No. 95: Capitol Weekly’s Top 100

95. Jaxon Van Derbeken
Okay, we’re coming out of the closet: We like the Chronicle. One of the reasons is reporter Jaxon Van Derbeken, who seems to cover everything worth covering and repeatedly broke new ground on three of the biggest stories of  the year — the PUC’s Michael Peevey, the aftermath of the San Bruno gas explosion and the never-ending deficiencies of the multibillion-dollar Bay Bridge project.  It’s hard to break a really good story, but Van Derbeken seems to do it all the time. If you’re a state politics junkie, you read the Bee because you must if you want to stay informed. And you read the LAT because you think you should. But you read the feisty, tightly-edited Chronicle because it’s fun. Why not?

Updated Aug. 25, 2015