incorporated on Aug. 4, 2009 in the state of California. Tax-exempt status as a 501c3 was granted by the IRS on Sept. 15, 2010. inewsource is funded primarily by individual contributions and foundation grants. We are guided by a board of directors.
Editorial independence: Journalists employed by inewsource take no editorial direction from donors whose contributions may support the organization. inewsource will not hesitate to report on its donors when events warrant. Our Editorial Independence Policy details the firewall between journalism and revenue.
To be transparent with the public, inewsource lists its donors on its website. In cases where a donor is the subject of an inewsource story, additional disclosure will be made.
Financial Documents
We do our due diligence to earn your trust in our reporting, as well as in our governance and financial sustainability. All of our financial documents are made available to view so that our supporters can trust we are sound stewards of your philanthropy. Review our IRS Form 990s, audited financial statements and annual reports:
Tax Returns
Financial Statements
Annual Reports
Fact-checking and Verification Standards
Transparency is one of our core values. Today, there is a need to build trust with our audience because new media and ways of communicating spread lies and slanted news faster than “real” news. At the same time, this era of new technologies makes it easier than ever for news organizations to be transparent. People don’t just have to believe us, they can investigate our investigations with our source materials.
Transparency is key to building credibility.
inewsource reporters have primary responsibility for reporting, writing, and fact-checking their stories. But before a story is published, the reporter reviews all facts and sources with an editor or another reporter. Facts must be traced to a primary source.
In addition, we “transparify” certain investigative stories. This process involves publishing a version of the web story with hyperlinks to all the story’s facts. This is proof that all facts have been documented with primary evidence. We do this to build trust with our readers and to be as transparent as we hope the public figures and institutions that we hold accountable will be.
Unnamed Sources
Not all sources are created equal. Some sources cannot speak authoritatively, provide proper analysis or speak specifically to every inquiry placed before them. To maintain the integrity of our reporting, inewsource reporters must select sources who can speak with validity to the topic at hand, and avoid presenting unqualified or underqualified sources as experts.
If an interviewed source has a conflict of interest, or whose qualifications may be tangential or limited, reporters will note that within the context of the story.
It is incumbent upon reporters to fully background their sources to uncover conflicts of interest or slant prior to using them in a story.
Unless discussed prior to an interview, all subjects talking to inewsource journalists are on the record. Specifically, the source is identified by name and title, and their exact or paraphrased words are attributed to them for publication. If journalists speak with sources who are not politicians, public figures or those not commonly interviewed by journalists, staff should explain clearly that information discussed will be on the record and for publication.
There are times, however, when information may be critical for a story but cannot be found or verified by other means. For example, a source may be able to confirm specific information about a series of events they may have witnessed, but have legitimate concerns about using their name or title. The repercussions to the source could be legal, job-related retribution or personal safety. The source and journalist must discuss these potential dangers and terms of use should be agreed upon by both parties.
If inewsource publishes information from an anonymous source, inewsource will explain to readers, in as much detail as possible, why we agreed to anonymity.
Corrections and Clarifications
inewsource strives for accuracy in everything we do, which is why we are committed to fact checking our content. But sometimes we make errors. When that happens, we correct them. We also clarify stories when something we’ve written is confusing or could be misinterpreted.
We endeavor to always be transparent about our commitment to correcting errors and clarifying misperceptions. When staffers see, hear or read about a possible issue with the accuracy of any inewsource content, they are expected to bring it to the attention of an editor and the web producer so it can be evaluated to determine how to proceed.
Including the web producer is key because inewsource is a multimedia news organization and shares its content with multiple partners on multiple platforms. The web producer must alert these partners about corrections and clarifications.
Corrections and clarifications should be included at the bottom of stories and dated.
Actionable Feedback and Newsroom Contacts
Our audiences know the region we cover and have a stake in maintaining and improving the quality of life in San Diego and Imperial counties. We know your knowledge and insights can help shape what we cover and how we cover it. We invite your comments and complaints on news stories, suggestions for issues to cover or sources to consult. We rely on you to tell us when we get it right and when we need to keep pushing.
Your comments, questions and suggestions can be sent to the team as a whole at contact@inewsource.org or you can contact a specific member of our staff.
Masthead
CEO, Editor and Founder: Lorie Hearn, loriehearn@inewsource.org
Lorie Hearn is the chief executive officer, editor and founder of inewsource. She founded inewsource in the summer of 2009, following a successful reporting and editing career in newspapers. She retired from The San Diego Union-Tribune, where she had been a reporter, Metro Editor and finally the senior editor for Metro and Watchdog Journalism. In addition to department oversight, Hearn personally managed a four-person watchdog team, composed of two data specialists and two investigative reporters. Hearn was a Nieman Foundation fellow at Harvard University in 1994-95. She focused on juvenile justice and drug control policy, a natural course to follow her years as a courts and legal affairs reporter at the San Diego Union and then the Union-Tribune.
Hearn became Metro Editor in 1999 and oversaw regional and city news coverage, which included the city of San Diego’s financial debacle and near bankruptcy. Reporters and editors on Metro during her tenure were part of the Pulitzer Prize-winning stories that exposed Congressman Randy “Duke” Cunningham and led to his imprisonment.
Hearn began her journalism career as a reporter for the Bucks County Courier Times, a small daily outside of Philadelphia, shortly after graduating from the University of Delaware. During the decades following, she moved through countless beats at five newspapers on both coasts.
High-profile coverage included the historic state Supreme Court election in 1986, when three sitting justices were ousted from the bench, and the 1992 execution of Robert Alton Harris. That gas chamber execution was the first time the death penalty was carried out in California in 25 years.
In her nine years as Metro Editor at the Union-Tribune, Hearn made watchdog reporting a priority. Her reporters produced award-winning investigations covering large and small local governments. The depth and breadth of their public service work was most evident in coverage of the wildfires of 2003 and then 2007, when more than half a million people were evacuated from their homes.
Managing Editor: Laura Wingard, laurawingard@inewsource.org
Laura Wingard is the managing editor at inewsource. She has been an editor in San Diego since 2002, working at The San Diego Union-Tribune, KPBS and now inewsource. At the Union-Tribune, she served in a variety of roles including as enterprise editor, government editor, public safety and legal affairs editor, and metro editor. She directed the newspaper’s award-winning coverage of the October 2007 wildfires and the 2010 disappearance of Poway teenager Chelsea King. She also oversaw reporting on San Diego’s pension crisis.
For two years, Wingard was news and digital editor at KPBS, overseeing a team of four multimedia reporters and two web producers. She also was the KPBS liaison with inewsource and collaborated with inewsource chief executive officer and editor Lorie Hearn on investigative work by both news organizations.
Wingard also worked at the Las Vegas Review-Journal as the city editor and as an award-winning reporter covering the environment and politics. She also was the assistant managing editor for metro at The Press-Enterprise in Riverside. She earned her bachelor’s degree at California State University, Fullerton, with a double major in communications/journalism and political science.
Assistant Editor and Senior Reporter: Brad Racino, bradracino@inewsource.org
Brad Racino is the assistant editor and a senior reporter at inewsource. He has produced investigations for print, radio and TV on topics including political corruption, transportation, health, maritime, education and nonprofits.
His cross-platform reporting for inewsource has earned more than 50 awards since 2012, including back-to-back national medals from Investigative Reporters and Editors, two national Edward R. Murrow awards, a Meyer “Mike” Berger award from New York City’s Columbia Journalism School, the Sol Price Award for Responsible Journalism, San Diego SPJ’s First Amendment Award, and a national Emmy nomination.
In 2017, Racino was selected by the Institute for Nonprofit News as one of 10 “Emerging Leaders” in U.S. nonprofit journalism.
Racino has worked as a reporter and database analyst for News21; as a photographer, videographer and reporter for the Columbia Missourian; as a project coordinator for the National Freedom of Information Coalition and as a videographer and editor for Verizon Fios1 TV in New York. He received his master’s degree in journalism from the University of Missouri in 2012.
Byline Policy
Most of our articles carry a byline to identify the author. In some cases, inewsource will use a brand byline such as “Staff” or “inewsource” for internal or editorial information about the newsroom. In these instances, inewsource‘s Editor and Managing Editor are responsible for content that uses a brand byline.
The Trust Project
inewsource is proud to be a member of The Trust Project and support efforts to increase transparency in journalism by displaying the 8 Trust Indicators on our stories. We launched the Trust Indicators on Sep. 16, 2020.
Privacy Policy
inewsource has prepared this Privacy Policy to explain how we collect, use, protect, and share information when you use our inewsource.org website (the “Site“) or when you use any of our services (the “Services“).
By using the Site or Services you consent to this Privacy Policy.
Log Data
Like many site operators, we collect information that your browser sends whenever you visit our site (“Log Data”).
This Log Data may include information such as your computer’s Internet Protocol (“IP”) address, browser type, browser version, the pages of our site that you visit, the time and date of your visit, the time spent on those pages and other statistics.
Cookies
Cookies are files with small amount of data, which may include an anonymous unique identifier. Cookies are sent to your browser from a web site and stored on your computer or mobile device.
Like many sites, we use “cookies” to collect information. You can instruct your browser to refuse all cookies or to indicate when a cookie is being sent. However, if you do not accept cookies, you may not be able to use some portions of our site.
Certain pages on our site may set other third party cookies. For example, we may embed content, such as videos, from another site that sets a cookie. While we try to minimize these third party cookies, we can’t always control what cookies this third party content sets.
Additionally, we may use third party services — such as those that provide social media conveniences, measure traffic, send newsletters and facilitate donations — that may place cookies on your computer. We don’t have any way of knowing how such services handle the resulting data internally. inewsource makes no claim, nor takes liability for the insecure submission of information via these applications.
Here are the services whose cookies you can find on inewsource.org:
- Sharing buttons for Facebook and Twitter. These use the standard scripts provided by each company.
- Google Analytics, which we use to measure site traffic. Google Analytics gathers certain non-personally identifying information over time, such as your IP address, browser type, internet service provider, referring and exit pages, time stamp, and similar data. We also use Facebook Pixel to measure, optimize and build audiences for advertising campaigns served on Facebook. In particular it enables us to see how our users move between devices when accessing our website and Facebook, to ensure that our Facebook advertising is seen by our users most likely to be interested in such advertising by analyzing which content a user has viewed and interacted with on our website.
- Stripe, which allows us to accept donations through our website.
- Salesforce to manage newsletter subscriber, donor, and other identifiable user data.
- Mailchimp, to manage newsletter distributions. We collect your email address if you choose to subscribe to one of our email newsletters or email news alerts. Other optional information that you enter when subscribing – such as your first and last names or city are simply so that we can deliver more personalized email newsletters. We DO NOT sell, rent or market your information to any other parties. We retain your information only as long as necessary to provide your service. When we send emails, it collects some data about which users open the emails and which links are clicked. We use this information to optimize our email newsletters and, as aggregate information, to explain what percentage of our users open and interact with our newsletters.
Personal Data
We only collect personally identifiable information such as your name and email address when you sign up for a newsletter, donate to our organization, or otherwise submit it to us voluntarily. We do not share your personal data with any third parties other than some common service providers, whose products use your information to help us improve our site, deliver newsletters, or allow us to offer donation opportunities.
inewsource limits access to all user data for the purposes of newsletter, fundraising, and customer service only. User data is not sold to or otherwise shared with anyone not working with or for the inewsource.
You may unsubscribe or opt-out of our email and mail communications at any time by hitting the “unsubscribe” button in any email you receive from inewsource, or by emailing us at contact@inewsource.org or calling us at 619-594-5100.
Donor Information
The identities of all donors will be listed on our website. inewsource does not share, trade, sell, or otherwise release donors’ personal information to any third parties.
Refunds
If you encounter errors when donating on the website, please contact us at members@inewsource.org. For example, if you submit a donation for an incorrect amount or make a duplicate transaction please email us immediately so we can reverse the charges.
Cancellation of Recurring Donations
You can cancel your monthly recurring donations free of charge by notifying us at members@inewsource.org.
Links to Other Websites
Our site may contain links to documents, resources or other websites that we think may be of interest to you. We have no control over these other sites or their content. You should be aware when you leave our site for another, and remember that other sites are governed by their own user agreements and privacy policies, which should be available to you to read.
Disclaimers and Limitation of Liability
Although we take reasonable steps to prevent the introduction of viruses, worms, “Trojan Horses” or other destructive materials to our site, we do not guarantee or warrant that our site or materials that may be downloaded from our site are free from such destructive features. We are not liable for any damages or harm attributable to such features. We are not liable for any claim, loss or injust based on errors, omissions, interruptions or other inaccuracies on our site, nor for any claim, loss or injust that results from your use of this site or your breach of any provision of this User Agreement.
Contact Us
If there are any questions regarding this privacy policy, please contact us at contact@inewsource.org or call us at 619-594-5100.