Lookout wins the Pulitzer Prize; Scotts Valley’s tabula rasa, and more
The newsroom at Lookout Santa Cruz won the Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News Reporting for our work during the winter 2023 natural disasters. Congratulations to the editors, reporters and business team who make Lookout what it now firmly is: a news organization of the absolute highest quality.
Santa Cruz County is still recovering from that devastating winter, and there are still more stories to tell. It’s difficult to bask in an achievement when it comes on the back of such dire circumstances. Yet, as a resident of the county, I think it is comforting to know that, in a moment of such diminished ranks in the industry, Santa Cruz has a news outlet that can rise to the moment and is dedicated to covering the stories that matter most.
To be a reporter for that news outlet, I couldn’t be prouder.
Can Scotts Valley finally fill the hole in its heart with a new town center?
In recent years, fresh streams of vitality have circulated around the heart of Scotts Valley.
Just off Mount Hermon Road, the city’s main thoroughfare and connector of Highways 9 and 17, a renovated library adjoins a new community theater in front of a transit center, sitting only a skip away from a new solar-powered townhome development and an existing senior center.
Skypark, the small, mountain community version of Central Park, buzzes with soccer teams, an active jungle gym, skate park and a pump track, and abuts The Hangar, a modern commercial space anchored by Laughing Monk Brewing and The Penny Ice Creamery. Within the radius of a stone’s throw are a middle school, a Target, a pair of grocery stores and a movie theater.
During his 28 years on the city council, Scotts Valley Mayor Randy Johnson has seen all of this come to fruition. Yet, sitting on the patio of The Hangar, surrounded by the many monuments of his time in power, Johnson can’t take his eyes off the expansive elephant in his view, the sprawling void at the center of everything.
“I think ‘tortured’ would probably be a bit strong,” Johnson said, describing his relationship to the vacancy before him. “Scotts Valley has a lot of appealing traits. But to have this hole in the middle of the community, where nothing really happens, it kind of hurts.”
The hole Johnson refers to is the empty, 14-acre lot that once hosted the Skypark Airport runway, closed now for 42 years. Today, the lot is characterized by several football fields’ worth of overgrown weeds, interrupted by a couple oak trees and lassoed by a makeshift and uneven gravel track. Pedestrians can walk it, cyclists can bike it, but on a hot mid-afternoon, the sight of this mostly shadeless, parched parcel dries the tongue.
For Johnson, it is the field of an unfulfilled promise; in fact, his first promise, on the campaign trail in 1996. Then, Johnson, and the nearly 30 years’ worth of elected officials who have shuffled through Scotts Valley since, promised to turn this space into a new “Town Center,” a downtown in the spirit of Santa Cruz’s Pacific Avenue, replete with housing, retail, restaurants and community space. Yet, now, after three decades of tries and fails, Scotts Valley residents might have more reason than ever to be optimistic.
Looking Ahead
Capitola looks to the future for its wharf: The Capitola Wharf is set for a grand reopening by August, according to city staff. On Thursday, the Capitola City Council is set to vote on a temporary use plan for the wharf over the next roughly year and a half that includes monthly events in the fall with food trucks, live music and a beer garden, as well as recreation programming and art and marine science classes. During the same May 9 meeting, the city council will also begin seeking proposals for a long-term wharf usage plan.
Coastal Commission reviews Santa Cruz’s oversized vehicle ordinance: In February, the Santa Cruz City Council voted to extend its oversized overnight vehicle parking ordinance for another three years. However, local homeless advocates appealed the decision, claiming that the ordinance has blocked people living in their cars from accessing the coast. On Thursday, the California Coastal Commission will decide on the appeal. You can watch that meeting here.
Weekly News Diet
Local: Following a movement we’re watching nationwide, UC Santa Cruz students have occupied Quarry Plaza with a Gaza Solidarity Encampment, protesting the U.S. government’s role in the Israel-Hamas war and demanding UCSC’s divestment from Israel. Lookout contributor Keith Spencer has that report from campus.
Golden State: Republican state lawmakers are pushing a bill in Sacramento that would strip state financial aid from any student found to have committed violent or criminal acts in their protests against the Israel-Hamas war. CalMatters politics reporter Alexei Koseff has that report from the legislature.
National: Jack Wade Whitton, a Georgia business owner, was sentenced to five years in prison last week for repeatedly attacking law enforcement during the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot. Whitton was known for bragging about having “fed” an officer to a mob of rioters. Whitton is just one of more than 1,350 people charged with federal crimes related to the riot, and one of about 850 who have been sentenced. Michael Kunzelman of the Associated Press has that update.
One Great Read
Revisit Lookout’s Pulitzer Prize-winning storm coverage
The Pulitzer Prize is American journalism’s top honor. To win, especially in the breaking news category, often requires grit, long days, and a belief in the value of independent reporting. However, submitting your work to the Pulitzer committee requires its own grit and long days and belief in the work already done. Lookout’s managing editor, Tamsin McMahon, worked for weeks putting this package together and submitting it for the award, all without telling another soul in the newsroom.
The package is its own documentary, telling the story of Lookout’s drive to cover the impacts of an unprecedented series of climate disasters that struck our county.
“Unrelenting” was a word we threw around the newsroom often over that time. It felt like each day, for more than three months, brought its own “Oh shit” moment, sending all reporters from their desks and into a sometimes unrecognizable community. Personally trudging through feet of mud in Felton Grove, standing next to homes pulverized by 80,000-pound Douglas fir trees in Boulder Creek, stepping over sopping living rooms and trashed New Year’s Eve decorations in a Soquel mobile home park, and trying to track down President Joe Biden during his visit, are images that will always stand out to me from that time.
And, of course, I remember the exhaustion of sitting front row to the innumerable disasters and traumas we had to cover. Moments like that can really make or break a newsroom, and this young team really came together to meet the occasion. I said it earlier, but I couldn’t be prouder of this organization.