Special Episode: Covering California, Panel 3 – Covering the Capitol

CAPITOL WEEKLY PODCAST: This Special Episode of the Capitol Weekly Podcast was recorded live at Capitol Weekly’s conference COVERING CALIFORNIA: The Future of Journalism in the Golden State, which was held in Sacramento on Thursday, May 30, 2024

This is PANEL 3 – COVERING THE CAPITOL

Panelists: Lara Korte, Politico; Greg Lucas, California State Librarian; Cynthia Moreno, Press Secretary for Speaker Robert Rivas; John Myers, CalPERS; Ashley Zavala, KCRA 3

Moderated by Laurel Rosenhall, Los Angeles Times

This transcript has been edited for clarity.

RICH EHISEN, CAPITOL WEEKLY: I’m only gonna introduce our moderator and then I’ll let her introduce everybody. But I do want to give a big thanks to Laurel Rosenhall of the LA Times… Bureau Chief for the LA Times. Thank you, Laurel for coming and doing this. I, of course, am really interested in this panel. Maybe for obvious reasons. We feel like we got a group of all stars here, so, this is all about covering the California State Capitol, which you might have ascertained is kind of difficult right now. So, Laurel Rosenhall of the LA Times. Thank you.

LAUREL ROSENHALL: Thank you so much. Happy to be here with this great panel. And we are obviously here to talk about covering the capitol, how we do it, how it’s changed over the years. And all day we’ve been hearing about how the news industry is changing. Since I have the mic, I will give my 2 cents on that question: I do think that the news industry is in a tumultuous adolescence right now, as we try to find a business model that will work for the future.

We had a long happy childhood when newspapers were very profitable and journalists didn’t have to think about the business side of the operation. And in the future, I think we will emerge into a mature adulthood with a valuable product and a steady, predictable audience. But right now we are without a doubt in a period of metamorphosis.

And just like with teenagers, that involves a lot of experimentation and risk taking. And we are going on some awkward first dates as we try new business models and partnerships. And we are trying on new styles and shedding old habits with our story formats and distribution channels.

Being a teenager is difficult and sometimes our zits show and we have food stuck in our braces, and other times the change is very invigorating and does force us to be creative and muscular. So, all these changes that we’re seeing in the industry, very broadly I think are also playing out in the media ecosystem at the state capitol.We do have diminished coverage by regional papers. It wasn’t so long ago that I remember reporters who specifically covered the Ventura County delegation or who focused on serving an audience in Modesto and they’re not here anymore.

But we’ve also seen new ventures crop up like Calmatters and Politico, and we still have some serious experience and expertise at the LA Times that I’m very proud of. Earlier this year we celebrated George Skelton’s 50th anniversary with the LA Times, and I am personally proud of the reporters I work with there every day.

So I do have to point out that even though a lot has changed, a lot has not. We are still working every day to hold the powerful accountable, to help Californians understand their government and to reveal information that would not be known without journalists doing our jobs.

“I try and politely explain this to staff sometimes who are very excited about a bill that probably does a lot of good in the world, but it’s probably going to pass unanimously… And that’s not really where we’re focused at. We’re focused at where people are arguing, where there’s a lot of money being spent where there’s political backstabbing happening.” -Lara Korte

So here to discuss what all of this looks like on the ground as we cover the state capitol is a great panel with a breadth of experience that spans different phases of political leadership in California and news industry trends. I’ll go from left to right. We have George Lucas, I’m sorry. That would [LAUGHTER] be amazing. But having Greg Lucas is also wonderful.

GREG LUCAS: …I would be here for George, you know.

LR: So, Greg was a longtime reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle, who is now the California State Librarian. Ashley Zavala is the KCRA reporter who covers the State Capitol and who leads the Capitol Correspondents Association. We’ll talk about that shortly. Cynthia Moreno, does communications for Speaker Rivas and was a political journalist, television journalist before that. Lara Korte is with Politico and writes the daily newsletter there. And John Myers was my predecessor at the LA Times and longtime, capitol journalist who’s now doing public affairs for CalPERS.

COVERING CALIFORNIA: Panel 3 – Covering the Capitol. Cynthia Moreno, Ashley Zavala, Greg Lucas. Photo by Joha Harrison, Capitol Weekly.

So Lara, I wanna start with you and ask you to talk about how you decide what to cover for the Playbook and for the articles you write for Politico. Some days at the Capitol, there’s a huge story and it’s obvious what all of us are gonna be covering, but many other days there are tons of smaller things that are going on at the same time. How do you decide what’s a story?

LARA KORTE: Yeah, that’s a great question and I just wanna say thanks everybody for being here and thank you Capitol Weekly for putting this on. Yeah, sometimes it’s… I don’t, for those who might read the California Playbook, you might notice that we call our top “The Buzz” because that’s what we aim for it to be, is what people are buzzing about. And so if there is an obvious topic, even if it’s something everybody else has covered, that’s usually something that will lead our newsletter.

But we really cater towards folks who are in the Capitol, who are inside baseball folks who really care about the inner mechanisms of government. And so we really like to cover stories that everybody is whispering about. That’s something we talk about a lot. Things that aren’t necessarily out in the open, but things that are getting a lot of attention behind the scenes.

And so we want to be a driver of conversation and move those topics forward. So, it can be a lot of things, we cover everything from Kevin McCarthy, Gavin Newsom, to the legislature to fights between city officials. So we really try and just capitalize on the top stories that are driving the conversation that day.

LR: And when it comes to specific bills, how would you decide which ones are newsworthy?

LK: Yeah, we always look for a source of tension. I try and politely explain this to staff sometimes who are very excited about a bill that probably does a lot of good in the world, but it’s probably going to pass unanimously and it has no opposition to it. And that’s not really where we’re focused at. We’re focused at where people are arguing, where there’s a lot of money being spent where there’s political backstabbing happening. That’s really the points of tension that we wanna cover with a bill. So that’s what we always look for.

LR: Okay, Great. Ashley, in addition to being KCRA’s reporter at the Capitol, you’re also the president of the Correspondents Association, so you’re sort of advocating on behalf of the entire Press Corps. Can you talk about the challenges that reporters have faced in recent years in covering the Capitol and what some of your work in that capacity has involved?

ASHLEY ZAVALA: Yeah, We don’t have enough time to go through all of the challenges that reporters covering the Capitol and even the administration have faced in the last couple of years. But really ever since the pandemic, we’ve been in an ultra hangover of press accessibility, of reporters being able to do their jobs, of just, I mean… to give you an example, and I know this is a logistical example, but today in a budget hearing, we’ve been asking, television reporters have been asking to be back on the dais, so that we’re not filming the backs of heads basically. We’ve… I’m sorry Cynthia, but we’ve asked leadership to please just reverse this rule. Allow television photographers back on the dais. And that was a request we put in months ago and we still can’t get a resolution on it.

That’s just one. But, even going as far as trying to make legislative leaders more accessible. Hearing from them regularly, especially right now at a time when a very opaque budget process, quite frankly is playing out. We’ve asked for more accessibility, we really haven’t gotten it. We sort of have to tap into our sources and do our groundwork to try to figure out what’s going on exactly.

“There were two of us at the Chronicle for most of the 20 years I was there and without establishing relationships of trust with legislative staffers, we could have never competed with larger bureaus” – Greg Lucas

But, yeah I would say accessibility… just basically there’s this arrogance in the building that people feel like they don’t need to talk to us anymore because they’re the super majority and they don’t really need journalists. And so, I think our Press Corps, I feel is very unified in attempts to try to rattle the cages a little bit in that space. But we’re still really working.

I know, and thank you Cynthia. For years we were asking for a space in the building just to work. Because we had journalists that were working on the floor of the Rotunda. Journalists who had to go to the bathroom for example, like Eytan Wallace who works for Fox 40, he’d have to leave his camera gear in a very public place to use the restroom because he really didn’t have a private place to go.

We had a news crew that had their car broken into outside of the State Capitol at this time when, again we didn’t have a space because there was no planning for journalists in the Capitol Annex project. Luckily legislative leadership and the governor provided us not one, but two spaces; talks are ongoing about how we move forward permanently. But again, those are just a few examples of the many that we are going through right now.

LR: Okay. I do have, other questions for you. And I do have specific questions for Cynthia, but since you kind of raised some issues, I wanna give Cynthia a chance to respond if you wanna respond to any of those specific issues that Ashley raised, or if not we can move on, but if you do it’s your turn.

CYNTHIA MORENO: I just come into this role as press secretary for the Speaker with a lot of empathy. And I say that because I was a reporter for 15 years. And so I was part of the Capitol Press Corps… and I wasn’t here during the pandemic, I was working for the Newsom administration. So I don’t, I’m still learning all the transitions that have been happening and the changes that have been happening at the Capitol, and I’m still learning about them little by little.

I will say though, that everything that is submitted and requests that are submitted: it’s a process and we’re working on them. And even though it might seem easy, like, “hey, just ask if we could do this or if we could do that,” and if we go and do that, it takes all these different channels because that’s just the way that government works.

I wish there was something easier that we could do to make some of these changes, like more accessibility for the press. Because both the director of communications and I, we both have been journalists for a long time, and so we understand the needs that journalists come with, and we have, again that empathy and we wanna provide all of the things that Ashley mentioned. But it comes with just, for on our end, it’s just a lot of work to go through the channels to get approvals, to make sure someone says yes and someone else is on board. It’s just a process.

And so it’s not that we’re not addressing the needs, it’s just a process. And so we’re doing the best that we can given the changes that have happened during the pandemic. Again we’re still learning what those changes are and we’re doing the best that we can on our end.

LR: Okay, great. Greg, you spent nearly 20 years covering the capitol for the San Francisco Chronicle. The Press Corps was different then. But one thing I think that we’ve talked about that was the same is the need for reporters and staff to build working relationships.

I think all of us have had experience, some experiences where staff serve more as gatekeepers and other experiences where they serve more as conduits. It really varies, but what have you learned about kind of making that staff reporter relationship productive?

GREG LUCAS: Well, first you were using the word “work” in conjunction with being employed by the San Francisco Chronicle. That’s a strong word. I don’t know if any of you read the San Francisco Chronicle. Their motto is “If it’s news it’s news to us.” And when I was there was more of an appetite for more fun, like silly stories. And they would accept stories where there was conflict and it was an important public policy issue.

But This is a paper that used to have in the corner of the front page, they called them “squiggly box” stories, there’d be a squiggly box and it would be something like, “Man Healthy After Head Removed,” “London Man Slain by Turnip,”” Vampire Bats Feast on Columbian,” stuff like that. So, working for the Chronicle was not comparable to working for other major newspapers in California, so there was a lot more fun to it.

I would say, and just I am eventually going to answer your question, it’s an old people thing, like we ramble and then finally get around to it. But in terms of access, so there’s been a steady diminution of media access. When I started in 1988 in the Assembly, reporters had seats like Assembly members, those same kind of old-timey seats along the aisles on the actual Assembly floor.

And I sat across, if you know, from Tom Bates who’s been the Mayor of Berkeley and was a longtime Assemblyman, his wife Loni [Hancock] was a State Senator, and like neither of us got any work done like sitting there yapping at each other. And briefly, one day Tom gets up and he says, “Greg I’ve got to use the head, can you vote for me while I’m gone?” That’s way wrong, that’s like a felony and stuff.

But I’m so dumb, I have no idea, I open up the daily file, I study the bills as they come up on the screen, and I’m about to reach over and vote for him and he comes running back, it’s like “stop, stop you asshole, it’s a felony!” [Laughter] So for good or ill, there isn’t that kind of access anymore.

But I’ll tell you there were two of us at the Chronicle for most of the 20 years I was there and without establishing relationships of trust with legislative staffers, we could have never competed with larger bureaus like the Sacramento Bee, like the LA Times.

And my colleague Rob Gunnison, who is basically my mentor, would talk about staffers as ‘trip wires.’ That we would have people we could contact who would help, sort of turn us on to something that was happening that we might not otherwise see. But as you said, Laurel, the whole thing was premised on a relationship of trust and knowing that we weren’t going to burn them, write the next day or lay something on their doorstep, or make it seem obvious who the person was who had helped us out.

And I think it’s just like anything. I mean, if my grandmother was here, she’d say the same thing. I mean, it’s about good manners. It’s about creating a relationship of trust. I mean, it’s a cliche, but if I give you my word and I don’t keep it, that’s it. You’re never going to talk to me again.

“There is a bias toward conflict that is paramount in this place. And I would argue that context is more important than conflict.” – John Myers

And I feel to this day there’s still that foundational thing where this is a business where it’s about your word. And if you don’t keep it, I mean, you’re done.

Did I kind of answer your question?

LR: Yeah. Trust. It sounds like is the answer. Trust, having a good trusting relationship. John, you made the switch from journalism to public affairs, government public affairs about two years ago. Could you talk to us about how your perspective has changed since you made that switch?

JOHN MYERS: Yeah. 23 months, but who’s counting? My perspective has changed and I wanna be really careful to not bite the hand that feeds me today. And also kind of the universe that I lived in too. But… and there’s so much of what Greg said that I could unpack as well. Because there are some things there that I think… most notably, let me just say that I think that the era that Greg was talking about, and I was fortunate enough to compete against Greg back in the former Press Corps days… the information age had not taken over this place. Social media had not taken over this place. Every lawmaker didn’t worry that they were being videotaped of them picking their nose or whatever it was, and put on Twitter within 10 seconds, the world changed.

GL: It was a huge fight in 1993 over bringing cameras to the legislature.

JM: Well, there you go.

GL: All the old timers with shiny hair like me fought Debra Bowen, wasn’t it? Who wanted to do that?

JM: That sounds right. That sounds right. And so I guess what I’m getting at is that as the world has changed, I would argue access issues change a lot of those things that you guys are still struggling with. And obviously I was too until fairly recently.

The thing that strikes me the most interesting is my view of the challenges has changed. And I wanna be careful here, but I also want to be honest with you that I think that there’s a lot of work that the Press Corps needs to do to do a better job.

COVERING CALIFORNIA: Panel 3 – Covering the Capitol. Laurel Rosenhall, Los Angeles Times. Photo by Joha Harrison, Capitol Weekly.

Candidly, there’s a lot of shortcomings in the things that we focus on and why they’re focused on and what they mean to Californians. The number one challenge we have, and this is, and I wanna be careful here ’cause Lara’s sitting right next to me, but Lara serves a particular niche. You have a particular audience that I think really does look for some of that conflict, but there is a bias toward conflict that is paramount in this place. And I would argue that context is more important than conflict.

You can find conflict in a lot of things that is not contextual. I would often tell people, I would tell people in the bureau when I had that job, I would tell people in former jobs, I was really interested in stories that told a larger truth. And I get these are not mutually exclusive ideas that I’m raising here, but man, the need for conflict, I see it so much more clearly now. And the lack of context. And I also would just say, ’cause like I said, I’m kind of being that guy on the panel. I would also say that sometimes accountability… people are mistaking conflict for accountability.

I don’t think accountability is solely because, looking for the story where there’s conflict, who’s fighting who, I think there’s accountability in different ways. And just one more just drop a bomb and walk out the door, Myers…. When the Democrats put out the budget thing the other day, I have no idea how they honestly get a number that the governor would’ve gotten if they rescinded all his cuts.

And I didn’t see anybody that asked the question. And I didn’t see it reported. I didn’t see the answer anywhere. I didn’t see the acknowledgement that that budget plan probably had holes in it that were not being revealed. I’m not saying that no one asked the question, but man, they got a lot – no offense to Cynthia – They got a lot of free coverage on y’all. They got a lot of free coverage on that. They rolled back cuts and there’s no way to explain them.

And I really would urge people to look for detail and context. I’m not saying it doesn’t exist. I don’t think it exists enough, and I did not see that as clearly, I think until I walked away from it for a while.

Bye, everybody. [Laughter.]

AZ: Oh, okay. Can I just jump in? Okay, and I feel you, John. I truly do.

JM: And yet?…

AZ: And this goes back, this goes back to again, the Capitol Press Corps request to hear from these people regularly amid these talks. And not only that, they dropped the plan at like 3:00 o’clock. And I’m on deadline, Lara’s on deadline. Everybody’s already on deadline.

Hey, okay, but at the end of the day, what they dropped is not really real. None of it is final. None of it is…. And so there’s also like a delicate balance we have to play with shoving information down the viewer, the reader’s throat, about something that’s really not happening… maybe.  We just… I don’t know, and so I agree: I would’ve loved to ask the question. I would’ve loved to been able to dig into what that plan was before this committee just passed it off of a whim when the state’s two key analysts can’t even say what their assessment is, because they didn’t even have the time because it had been 18 hours. But I hear you. I completely agree. I wish that there was just more of a thought that the public should be informed about these decisions before they quickly make them. I hear you.

LR: Let’s talk about the afternoon news drop. I didn’t really plan to have that on the agenda here, but since it came up, and yesterday is a good example, and we have people who are now in the government who have previously been in on the side of being the reporter. When you’re on the side of being a reporter, and something drops late in the day or something drops on a Friday afternoon, it feels like it’s not being presented in a way that makes it get the most coverage, makes it easy to scrutinize.

It does make it feel like sometimes it’s like, “oh crap, we gotta rush and get this done.” And other times, it can be like, okay, I’m gonna not have us rush, ’cause I don’t wanna write a complicated budget story in an hour.

So what’s going on on the inside in the government when information of major public importance gets put out late in the day, or with little, with no formal heads up in a way that the news media can actually prepare to do real coverage?

JM: Well, I’m gonna state the obvious: you know. It’s exactly why you said it is, which is when someone who doesn’t have a media sophistication in an agency, in my brief experience, has said, oh, we should put that information out. I’m like, don’t put it out on Friday at 2:00 ’cause it’s gonna raise a spectre that we’re doing it for some other reason.

Now, having said that, again, everything is not black hat in government. That’s another problem I have with the business that I worked in for a long time. I had a lot of editors, including people who are not in this room, who work in Los Angeles, when I was in your job, who were only interested in government being a black hat. There’s always a black hat. Government must be corrupt, the government must be bad. Sorry, I’m really kind of having a moment, aren’t I?

But the point is, sometimes that stuff gets out for very reasonable reasons: because it took a while to get it right. It took a while to check the numbers. It took a while for it. The place that is not obvious about the need to balance that with the perception that we buried it is a problem office, I would say.

Because you don’t want the perception that you’re dropping it out there at night. ‘Cause when you do drop it out there at night, I think if you’ve gone through and you’ve had reasonable people say, “man, we shouldn’t do this tonight,” ’cause it’s gonna look like this. And you still do it then, then that tells you it probably was originated by the thing you think it is. But sometimes it’s just the work is not ready. Honestly, honest to God… I know sometimes it’s just, it is what it is that the work wasn’t ready. They didn’t have the information that you needed.

CM: And I just wanna add too, it’s a combination of things. In the same way that a reporter wouldn’t write a story and then just get it published, it has to go through levels of editing and scrutiny before something gets published. In the same way with government, as a spokesperson, I can’t say anything unless I’m told, “Hey, we’re ready to deliver this.” “Hey, there’s an agreement that’s been made on this.” “Hey, go ahead and talk to these reporters and chat with them about this. Return that phone call, return that text message.”

There’s people above me that are making decisions that I can’t come out and say something, unless those decisions are not made, and those decisions take a while. They take time. It’s not always like, “why are they hiding? Why are they not being transparent? Why aren’t they giving the information? “

“If Public Relations Officers aren’t candid or welcome the opportunity for questions, it creates a vacuum of information. And then that gets filled with misinformation.” – Lara Korte

A lot of times we don’t know ’cause it’s going through different channels and there’s negotiations happening, there’s different stakeholders that are trying to figure out what it is that… what agreement is gonna be made. And so it’s not always like, we should not be seen as like the bad guy, because we’re trying. Again… I say this in the context of also being a reporter and seeing being on the other side. And I also wanna add to what you said, George, like the importance of building relationships.

GL: It’s Greg.

CM: I’ll take the blame for that. I’m sorry.

I wanna highlight building relationships, it’s so important. It’s so important to build relationships because people in government are not the enemy, and we wanna share the information that we have. And so the better relationship that you build with reporters and vice versa, it’s gonna be easier for me to approach and say, “Hey, look, I have information to give you. Hey, look, I wanna give you this exclusive on this story.” Or, “Hey, look I have this information that you should run with.” It’s all about those relationships.

I feel like I understand that the Press Corps is now significantly smaller than when I was a part of it. I look at pictures of when I was a reporter back in 2017, and it was a huge group. There was about 50, 60 of us. It was a huge group. So to see it be such a small group, especially the ones that are covering the legislature, again, I empathize.

But with that said, again, we’re not trying to withhold information. We’re not trying to be sneaky. That’s not who we are, that’s not who I am as a human being. I want information to be out, but again, there’s channels, there’s negotiations, and sometimes things just don’t come together, and I won’t know about that or I’m not allowed to speak on certain things until everything is approved and everything is ready, and we’re ready to talk. And I say that with again having a lot of empathy for reporters.

LK: I will just add something that I see a lot of folks do, which like, to your point about raising suspicions without needing to, is that sometimes, like if you aren’t candid with reporters. If Public Relations Officers aren’t candid or welcome the opportunity for questions, it creates a vacuum of information. And then that gets filled with misinformation.

And one of the examples I think about a lot, which is kind of drastic… I don’t wanna pick on Governor Newsom, but some of you might remember, he was supposed to go to the Climate Summit I believe in late 2021 after the recall. And he decided not to go, and no explanation was offered.

And there was a lot of speculation that happened in that time afterwards of… It was crazy stuff. People were like, “he has COVID, he’s dead. He has to have a kidney replacement.”

COVERING CALIFORNIA: Panel 3 – Covering the Capitol. Cynthia Moreno, Ashley Zavala, Greg Lucas. Photo by Joha Harrison, Capitol Weekly.

And I remember the Press Corps constantly being like, can you just tell us what’s going on? Why is he not going to this important climate summit. He’s a summit guy. And then I think it was weeks or months later, he did a conversation at some kind of panel where he said simply like, “oh, my kids wanted me to stay home.” Like it was Halloween, which is like, fine. And maybe that was the real explanation or not, but it’s like, how hard would it have been and how much damage could you have controlled if you had said that at the front?

And so I think that a lot of folks are really nervous about talking to the press and being candid, but man, it does such a big lift just to tell them, give an explanation for what’s going on, because that’s when suspicions arise, is when you close all the doors and you don’t answer the calls, and you’re like, “oh, nothing’s happening.” That’s where we get really suspicious.

JM: That one seems super easy to have just told the truth, wouldn’t it?

LK: No, you’ll have to tell Governor Newsom.

JM: Well, I remember it. Yeah. It was not a controversial one.

LR: Okay. So to shift gears from the sort of interactions where we’re in maybe in conflict with each other, and maybe there’s a feeling of not sharing information. To shift to the opposite side of that; when there are staffers who have a story they wanna share, they have something they wanna get out, they want it to be on TV, they want it to be in Politico’s newsletter. What would you recommend for those staffers? What’s the best way for them to pitch you or communicate with you, or just tell you about what they’d like to get coverage of?

LK: Give it to us first. We would like to have the scoop on it.

AZ: Don’t listen to that. Give it to us first.

LK: No, give it to us first. That goes a long way, and that’s really obvious. Yeah, I guess the other thing is pitching why this might… It has to be something new. It has to be something that hasn’t been reported before. Sorry, John, it has to have some tension in it. There has to be some kind of conflict or something interesting here. That’s fine.

AZ: I would say I concur. For television, it’s a little different. I think it’s just our medium is pretty visual and I’ll take anything, I really will. Or I’ll at least hear you out. But for television, the more visuals, the better is really helpful. I realize that politics is not really the most visual, especially when you’re in the same building that’s stationary with the same people every single day.

But, also exclusivity, I think is a big point, especially if it’s on something that’s very top of mind, really current eventy, if it’s something related to what’s happening federally, maybe, or even statewide or internationally, whichever. But yeah, I would say don’t be afraid to pitch.

LR: Yeah, okay.

LK: If you can peg it to something that’s happening nationally too, or like a timeliness element that helps a lot.

GL: Yeah. I was just gonna say, know your audience. So you pitch something to a Bay Area publication about Los Angeles, all we want in the Bay Area is for LA to fall into the ocean. We don’t wanna write a story about them. Or, read the publication or watch the TV station that you’re trying to get something on. What turns on their viewers? We would’ve been more likely to write about. And I’m curious, did we ever do this: legalize ferrets in California? Can you have a ferret now in California?

LR: Not yet.

JM: Don’t think you can have.

GL: Okay. Somebody called Dede Alpert get her to run that bill.

At the Chronicle, like, we’d write the hell out of them, like legalizing the ferret thing, ’cause it’s fun and interesting.

Or we had somebody pitch us… or in fact, it was the people who called, they were the company that provided, they had the fresh produce contract with the city of San Francisco. And some of their produce went to the… I’ve forgotten the hospital’s name… but the hospital where the mentally ill were helped. And some of it went to the zoo, but so the Board of Equalization said that they owed $80,000 in taxes, because the animals at the zoo were taxable, because you don’t slaughter them after they eat it.

“We do read everything that you guys produce, TV and also in writing. We follow it pretty religiously in the building.” – Cynthia Moreno

So, if the fresh produce went to chickens and stuff like that… And so that was an attractive story. It’s like… What is it like?… David and Goliath kind of thing. This poor vegetable produce company fighting against the faceless shameless bureaucrats at the wicked board of equalization. And those are the kind of things like you were saying, it’s about conflict.

All the stuff that’s good for the media is bad for everyone else. Like poverty, war, disaster, those are great stories. But it’s not so hot for the people that it happens to. But that’s what… What’s the thing like from Inherit the Wind... where the guy who’s supposed to be H. L. Mencken says the media’s here to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. So that’s my 2 cents on pitching something.

LR: Cynthia, what’s your advice for staffers who are new to working with reporters?

CM: A lot of staffers, a lot of comms directors in the building come to the Speaker’s office for guidance. And so a lot of times they ask us, “Hey, we have this story, our boss is working on this bill, which reporter do you suggest, do you think that we should pitch it to, should we talk to?” And they do ask us very candid questions. “Should we trust this reporter? What do you think about their writing? What do you think about their stories?” And so once we sit down with them and kind of analyze what they’re looking for, we provide advice and guidance.

One of the things I’ve noticed in the Capitol building is a lot of comms directors, a lot of ’em don’t come in with a lot of experience in journalism, and so a lot of the things that we try to do is really teach them how the Press Corps works, how political journalism works. We kind of give them an idea of what the reporters are that are working, that are part of the Press Corps, easy ways of pitching, how to pitch, things that might be interesting to certain reporters.

“If taxpayer dollars are paying for their salaries, then I think it’s incumbent upon them to provide the information back to the taxpayer that’s funding their pay.” – Ashley Zavala

So it varies and it depends, but we do try to provide the best guidance that we can, in terms of really pitching their work that has to do with their Members and would affect, depending on the issues in California like which outlet would be better and which reporter? So we do read everything that you guys produce, TV and also in writing. We follow it pretty religiously in the building.

LR: And Ashley, last year, the Correspondants Association issued guidance for journalists in doing our jobs to get information from the legislature and state agencies. Can you talk about some of the highlights of those guidelines and why it was necessary to issue them?

AZ: Yeah, and we keep the guidelines on our running chain to the broader Press Corps. At the highest of high levels, is, we are urging our members to not give their questions in advance. Because several offices, and still to this day, they keep doing it, are asking for journalists to send their questions in advance. “Well, how is my member gonna be prepared? And blah, blah, blah, blah.”

That’s fine, that’s fine. Your member, first off should be prepared. That’s their job. Second, they should be up to speed on what it is that they’re expected to talk about. Now, it’s not like we’re gonna be cagey about the subject matter in particular. We can have a broad discussion about, “oh I just generally wanna get a sense of where you’re at on X, Y, Z.” But anyway, so we tried to really figure that out.

Also with Governor Newsom’s administration, and they have gotten better, a little better. The Administration operates in a very piecemeal way when it comes to communications.

For example, the California Department of Public Health only wants your questions in advance, only wants to send you the responses in writing, basically. Very seldom do they make someone available on camera, especially. And so that’s been a challenge, but one thing that we’re struggling with, especially with that department and a couple of others is attribution on quotes.

So if you’re giving us information, we’d really like to know who it’s coming from. There are some news outlets where you can get away with saying, oh yeah. Like mine in particular, “officials with the department of blah, blah, blah, say this.” Okay, that’s fine. But there are other publications that wanna put a name on this information and ’cause that’s important. So those are two of the high level guidances that we’ve issued.

LK: I would just… I don’t know if you have thoughts on this too, Ashley, but for me the reason why we don’t wanna send questions in advance or we want to attribute to a statement to somebody is because this is public taxpayer funded government, it is not okay to hide behind these ambiguous veils. We want to put a name to the things that people are saying, and hold people accountable.

And I’ve had interviews with state officials canceled, because I refused to supply a detailed list of questions in advance. And that was after having several candid conversations about the subjects I was looking at, providing a lot of information about what I wanted to talk about. But they canceled it because they said I refused to supply a list of questions, and that’s just unacceptable to me. And so this is not how a taxpayer funded public government should operate, in my opinion. I don’t know if you have thoughts on why we do this.

AZ: Oh, 100%. And especially, because these people who work in communications, they make great money. They really make impressive money. And that’s the legislature and well, legislative leadership and the administration across the board. And so if taxpayer dollars are paying for their salaries, then I think it’s incumbent upon them to provide the information back to the taxpayer that’s funding their pay.

JM: Yeah, but let me just play the other side of this for a moment.

LK: Interesting.

AZ: Well, you’re on the other side now.

JM: Well, no, because I think it’s important to say it. The reporter needs to have done his or her homework before they come in. If they’re not gonna provide questions, which I have no problem with, and I never provided questions in my journalism career. Know what you’re talking about before you walk in the… And none of you guys, you’re all great… know what you’re talking about before you walk in the door.

“It’s not a crime scene. It’s state government. There is a little bit more that you need to know prior to walking in the door.” – John Myers

Case in point, very recently – and the more you get outside of the capitol, you get into kind of the more complexity of state government, it’s a little bit harder – had a reporter… maybe I shouldn’t tell this, but what the hell… I had a reporter from a large news organization recently contact me at the Pension Fund at CalPERS.. or my team. It’s a team of Public Affairs that I’m lucky to run, be a part of, contacted us, wanted to talk to one of the investment people about some particular investment that he thought we had.

We asked, could you tell us a little bit more? Give us a little sense which one… “No no no…” very like, “First Amendment, I’m not giving you any damn questions. I’m not gonna tell you what it is.” Got in the interview, he asked about the investment. The guy said, “we’re not invested in that.” He’s like, “oh, nevermind.”

So I took two hours out of a managing investment director’s time, told him it was about a particular thing. Reporter didn’t know that we weren’t invested in it. Wouldn’t tell us what we were doing before the thing – a large news organization – my point just simply being, do your homework before you go.

And again, you’re representing what I think you have to, because you have gotten pushed back in places that is unwarranted. But I would simply say it is a relationship back to everything we’ve talked about here. And do your homework before you go in, because when you go in and you don’t know… literally I’ve watched a reporter one time at the Capitol just put a microphone in someone, this was years ago…and just go, “so can you just tell me what’s going on?”

That’s not a question. And also it’s a stump speech then from the politician who gets to say whatever they wanna say.

LK: I mean, I retain the right to just ask people what’s going on, respectfully. I don’t care. If you’re there, I’m gonna ask you.

LM: If it’s Senate Bill 42 and they don’t know anything about the bill, and that’s the only question they have, that’s not as a technique, because I think you’re referring to it as a technique. I totally agree.

But it’s not a crime scene. It’s state government. There is a little bit more that you need to know prior to walking in the door. Crime scene is always, “can you tell me who killed who?” Anyway.

AZ: Well, I will go on. I would argue though, a crime scene involves people who can remain private, who have their privacy issues. Government is entitled to its taxpayers, to the people that are funding it. So I just, but I understand what you’re saying. And I agree. I think there are reporters that do not help themselves and do not make the process easy, but still…

LR: I’m gonna shift to questions from the audience. Are there things that people wanna ask us on our panelists here.

RE: If you do have questions, look for me, look for Tim. Wave a hand.

KIM NALDER: Hi, Kim Nalder, Sacramento State. So, when you were talking about reporting on conflict, there’s a… related to that sort of, is the reporting on horse race when it comes to elections. And Jay Rosen at NYU has been talking about reporting on the stakes, not the odds, which just seems really wise for democracy in general and would apply to state politics, of course, as well.

“I have to commend that some of the papers, Calmatters, for example, LA Times, some of the big papers that are covering.. that have reporters that are covering these communities… because the reporters have the lived experience and their lens is a little different.” – Cynthia Moreno

But I know when… I’m a political scientist and I sometimes get reporters calling me about State politics… and sometimes I think just like to entertain myself, I’ll give answers that are based on my actual academic expertise and I’ll hear the keyboard stop. [Laughter]

And it’s like they’re fishing for the thing, the blank in the story that they’re waiting to put my sentence in, rather than actually trying to get information. And so often it’s the thing that they actually wanna hear is “what does this do for Newsom’s political future?” Or something that’s not even necessarily about what I know or what I care about or democracy or what probably a lot of the readers or viewers need to know, maybe what they think they want to know, but maybe not what they need to know.

So is there thought put into reporting the stakes or reporting on things that maybe are vegetables rather than dessert for the people that you’re reporting to?

LK: Since I brought up conflict, I can talk about this a little bit. I think absolutely, we don’t want to write about the horse race unless something matters and we can say why this matters and what it’s gonna mean.

COVERING CALIFORNIA: Panel 3 – Covering the Capitol. John Myers, Lara Korte, Cynthia Moreno, Ashley Zavala. Photo by Joha Harrison, Capitol Weekly.

Politico has a very specific audience that really demands and asks for a lot of the desserts. And I recognize that. I will try and sneak in vegetables when possible, but this is one of the things that I think we constantly struggle with in journalism, is trying to get people to care about things, and those sexy soundbites about what this means for Gavin Newsom sometimes is what reels people in.

But yeah, far and away, I think the entire base of this is informing people about their democracy and trying to keep them engaged with that at the same time. So it’s a balance and I know it’s tough. And it doesn’t always seem super equal. I appreciate the question.

CM: I actually wanna answer your question too, given, so I was actually a reporter for Vida en el Valle which was at its time, at its peak, the largest bilingual newspaper in the United States. And when I was part of the Press Corps, I was the only reporter that was covering issues that would be of interest and impact to the Latino communities of California.

And we weren’t focused on desserts. We were focusing on these communities that have historically been underrepresented, are voiceless and reporters, mainstream, what I like to call mainstream reporters, typically don’t go out there to cover these stories. And one of the things that I tried to do was write these stories that probably didn’t gain a lot of traction because maybe in the eyes of the majority or mainstream, they weren’t important.

And what I’ve seen now is a huge shift and a huge transition into all the outlets all of a sudden… mind you, I lost my job in 2017, I was laid off… and it was very disappointing because it was, I was covering a certain niche community, which was a Latino community, which I would argue is the largest community in California.

And so one of the things I’m noticing now is that all these stories that I had written so long ago that no one really cared about are stories that now everyone’s reporting on. And I like that because I feel like these are communities that have a lot of issues, issues that should be addressed by government, issues that have been ignored for a long time but people who have lived experience in those communities have grown up with those issues and they’ve seen no resolve.

And so I have to commend that some of the papers, CalMatters, for example, LA Times, some of the big papers that are covering.. that have reporters that are covering these communities… because the reporters have the lived experience and their lens is a little different. I commend that because now we’re starting to see a shift in government.

We’re starting to see a lot of the policies that are being enacted, a lot of the laws that are going through, if you notice, a lot of them impact the most diverse communities and underrepresented communities in California.

And so that, to your question, I do think that there needs to be more focus on these communities. I feel there needs to be more stories that may not be the dessert, but they’re definitely the vegetables and the people who are picking those vegetables. I feel like that’s something that we need to transition to. We need to look at, with more depth, more clarity, more scope, but also have people who understand those communities, who speak the language.. Because these are consistent barriers. One of the things that, and I have to share this with the Press Corps is, there’s a lack of diversity and diversity is so important.

It’s important for storytelling. It’s important for reporting. It’s important for all. I mean, if there’s, for under deep understanding of issues of people, of social causes, of bills, of why they’re being enacted, of policies. There needs to be more of that. And so one of the things I’d like to see in the Press Corps in general is, I’d like to see more diversity. I’d like to see more people of color. I’d like to see more reporting on the communities that actually are suffering and have been suffering for a long time in this great state.

RE: I see a question back here.

SIGRID BATHEN: This is a great panel. The issues of access, I mean, I’ve been in this business for a long time on both sides of the fence as a reporter and also as a media director, press secretary, et cetera… and I taught journalism.

And do you see these problems becoming worse? I write now for Capitol Weekly on mental health issues, and I’m finding, even though this is a subject I’ve covered for decades for many publications… very, very difficult often to get information from public officials or organizations, for example, that are tax funded. I’m thinking here of the California Behavioral Health Directors Association, which has a notification on their website that if it’s a media question, you send an email to a private PR firm. To hopefully get a response eventually by email.

Very difficult to talk to a human being. Has it gotten worse? That’s what it seems like to me.

AZ: I think so, yeah. I started covering California politics in 2018, and I feel like the information flow has just taken a bit of a nosedive across the board. Again, as I said, there’s been this pandemic hangover in terms of access. The Press Corps with the administration did have some very hard conversations with Governor Newsom’s office. We tried to work a lot of things out. I will say that the governor actually makes himself more accessible, sorry, Cynthia, than the legislative leaders at this point.

We see him fairly regularly, or at least reporters at some point have opportunities to ask him questions so far almost on a monthly-ish, weekly-ish basis. But I do think there are still hurdles in his administration and different departments in which I think they could be doing a better job. Some don’t even talk on the phone anymore, which blows my mind, but I just think that, yes, overall, it is much worse than when I first got here.

GL: However, I would say that there’s much more access that we all have to information, much, much easier than existed before.

I mean, we used to be dependent often on a bill analysis. You’re under deadline. Do you have time to go and double check whether the study that’s cited in the bill analysis is still valid? I thought maybe you wrote the story, John, but there was a story that was written about how in these bill analyses, the stuff that’s five years old is recycled, like a recent study that actually turns out to have been recent when the bill was first introduced in 2017.

I mean, I was dependent upon the librarian at the Chronicle. “I’m gonna go cover this hearing, send me seven articles.” Now I can access seven articles while I’m sitting there waiting for something to happen and use that to get a better response from the people who ain’t responding. I’m writing a story that says, “you’re pond scum and I have these stories that back up my theory that you’re, the fact that you’re pond scum,” that might get people to respond a little bit quicker.

JM: But I think Sigrid, part of what I was struck by what you’re saying is that you’re asking questions for depth in a lot of cases, and I know you and I know the work you do. So, I mean, you’re asking questions for depth in a system that is not built… a system that’s built for speed, a system that’s built for efficiency.

“If I’m a big deal elected official, why do I care about creating a relationship with the press? Less, fewer and fewer people get their news from television, get their news from a newspaper.” – Greg Lucas

So the PR firm…the PR firm may be the cheaper way to actually deal with press than having staff. I mean, maybe the consultant thing may be better for the taxpayers, which by the way, never gets reported, that that actually might be the better deal for the taxpayers than the actual cost of a staff job… says the guy who works for the pension fund. But it’s just not built for depth. And I think it’s because the information age has made everything 24 seconds, 24 characters, everything.

Those conversations we used to have and we pick up the phone and call somebody in an agency have just gone. It’s just a different model that they have built their operations for. So I know what you’re talking about because like the calls that I would make in the ’90s to someone are not the calls – I couldn’t get that call, pandemic and others, it becomes harder. And there are layers of people and they’re panicky. They don’t wanna, I mean, honestly, that’s the other thing I’ve noticed.

When you look on the inside, the reluctance to speak sometimes is not about not telling the public something, it’s the fear of getting it wrong or misspeaking and having it become a viral moment that they never can live down.

RE: John, let me interrupt you here for just a second.

JM: Please.

RE: Because this goes to something, not George, Greg, was talking about earlier, maybe all of this, and I’m sorry, I’ll get your question. My poor interns hear me say all the time, when I ask them, “what business are we in?” And they always give me the wrong answer ’cause the answer is “we’re in the relationship business.” And it seems like every single thing that you are talking about here is about the relationship that we have as reporters with the people we’re covering.

And what I’m hearing is there is a tremendous lack of trust between these two parties. If you were around for the keynote, you heard me kind of gripe about the governor and how he treats us, which I feel is with a lot of disdain. And it feels like it comes down to all of the legislative leaders and everybody else. How do we fix that? How do we build better relationships? You mentioned you had an editor who just wanted to see negative stuff, right?

JM: Oh yeah.

RE: How do we fix that? How do we make these relationships better so that that person that you call in the Speaker’s office doesn’t go, “God, this guy’s a jackass.” There’s always the same thing. They’re at least willing to talk to you because they think they’re gonna get a fair shot. How do we fix that?

JM: Well, I’m just gonna step up, sorry, ’cause the reporters need to talk about it. But my experience in the job was don’t call somebody just when you’re on deadline. Don’t call somebody just when you need them.

Back to Kim’s comment over here. Nobody, I mean… I’m not saying no one would call Kim… I’ve called Kim before, but like no one would call, not enough people clearly are calling Kim to just say, “hey, what are you looking at this election season? What’s interesting,” and have that half hour conversation where we’re just idea spitballing. It’s “I need you now, I need you, I need you in five minutes. I need you out in front of your office, please, et cetera.”

It’s a two-way street. And don’t just call people when you need them. I mean, the number of conversations and everybody up here is incredibly good at what they do. The number of conversations that you have, I used to tell people this, versus the number of things I actually wrote, were, the proportion was crazy. Because I was just out… I was at Chicory back when Chicory was there, I was at Ambrosia. Ambrosia was there.

CM: Rest in peace.

JM: Rest in peace. And you were just having conversations with people that would get me to think about something else I would do. So part of it for me, Rich, is don’t just call people when you need them, today. Call them at other times. And I know that’s hard because you got a million things and deadlines and schedule, but that is part of the job. You have to have a longer conversation.

CM: I actually wanna add to that too. Like I always say being nice and cordial and friendly goes a long way. Again, we’re not the enemy.

We all have lives outside of our jobs. We all have other activities that we do. We’re all people, we’re all human. And so, I often wonder, and you’ve asked me this question many times, how did I get this far?

And when I look back, I look back at my journalism career and the relationships that I built and now coming back into the building and being in the building now for seven, eight years. And I think it was all those relationships.

I was going to Chicory. I was going to the coffee spots and talking to people in power and saying, “hey, look, I want some time with you. This is where I’m thinking about my story. What are you working on?” Like I was constantly meeting with staffers and I was super nice to everybody, never really gave them too much information about what I was working on. And my stories I felt were always very solid.  But it was, I look back and I think the success was taking the time to really get to know the staffers, get to know their bosses, having those conversations with them one-on-one. I think that was like a really good recipe for success.

And I don’t see, now coming back after the pandemic, I was at a State department before coming back into the building, and it was during the pandemic. So it was very different. Again, the pandemic has changed a lot since I came back. It changed a lot of things, but… there’s, again, it’s very black and white. There’s a lot of hostility.

And I don’t understand it, because that’s not my experience being both a part of the Press Corps and being a reporter and trying to get my stories and my interviews, and the stories I was writing and now being on this side, I don’t see where that happened. That polarization kind of happened. I don’t know when, I don’t know if it’s pandemic, I don’t know what to blame it on, but it’s very, very different from when I was a member of the Press Corps.

GL: If I’m a big deal elected official, why do I care about creating a relationship with the press? Less, fewer and fewer people get their news from television, get their news from a newspaper. I mean, all you have to do is read these polls about the upcoming presidential election. And you see that there’s this growing, particularly younger people, don’t get their news from that.

“Where I have had tensions with my professional relationships are when another side, a spokesperson or a campaign consultant thinks that having a good relationship means I always write their spin. Or I always publish what they want me to. And then they come and they yell at me and they’re like, ‘you’ve ruined our relationship.’ And I was like, you have a grave misunderstanding of what I do and what your role is here.” – Lara Korte

Why would I possibly worry about creating a good relationship with the media when there’s multiple social media platforms that I can put out my message unfiltered, exactly what I wanna say. Shape exactly the way I wanna say it. Why bother? I mean, just kind of being the devil’s advocate, but I mean,…we can improve the relationship all we want, but it’s like the old Grateful Dead song, “You ain’t gonna learn what you don’t wanna know.” So if it isn’t valuable or important, why are they gonna put the energy in?

LR: Well, and I think though that evolving reality where politicians can speak to the public unfiltered through the media, maybe what contributes more to the tension in the relationships, because it does mean that we have to, often we find ourselves in a situation where we have to differentiate our coverage, but we don’t wanna just repeat what they’re putting out on their social media. We have to differentiate. And how do we do that? It’s often through doing stories that are not the kinds of things that politicians would highlight on their own social media. So not to say exclusively that, but maybe those are related issues.

AZ: I think, sorry. Is that okay?… Well, I just, first, I wanna just level set here that we’re not all like, in the Capitol, it’s not all hostility and we’re not all like, me and Cynthia aren’t punching each other in the face.

All right, I just wanna like make sure that everyone understands that, first off, none of this is personal. None of this is personal at all. Everyone is trying to just do the job of having the same common goal of just wanting to inform the public. We just have different ideas of doing it.

I think one, and I do blame the pandemic because we were in this Zoom, everyone was in their own homes, working from home, not doing anything in person, doing interviews over email. We just didn’t have that social connection.

And I know I have this reputation-  thank you, Capitol Weekly – with some members, but overall being present every single day at the Capitol, in the back of the chamber, in the hallways, forces people who might have questions about me, or people who I might have questions about, forces us to come together and just share a little joke or something that we saw or whatever, just some like shred of humanity that we can share between us, just being physically present.

So I think that’s sort of part of it also, just being around each other, I think sort of helps.

LK: I will say relationships are very important, that’s very true. And like you said, there’s a lot of other things we have to do. I mean, that’s not an excuse, but like, oh my gosh, there’s such a demand for content all the time. And so like meeting with people it’s so important and I very much try and do it. I think that relationships are important on both sides and where I have had tensions with my professional relationships are when another side, a spokesperson or a campaign consultant thinks that having a good relationship means I always write their spin. Or I always publish what they want me to. And then they come and they yell at me and they’re like, “you’ve ruined our relationship.” And I was like, you have a grave misunderstanding of what I do and what your role is here.

And so to me, the relationships are important, but what’s more important is having accurate and fair reporting. And so if you can’t respect that that’s what I’m doing when I’m trying to talk with you, then this is like not going to work. There needs to be a both sides communication.

JM: She has a question… No, but I wanted, this is my 10 seconds after I’ve been really mean about other stuff today.

These guys, you have the, the part of the relationship problem is you having the hardest job that you’ve ever had at this particular moment in the profession of journalism.

“From my experience, there’s 120 of them over there and they’re not all the same. I would not ever paint them all with the same brush.” – Laurel Rosenhall

The deadline speed, the demands, the demands for clicks, the demands for readers, the demands for engagement, the demands to be different have never been this hard. I’ve never lost sight of that. I sleep on weekends now. It is a very strange phenomenon… But you have incredibly difficult jobs and everything that we talk about here should be viewed at least partly through the lens of, you’re doing a hell of a hard job in the hardest time you could have done it.

Greg and I did not do it in those years. You are doing something that is far harder in some ways than a trapeze act almost.

GL: That’s true.

RE: That’s true, okay. I apologize, I cut in front of you. Got a couple of times today, you get the final question.

LORRAINE BARRON: Thank you. Hi, my name’s Lorraine Barron, I’m from Sac State. I chose to go back to school late in life, become a journalist because I believe in this field.

JM: No, thank you! Yes.

LB: I truly did because journalism had a different meaning back then. Today, unfortunately, some of the things I’ve seen aren’t showing that. I released a story on [Los Rios] Chancellor Brian King, and his goal, he always told me, was to stay in communication with me, “stay in communication.” When I released that story and it was part of the part of what cost him his job in San Diego, he would no longer speak to me.

I have watched politicians do this and I’m not saying other staffers do it, but I have recently been trying to cover things. Love you, Ashley. I’ve seen her literally take some heat on camera.

COVERING CALIFORNIA: Panel 3 – Covering the Capitol. John Myers, Lara Korte, Cynthia Moreno. Photo by Joha Harrison, Capitol Weekly.

If we’re really trying to save journalism, save this industry and keep us in a democratic policy, what are we doing? How are we doing that? How are we encouraging that? Because when Ashley’s asking a question [GARBLED] that doesn’t give confidence into the public. That Senator, that Assemblyperson, is having faith in that she’s gonna report the truth. And isn’t that what this is about?

LK: Sorry, was your question about how media can give more trust or earn more trust? Sorry, could you clarify?

LB: My question is not about how media can give more trust. My question is how can… I heard two senators speak today about how they want these bills to pass so that they can help support the industry so that we can continue to have this freedom of the press. But I don’t see that happening on TV. I don’t see that happening when I was trying to find out about AB 12.

When you’re covering something and you’re reaching out and you’re like, “hey, help me out here. What do we need to do?” There’s a disconnect. But it’s not just a disconnect, it’s much deeper than that. And to be shut down or things to be released late, we’re not giving that respect to who we serve. We don’t serve ourselves. We serve the public. Yeah, that’s what I’m asking. I’m asking, how do we build that? How do we connect so that there isn’t this fall apart?

LR: I mean, I think for the journalists, the journalists are asking the questions, And then the public officials are choosing whether they wanna… Do they wanna look us in the face and answer the question or do they wanna run away? And I think that’s their choice. And then that’s reflective. I mean, they’re choosing how they wanna respond. So, right.

[INAUDIBLE FROM AUDIENCE]

LR: Oh, well, I will say from my experience, there’s 120 of them over there and they’re not all the same. I would not ever paint them all with the same brush. I have seen some elected officials who are very media friendly, media savvy, some who are very hostile to the media, some who are very awkward with the media. I mean, I would not say that they all have the same kinds of relationships. Some of them only want their staff to interact with the media. Some of them give reporters their cell phone numbers and don’t even have the staff involved. So they’re very different. I wouldn’t paint them all the same personally.

LK: Yeah, I think just continuing to have a robust Press Corps is probably the best way to do this. And I’m sure this is the case for many people. But for me the longer I stay in one place, the better relationships I get, the more people recognize me, the better questions I ask, the more trust that’s there. And so people have often, like my parents will ask me, are you going to sell out? Sorry, John, and go to like a big fancy PR firm. And I’m kind of like, yeah, I was like, “I don’t I don’t think I can.” Like, at least not right now. I think it’s important enough that we all need to be staying here and asking questions. So maybe that’s the answer is just like sticking around and doing the work every day.

CM: One of the things I just wanted to add is like, yeah, lawmakers are very different with the media. The media is just one slice of this entire pie that lawmakers have to deal with every day. And not only that, but they’re not navigating just media. Media, to some it’s a priority. Some of them have bad experiences with the media. Some of them have been burned by the media, and rightfully so, if they’ve done something wrong, that’s what the media is there to do. Hold elected officials accountable. But they also sign up for that.

Some are shy. Some have anxieties. I mean, we have to be thoughtful about the reasons why. It’s not always “they don’t wanna give me information.” It’s not always “they don’t wanna grant me an interview.” It’s not always “I want to push them away.” It’s a lot of times there’s anxieties there. There’s not an understanding of how to communicate or how to communicate effectively. There’s fear. There’s a lot of things that we need to be mindful about.

And they’re not always reasons that they just don’t wanna talk to the media. That’s really not been the case from some… a lot of the situations that I’ve noticed. Being in the Capitol for so long, there’s other things that are there and they’re working on those things. So that way they could be better, I guess, conduits with them with the media.

RE: We’re going to have to wrap it up on that. I apologize.

JM: Today’s the day to bury bad news ’cause apparently there’s a Trump verdict in. So anything that happens in the Capitol in Sacramento today was buried on purpose because the world’s watching the Trump verdict.

RE: Absolutely.

JM: I wanted to give credence to that. So be looking out today, everybody.

RE: Well, I know we’re I know we’re all going to rush right to our cell phones now and check all that out. Thanks to this fabulous panel. I think I said it was an all star panel. I maybe undersold it….

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