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.
A 44-year-old woman was tested for COVID-19 at the Palomar Medical Center in Escondido. She was found unresponsive in bed three days later while waiting for her results.
In Chula Vista, a 54-year-old man who had been sick for two weeks stayed home rather than seek medical care. His roommate found him on the toilet, deceased.
And an El Centro man with kidney disease was denied dialysis twice after developing a fever and coronavirus symptoms. Days later, he fell out of his car and went to the hospital, where he tested positive for the virus. He was sent home and died soon after at UCSD Medical Center.
These stories reflect the growing number of people in the region who are not getting the medical attention they need until it’s too late.
Deaths at home have climbed to levels well above what San Diego County has seen in the prior three years, according to an inewsource review of public health data. The percentage of deaths occurring in homes — as opposed to in hospitals or other settings — rose from 34.8% in 2019 to about 38% since January.
Andrew Noymer, an epidemiologist at UC Irvine who studies pandemics, said the findings “highlight a gap” in communication from public officials to residents about the virus and when to seek help.
While there’s no way of knowing for sure if a hospital visit will save a life, Noymer said, in some cases, it could.
“People need to understand that if they’re very sick, they need to seek medical care,” he said.
Interviews with healthcare workers, researchers and the families of those who have died shed light on why some who are seriously ill are not going to hospitals: a belief that doctors can’t or won’t help COVID-19 patients, a lack of education and guidance from public health workers and an ongoing problem with false-negative test results.
Totally alone
Hector Navarro Lopez, who died from the virus after his wife called 911 from their house, hadn’t seen a doctor since 2018.
The 52-year-old San Marcos resident had worked two jobs — in manufacturing and newspaper distribution — to provide for his wife and four children, but it still wasn’t enough. He had let his health insurance lapse for six months to save money.
Noemi Arroyo Ramirez, his wife of 26 years, said he had no underlying health conditions and was almost never sick, so he rarely took the time for routine checkups.
On May 18, after developing a mild cough and difficulty tasting food, Navarro Lopez went to a county lab for a COVID-19 test, his wife said, but he wouldn’t get the results for four days.
In the meantime, he experienced stomach discomfort and an occasional fever. He sought help from North County Health Services in San Marcos, a nonprofit clinic that predominantly serves low-income and Hispanic families.
At the clinic, staff were screening patients for coronavirus symptoms and taking their temperatures before allowing anyone to enter the building.
When Arroyo told the healthcare workers that her husband had a fever the day before, she said the employees abruptly packed up their belongings and retreated inside the clinic. Roughly 10 minutes later, a worker returned, telling the family to go home and wait for a call from a doctor.
Areli, the couple’s oldest child, said it felt like the staff had no compassion for her dad once they thought he might have the virus.
“People don’t know how to handle it,” the 24-year-old said. “They enter this paranoia. There’s no respect.”
She added: “I can’t help but think maybe they didn’t do enough.”
The ailing father received a phone call later that day from the clinic. Arroyo said the doctor didn’t ask to see her husband’s stomach over video chat and offered no medication or treatments — only instructions to call back once Navarro Lopez’s test results came in.
The following day, on May 22, he got the news: positive for COVID-19.
Arroyo called the clinic and left a message, she said, but never heard back.
In a statement, Dr. Marie Russell, the North County Health Services chief medical officer, said its clinics have been “committed to caring for the community throughout the COVID-19 pandemic,” and began screening patients for symptoms early on to protect others from the virus.
Russell said if someone tests positive at their designated labs, a doctor will follow up and provide care instructions. But in Navarro Lopez’s case, he was tested at a different lab before he ever walked into the San Marcos clinic.
A spokesperson for the clinic added that its doctors strive to do video appointments when they can’t see patients in person, but sometimes phone visits are necessary if there are technical difficulties or the patient has “limited video capability.”
Arroyo said she was left to care for her husband using her own intuition, television and Google search results.
She gave him hot tea, isolated him in a bedroom, took his temperature multiple times a day and supplied him with aspirin, vitamin C and Tylenol.
But Arroyo is no doctor. She didn’t know that the coronavirus can cause oxygen levels to drop dangerously low even while someone looks and acts normal.
And she didn’t know what to do when her husband’s fever rose to 103 degrees. All she saw in online articles was to go to the hospital if your temperature reaches 104.
“It felt like, ‘This is your patient. Take care of him. It’s your responsibility. If he passes away, it’s your fault,’” Arroyo said.
“I felt like that, like I’m alone. Totally alone.”
Arroyo said after losing her husband to COVID-19, she lost her trust in healthcare providers, too.
“If I feel like I will die, I will go to the hospital,” she said. “Otherwise, I will not go to a hospital or talk to a doctor because they don’t help me with something simple (like) stomach problems.”
A devastating outcome
Reports from the San Diego County medical examiner’s office tell the stories of more than a dozen COVID-19 victims since March who died at home or on their way to hospitals.
In five cases, the victims tried to seek medical care in their final hours before death but could not be saved. In another four, they were rushed across the border from Mexico in search of an ambulance. In three, they suffered serious falls — a common side effect of the virus in old age — that resulted in their deaths.
Four other reports say the deceased were found unresponsive at home by family members, roommates or others.
The medical examiner’s office only reviews a small fraction of COVID-19 cases, including sometimes when the cause of death is unclear or when the victim hasn’t sought medical care recently. The reports grimly describe how the virus can attack the body at full force without warning, and how quickly it can take a life — especially when medical professionals aren’t available to help.
Experts say a reticence to seek medical care can result from misunderstandings about how American hospitals are operating during the pandemic.
This is especially true in border communities. Dr. Eva Tovar Hirashima, the prehospital medical director at the Tijuana Red Cross and an emergency room doctor in Riverside, said people who have previously sought medical care in Mexico may expect a similar experience in the U.S. — that hospitals are too overwhelmed to take care of patients who aren’t visibly, seriously ill.
“People who are first generation (Americans) and who have been exposed to the Mexican medical system may believe that in order for them to actually be assessed appropriately and admitted to the hospital, they really need to come at the last minute,” Tovar Hirashima said.
“Because if they don’t come at the last minute, then they’ll be discharged home.”
Early on in the pandemic, Tovar Hirashima realized that more Tijuana residents asking for medical help from the Red Cross were dead by the time emergency paramedic teams arrived on the scene.
San Diego physicians noticed something similar on the U.S. side of the border — the number of emergency room patients was shrinking, not growing.
County data shows that early on in the pandemic, roughly 48,000 fewer people visited the region’s emergency rooms than during that time in 2019.
Meanwhile, home deaths started to rise. Hundreds of more people in San Diego County have died in their homes than would be expected in a normal year, according to a review of county public health data.
By April, hospital executives were appealing to the public through the news media, encouraging people to seek medical attention if they felt unwell.
“Our concern is the patients that do have chest pain or stroke symptoms — if they’re waiting to come in, time is literally ticking away,” Dr. Ghazala Sharieff, the chief medical officer of Scripps Health, told KUSI News in April. “So if they wait, that could be a devastating outcome.”
Dr. Wilma Wooten, the county’s public health officer, said officials are educating the public through their healthcare partners, media sources and other channels to alleviate concerns about the coronavirus. She encouraged residents to reach out to their physicians if they don’t feel well.
“Don’t be afraid to seek healthcare,” Wooten said. “Call your doctor. Much of medical care is being conducted via telemedicine. So in many cases you may not need to go in face-to-face.”
But Wooten’s statement didn’t acknowledge the many San Diegans without a regular primary care physician to call. Navarro Lopez, the San Marcos resident, was one of them.
In county survey results from 2015, about 14% of San Diegans said they did not have a regular place to go when they became sick, and 18% had not visited a doctor in the past year.
Gene Kallenberg, a faculty physician at UC San Diego, said primary care doctors are a key source of support and guidance for COVID-19 patients. Not having one is frequently the root of the problem, he said.
“Potentially the absence of a relationship with a primary care physician led to the patients making these poor judgments that left them home in bed and dying,” Kallenberg said.
At UCSD, doctors communicate with their coronavirus patients almost every day until they recover, Kallenberg said.
“It’s tragic to me when someone has no one to call,” he said.
Playing catch-up
If a resident with COVID-19 doesn’t have a regular primary care provider, the county tries to fill in the gap.
The county public health office says it has multiple “touchpoints” to communicate with coronavirus-positive residents and provide them with care instructions.
But some people — like Navarro Lopez and his family — get left behind.
The first point of contact occurs when a person tests positive for the virus at a public lab. A county nurse is supposed to reach out to them with instructions for isolating at home, wearing a mask, social distancing and disinfecting their environment. The nurse is also supposed to explain when it might be necessary to go to the hospital.
Arroyo said her husband was tested at a county-run lab in Escondido, and yet the family never received a call.
The second touchpoint occurs during contact tracing. Public officials say case investigators try to reach everyone who tests positive for COVID-19 so they can track down others who were potentially exposed. Then, a separate group of workers called contact tracers reach out to those who may have been infected.
The process poses another opportunity for the public to speak with experts about what they should do to protect themselves and monitor their health. But Arroyo said she and her husband did not receive calls from investigators or contact tracers.
County Supervisor Nathan Fletcher, who co-chairs the region’s COVID-19 taskforce, said he didn’t know the details of Navarro Lopez’s case, but it’s possible the county could have had outdated or incorrect phone numbers for the family.
Rick Greenwood, a member of California’s testing taskforce, said case investigators and contact tracers up and down the state are swamped with work. The problem with contact tracing, he said, is the more tests that are conducted, the more the staff becomes overwhelmed.
“If you only do a thousand tests and find a few people positive, the system isn’t stressed,” Greenwood said. “If you start doing 200,000 and 300,000 a day and end up with thousands of positives, you need to have a system in place to know what to do with them.”
“The state’s playing catch up,” he added, “trying to hire people at the same time that hundreds of positive tests are coming in.”
In San Diego County, contact tracing efforts slowed in late July. At the time, the county’s goal was for 70% of investigations to begin within 24 hours, but only 11% did.
Fletcher said the county has hired additional staff and now has a big enough team to reach everyone who has tested positive and the people they could have infected.
Should I go to the hospital?
According to the San Diego County Health & Human Services Agency, not necessarily. Most people with COVID-19 are able to manage their symptoms as an outpatient and do not require hospitalization.
Symptoms of COVID-19 range from mild illness such as a bad head cold, loss of taste/smell, to fevers and fatigue, all the way to severe viral pneumonia leading to hospitalization.
There are no specific medical treatments for COVID-19. You can use the same over the counter treatments that you would use for any other viral respiratory illness. It is important that you stay rested and well hydrated. Also, get in contact with your doctor. Many clinics are able to do telephone visits with the doctor for more specific guidance.
People at higher risk for severe illness are the elderly and individuals with underlying medical conditions: Heart conditions (coronary artery disease, heart failure, cardiomyopathy), chronic kidney disease, obesity, COPD, diabetes, sickle cell disease, organ transplant.
You should go to the hospital or call 911 if you or your family member are experience any of the following:
- Difficulty breathing.
- Persistent pain or pressure in your chest.
- New confusion.
- Inability to wake up the sick person or inability to stay awake.
- Bluish tint to the lips or face.
If you call 911, notify the operator that you or your family member has COVID-19 so the first responders know to take the proper precautions.
Read more on San Diego County’s website here.
As of late August, 97% of investigations are opened within one day, and more than 40,000 investigations have been performed, public health data shows.
“The aim and intention is to contact all,” the supervisor said. “And that’s how we’re structured. That’s how we’re staffed. That’s how we’re set up. And that’s how we’re operating.”
Of the people local investigators reach out to, 90% have provided information to the contact tracing team. That leaves 10% — or 3,472 people — who could not be reached or would not answer questions as of mid-August, including Navarro Lopez’s family.
With no experts to turn to for advice, Navarro Lopez’s wife didn’t seek medical attention for him until she knew it was an emergency.
On the morning of May 27, her husband told her something was wrong with his legs.
“I feel bad. I feel bad,” Navarro Lopez repeated.
Arroyo called 911, but by the time an ambulance arrived her husband insisted he was better and didn’t want to go to the hospital.
She begged.
Arroyo told her husband this might be their one chance to finally hear from a healthcare worker about his illness and how she should be taking care of him.
Navarro Lopez obliged his wife’s pleas, walking to the stretcher. He had two heart attacks before he made it to Palomar hospital.
The day he died, Navarro Lopez left behind a son finishing ninth grade, a daughter graduating high school in two weeks, a son in college with dreams of working in the Sheriff’s Department and a 24-year-old daughter less than two months away from getting married.
The family’s cozy San Marcos home is copiously decorated with sports trophies, framed photos, school awards, woodworking projects and religious icons. Gathered together there in late July, Navarro Lopez’s four children and their mom held each other close, crying and laughing as they remembered their beloved patriarch.
“We’re gonna use my father as something that’s going to propel us forward and for us to succeed,” said Hector, 22.
Miranda, 17, called her dad a “man above all men” with a pure heart. Axel, 15, said nobody ever had anything bad to say about his father.
Areli, 24, described her father as a quiet man who protected and guided the family.
“I knew that with him and my mom around as our parents, everything was going to be OK and everything was going to be possible,” she said.
The loss taught her that sometimes the only way to survive is to be resourceful, Areli said.
“If somebody doesn’t want to help you, find a way to help yourself.”
Testing the system
Alfonso Ye Jr., a 25-year-old part-time pharmacy technician, tried to get help when he started feeling sick.
On March 17, he went to Scripps Memorial Hospital in San Diego and tested negative for the virus, according to coroner’s records. The hospital diagnosed him with a respiratory infection and gave him no medication, the records say.
Not long after his discharge, the El Cajon resident headed to Riverside County to stay at his mom’s house in La Quinta until he felt better.
Eight days later, when he had trouble breathing, his mother wanted him to go to the hospital, according to the coroner’s records, but Ye repeatedly said his COVID-19 test was negative and did not go.
Ye’s mom called 911. The paramedics couldn’t save him.
A posthumous test confirmed the pharmacy student was positive for the coronavirus. The coroner’s records said he died from respiratory distress caused by COVID-19, making him one of the first documented San Diego County residents to die from the virus.
Tools to detect the coronavirus aren’t advanced enough to decipher whether someone like Ye developed the virus after testing negative or if his first test result was inaccurate.
As the number of COVID-19 tests conducted continues to rise, so do the number of false-negative results, which can discourage someone from seeking potentially life-saving medical care.
A June paper from the Mayo Clinic estimated there could be more than 20,000 people in California who received false-negative results. The scientists warned that if healthcare providers aren’t careful in interpreting test results and advising patients, it could cause someone to develop a dangerous confidence that they are virus-free.
Research from Johns Hopkins found that COVID-19 tests working at their best still lead to false negatives about 20% of the time, meaning at least 1 in 5 people with the virus receive negative test results.
The Food and Drug Administration cautions healthcare providers that false-negative tests can lead to a delayed diagnosis and improper treatment. Plus, they can result in patients failing to monitor their symptoms closely.
In a June fact sheet, the federal agency advised that when a patient tests negative, medical workers should consider the likelihood that the person was exposed to the virus when deciding how reliable the test results are.
In Ye’s case, he had a colleague who had recently tested positive for the virus and was on a ventilator, according to what his mother told the coroner’s office.
A spokesperson for Scripps Health declined an interview request and did not comment specifically on Ye or his test results. He said the hospital system has no way of knowing how often negative COVID-19 tests are tied to individuals who later test positive.
Ye’s death was a loss upon loss for his family. His father, of the same name, died about two years ago.
Stephanie Silva, Ye Jr.’s cousin, said Ye was very ambitious and his life was going well. He loved his job and was planning to graduate from the pharmacy program at Pima Medical Institute in Chula Vista in April. He was living in El Cajon with a roommate, his first time venturing away from home in a big way.
Ye loved San Diego’s live-music scene and Disneyland, his cousin said. He was someone people always looked forward to seeing and someone who’d go out of his way to visit friends and family.
“He was always the go-to person for anyone that wanted to just talk,” Silva said. “He was the person that you wanted to talk to if you were feeling sad.”
Ye was well liked and high achieving. He’d applied for and earned his pharmacy technician license while still in school, a step that showed his initiative, said Benjamin Montoya, one of his professors.
“He was young. He was full of life,” Montoya said. “He had so much in front of him. It really hit me hard.”
It’s been almost six months since Silva lost her cousin. She said his death and the other lives lost to the pandemic feel like they could have been avoided if more safety precautions had been in place.
“It’s very sad how many people see these numbers but don’t really see the people behind them,” she said.
inewsource intern Sofía Mejías-Pascoe and reporter Camille von Kaenel contributed to this story.
Type of Content
News: Based on facts, either observed and verified directly by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources.
- 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.
Type of Content
News: Based on facts, either observed and verified directly by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources.
Article Post Types
postType of Content
News: Based on facts, either observed and verified directly by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources.