Mark Conley

Follow Mark Conley on: Twitter, Instagram, Facebook. Mark joins Lookout after 14 years at the Mercury News and Bay Area News Group, where he served as Deputy Sports Editor on a staff that covered three World Series, three Super Bowls, five NBA Finals, a Stanley Cup Final, six Olympic Games and three U.S. Opens over that span. He led enterprise coverage and special projects, and guided the Merc’s premium NFL and MLB magazines to five straight years of top APSE honors.Mark chaired a digital innovation committee and partook in the Table Stakes program that led to the newsroom’s establishment of a digital subscription team and a product development approach to coverage. He helped build brands around Pac-12 and high schools coverage via robust newsletters, social engagement, promotional deals and targeted audience content. Both coverage areas became top digital subscription drivers in the sports department — and the newsroom as a whole.Mark has lived in Santa Cruz County — Westside, Eastside, Midtown and now Capitola — for more than 20 years and has a passion for seeing journalism restored in the place he lives and loves.“This county is such a special place, and it’s as much about the people who choose to live here as the magical geography,” he says. “I’m looking forward to helping tell the stories of Santa Cruz County.”
Posted inCoast Life

Don’t mess with the women: Backlash over surf contest inequity leads to a reexamination of fairness, the law

by Liza Monroy and Mark Conley

When Santa Cruz’s only big surf industry company, O’Neill Wetsuits, put on an event in October that for the first time included females, it could’ve been a happy story of progress at last. Instead it “came off wrong,” according to many who followed it closely, and the company has said very little about it. Others, though, had much to say.

Posted inCoast Life

Triumph through tragedy: Tushar Atre’s death spurred his friends to build a unique life opportunity for kids

by Mark Conley

“Helping girls grow with the flow in science, technology, engineering, art and math, as well as surfing” is the Drop In Coalition’s mantra. It was developed in honor of the Pleasure Point entrepreneur who bonded with and inspired his group of like-minded friends in the water and out. It also is geared toward rectifying one of Atre’s most troublesome questions when he began surfing: Where are the people who look like me?

Posted inWatsonville / Pajaro

‘Kids pretty much on their own’: Leaders grapple with Pajaro Valley’s pandemic-fueled youth violence crisis

by Mark Conley and Hanna Merzbach

Those who see it up close talk to Lookout about what they view as the biggest challenges to fixing the problems that ail so many kids growing up in Watsonville. But they are far from easy, and many rooted deeply in the systems that govern an area with a disproportionate population living below the poverty line.

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