We’re almost to Friday, folks, and a well-deserved non-rainy day! As we dry out a bit, we digest the mixed news delivered by county health officials on Thursday. The short version: The county is trending in the right direction as we hoped and suspected, but getting from the purple tier back into the red is […]
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 inCOVID 2022
COVID PM: Inoculating in the rain, slow declines on key metrics continue
Hi, soggy Santa Cruz, I hope you’re surviving our most prolonged rain event of the winter. It didn’t prevent one of the county’s newest vaccination sites from ramping up, as you’ll read more about below. Nor did it dampen the news that COVID cases continued to decline in Santa Cruz County two days after news […]
Posted inCOVID 2022
COVID PM: Our in-depth look at farmworker vaccines
Hey, it’s Tuesday night and the worst of the weather is yet to come. Don’t be reading this while driving on a wet road please! In our COVID Today reporting by Mallory Pickett, we learned that 340 vaccines were administered at the newly opened drive-thru center at the fairgrounds on a day when the state […]
Posted inCOVID 2022
COVID PM: Back to the purple tier and what that means for us
Happy Monday night, folks: While we’ve got a concerning bit of weather on the way, we also received some very good news on the COVID front today. Though it’s not looking like a very good week for outdoor dining, our struggling establishments have at least gotten the green light via a move out of stay-at-home […]
Posted inCOVID 2022
COVID PM: Stay-home order might be over soon, event wrap-up
Happy Friday, Santa Cruz people, Our update on all things COVID doubles as a breaking news alert this evening: The stay-at-home order might be lifted within two weeks. More on that in a bit. Thursday night’s big Lookout event went very well, and I want to thank those of you who reached out to me […]
Posted inCOVID 2022
COVID PM: Big event coming right up, hail to the nurses like this one
Hey, folks: It’s a Happy Covid 2021 Event Night here at Lookout and I’m super excited to see how much smarter I get on a topic that’s been vexing all of us for far too long now. Even if it’s just one important factoid from the mouths of Gail Newel, Marm Kilpatrick or Erica Padilla-Chavez […]
Posted inCOVID 2022
COVID PM: Don’t miss your chance to get answers straight from the experts
Good evening, folks, and thanks for clicking into your COVID-19 catchup this Wednesday evening. If you were going to put together an all-star cast of local health experts to wrap its collective head around the ongoing pandemic, well, you’d have tomorrow night’s Lookout-hosted event. This is the COVID 2021: The Experts Answer Your Questions lineup, […]
Posted inCOVID 2022
COVID PM: State & county officials see data shift a bit differently
Hello, fine people of Santa Cruz County. Amidst the fear of yet more fire destruction and preparation for a presidential swap-out, there was still news to be had on the COVID-19 front — and it was a mixed bag between what was being said by state and local officials. Despite a mind-numbing stat — on […]
Posted inPandemic Life
COVID-19, A Love Story: One couple fought the pandemic together — until ‘Pop’ lost the battle
Gene and Doris Johnson were doing well in assisted living before the coronavirus changed everything about how the 94-year-old couple could connect to their loved ones. At least they still had each other — until Gene, a well-known teacher and coach, died last week.
Posted inCOVID 2022
COVID PM: Lots of new virus, vaccine information to process
Happy Friday, everyone! It was a day of drawing back the curtains on our county’s — and nation’s — health crisis. If you weren’t already familiar with the names, faces, voices and opinions of Dr. Gail Newel, Dr. David Ghilarducci and Dr. Mimi Hall, a rare Zoom gathering Friday provided essential one-stop processing. You can […]