Christopher Neely

Over the past decade, Christopher Neely has built a diverse journalism résumé, spanning from the East Coast to Texas and, most recently, California’s Central Coast.

Chris reported from Capitol Hill in Washington with Capital News Service before spending a couple years along New Jersey’s shores. There, he wrote for the Coast Star, where many stories stood against the backdrop of a new, post-Hurricane Sandy reality. Chris then traveled down to the heart of Texas to take a role as Austin City Hall reporter, spending five years writing about the thorniest and politically fraught urban issues in the Texas capital. Those included a housing and homelessness crisis, issues of billions of dollars in economic development deals, natural disasters, the pandemic, a reckoning over police violence and the rapidly changing identity of America’s fastest- growing major city.

Most recently, Chris spent nearly two years just south of Santa Cruz, at Monterey County Weekly, as a staff writer covering water, the environment, wildfires, politics, county government and Big Sur, with some music and human interest stories mixed in.

As Lookout’s Politics and Policy Correspondent, Chris now adds chronicling Santa Cruz County’s political life to his repertoire, with an eye toward telling engaging stories about the decisions and decision-makers within the county and its cities. Along with his reporting duties, Chris authors the In The Public Interest newsletter, a Monday menu of political and newsy goings on throughout the county.

“Being a journalist allows one to tell the story of our time,” Chris says. “I do that every week here in Santa Cruz.”