Quick Take
As we’ve come out of the pandemic, Lookout CEO and Founder Ken Doctor highlights the bursting vitality of the county, and that there’s lots planned for the spring.
Maybe you, like many of us, spent last Friday morning enjoying the first bit of real spring – a warm, sunshiny day away from computers and phones. If you missed Lookout that morning, you missed something a little remarkable. Each of our top stories featured women, a diverse group of women doing noteworthy things in our community. Longtime women’s rights advocates Cynthia Mathews and Gail Michaelis-Ow. Esteemed cookbook author Andrea Nguyen. Local playwright Kate Hawley, who debuted her latest play at the Jewel Theatre. A succinct Q & A with Jewel artistic director Julie James (in one of our new formats you’ve told us you like, in addition to the popular “Ask Lookout’’). A story on Dientes CEO Laura Marcus and Santa Cruz Community Health CEO Leslie Conner, who launched a $28-million Live Oak medical and dental facility. A quick look at native Santa Cruzan Heather Rogers’ perspective on becoming the county’s first public defender. And our own Lily Belli giving you a taste of the weekend with Eaters Digest.
What I, as the founder of this evolving thing we proudly call Lookout Santa Cruz, found remarkable is that we didn’t plan to feature stories focusing only on women last week.
As journalists, we’re fairly immune to someone naming some month as a focal point for attention – yes, March is Women’s History Month. We prefer to consider all 12 months of the year the playing field to recognize and make prominent the worthy and diverse people who make Santa Cruz County so endlessly interesting. We just follow our noses – and on Friday, as with many days, that means featuring women prominently on Lookout.
As I look at those stories, I’m reminded of the early, bitter critique of Lookout’s launch by a fellow local publisher, who declared Santa Cruz had enough news coverage and that enough stories were being told. Consider that none of those stories – covering political controversy, the arts, health, local food and more – appeared elsewhere. We set out when we launched Lookout in the deep, dark days of COVID-19 in November 2020 to tell the stories, the controversies and the passions of all of us here. A year and a half went by in the blink of an eye for a new news company asking to be read, shared and trusted. And in that time, we’ve been able to offer you thousands of stories – and ones that appeared nowhere else.
So as we launch into all the coming expansion of Lookout, first THANK YOU, and second, this is the time to become a member. Joining our fast-growing membership list gets you all of the expanding Lookout, and supports our team. Here’s our recent group shot.
Take a look at all of them here, and you can see the journalists who work for you and get paid a decent wage in affordability-challenged Santa Cruz. I’ve been in the news industry for 47 years now, and our young, spirited team, including growing ranks of interns, gives me the confidence that the future of journalism will be strong here. Those interns, led by staffer Max Chun, in fact, now produce another Lookout offering, Student Lookout, providing the scoop on student deals, news, entertainment and athletics in town. If you’re a student or know one, signing up here is easy.
Most immediately, let me introduce to all of you another impressive woman.
Jody Biehl has joined as our first Community Voices editor, and we knew from the get-go we’d found the right person to lead and edit Lookout’s new opinion pages. She’s reported from the farmworker fields of Santa Rosa to the busy streets of Berlin. Her unique resume qualifies her as a new Santa Cruzan bringing both a local view and a global view to our readers: It includes The New York Daily News, The Santa Rosa Press Democrat, The San Francisco Chronicle and Germany’s Der Spiegel. Jody’s unceasing curiosity is matched by a keen editor’s judgment. She taught journalism for a dozen years in New York and now teaches it at UCSC.
What do we hope Community Voices will become? Simply a fair and vital forum for public debate that pushes us all forward, in line with Lookout’s overall mission: Make Santa Cruz County a better place for all who live here. That means you’ll see, in the best tradition of once-robust newspaper editorial and op-ed sections, local viewpoints and letters to the editor. We’ll let Jody outline what else you can expect closer to our launch in April. She’s already met dozens of you, and wants to connect with more.
Contact her at jody@lookoutlocal.com. (And, yes, that’s another reason to become a member now, so you can experience all of Community Voices as it launches. That’s in addition to the fact that we’re finally able to meet all members in person at our April 28 Open House.)
Looking Out:
- I talk to a lot of employers around town and their No. 1 complaint remains: the difficulty of hiring. More and more of them have joined us for our new Lookout Job Board, and they are making matches. Check it out here.
- Have daily digital puzzles become a habit for you? Good news. Our new Santa Cruz Puzzle Center soon launches, with daily mini-crossword, Sudoku and Word Search. Plus – Santa Cruz-themed puzzles. Look for the launch this week.
- We’ve made it easier to follow your favorite Lookout correspondents. You can now sign up to be notified by text each time they publish a new piece. We’ve started with the stories of Wallace Baine and Lily Belli, and will extend the service soon. Sign up now at joinsubtext.com/wallace and joinsubtext.com/lilyonfood. Getting ready for the reopening, Lily and Wallace have both previewed the “normalish” summer ahead, with arts and farm-to-table guides Lily’s weekly newsletter now moves into its second month. Tell your friends who aren’t signed up for it. And in April, Wallace’s own weekly newsletter – jam-packed with, as he has outlined it, “news, interviews, my picks for the best events of the week, recommendations, trivia, jokes, asides, alerts, reminders and other nuggets of intel drawn from the people and places that make up this impossible-to-contain community.”
- And another findability tip, for stories that might be a couple of days old. You’ll find our “carousel” of correspondents as you scroll down our home page. Just click on each writer and you’ll see all their recent stories.
- I talk to a lot of employers around town and their No. 1 complaint remains: the difficulty of hiring. More and more of them have joined us for our new Lookout Job Board, and they are making matches. Check it out here.
- Have daily digital puzzles become a habit for you? Good news. Our new Santa Cruz Puzzle Center soon launches, with daily mini-crossword, Sudoku and Word Search. Plus – Santa Cruz-themed puzzles. Look for the launch this week.
- We’ve made it easier to follow your favorite Lookout correspondents. You can now sign up to be notified by text each time they publish a new piece. We’ve started with the stories of Wallace Baine and Lily Belli, and will extend the service soon. Sign up now at joinsubtext.com/wallace and joinsubtext.com/lilyonfood. Getting ready for the reopening, Lily and Wallace have both previewed the “normalish” summer ahead, with arts and farm-to-table guides Lily’s weekly newsletter now moves into its second month. Tell your friends who aren’t signed up for it. And in April, Wallace’s own weekly newsletter – jam-packed with, as he has outlined it, “news, interviews, my picks for the best events of the week, recommendations, trivia, jokes, asides, alerts, reminders and other nuggets of intel drawn from the people and places that make up this impossible-to-contain community.”
- And another findability tip, for stories that might be a couple of days old. You’ll find our “carousel” of correspondents as you scroll down our home page. Just click on each writer and you’ll see all their recent stories.
