Investigative reporting you didn’t read anywhere else, for San Diego and beyond

Hi there, 

Managing Editor Jamie Self here. Before we wrap 2024, I want to share with you some of the great work our team has done. 

At inewsource, we strive to improve the lives of our neighbors in everything we do through fact-based, unbiased investigative journalism. 

These stories take time, resources and skilled investigative reporters and editors to produce. All our work is rigorously vetted through our intensive fact-checking protocol, unmatched in the San Diego region. 

The care we take with our work ensures the news you get from us is the most reliable of any you’ll get anywhere. 

Here are some examples of how our investigative reporting had impact in 2024:

Housing policies changed

In 2024 alone, our exclusive reporting drove housing agencies across the county to comply with a major state law and start protecting low-income renters from excessive and illegal rent increases. As a result, about 30,000 renters are being protected when they weren’t before. 

Accountability for health providers

Following up on our 2022 investigation into overdose deaths and unsafe conditions at Veterans Village of San Diego, we wrote exclusively about an additional death, more scrutiny from regulators and ultimately the state’s revocation of the center’s license for providing residential substance abuse treatment. 

No other news outlet in San Diego covered this story until after we broke news about the center’s license.

Investigating the border

Sofía Mejías-Pascoe, our border and immigration reporter, exposed an alleged abuser in Border Patrol – the agent has since been charged in three separate incidents. 

She also investigated systemic failures in medical responses to health emergencies at the U.S.-Mexico border wall. Her reporting asked why a migrant woman was trapped on top of the border wall for more than 20 minutes, crying for help before she fell to her death, while a Border Patrol agent watched, seemingly unable to help her, from below.

Other news outlets picked up the press release about the incident when it happened, but no one dug into the circumstances around the woman’s death the way Sofía did, taking time to ask critical questions of the multiple agencies involved to retrace what happened that night and find out if anyone was held accountable. 

We also understand that accurately reporting on immigration requires spending time observing what’s actually happening at the border. That’s why we sent teams of reporters to Jacumba to report – for 48 hours straight – how migrants were crossing the border and awaiting processing by the U.S. Border Patrol.

Amplifying refugee farmers’ concerns

When refugee farmers accused a local nonprofit of controlling access to a community garden without legal authority to do so, our reporting alone dug into the details and revealed that the nonprofit didn’t in fact have a lease on the land – and the city was partly to blame. Our reporting was translated into several languages and posted to a bulletin board in the garden so farmers, many of them refugees, could be informed. 

Investigating political power

In the lead-up to the 2024 election, we leveraged our campaign finance and data expertise to dig into political campaigns to fact-check the rhetoric and follow the money. We exposed the special interests behind a countywide half-cent sales tax and revealed how developers were donating to a conservative county supervisor candidate under a coalition ostensibly about helping homeless people.

We also wrote about an area church’s extensive political activities and how they fly in the face of laws restricting religious organizations’ activities in exchange for freedom from taxation and transparency.

We believe wholeheartedly you won’t find our investigative reporting – in-depth, fact-based, impactful – anywhere else. 

If you agree, please consider supporting our work today. 

– Jamie