It was “Christmastime for journalists” at the Daily Breeze offices in Torrance Monday, as the newspaper’s shorthanded staff celebrated the paper’s first-ever Pulitzer Prize for an investigative series detailing an abuse of power by former Centinela Valley Union High School District Superintendent Jose Fernandez.
The Pulitzer gave Daily Breeze staffers a shock and a brief reprieve from the harsher realities of the newspaper business. (After a series of cuts, there are now just five staff reporters left at the paper to cover the entire South Bay).
Reporters didn’t think the understaffed 63,000-circulation newspaper stood much of a chance. To downplay the moment, they watched the ceremony separately in their cubicles on YouTube.
But when the announcement finally came in around 12 p.m, the subdued atmosphere became euphoric. City editor Frank Suraci let slip an expletive and a loud whoop to alert the newsroom that he and reporters Rob Kuznia and Rebecca Kimitch had won the Pulitzer for local reporting.
“The first word out of my mouth was a four letter word,” Suraci said. “As soon as I heard Rob’s name, I let out quite the whoop.”
Soon after, supplies were procured for an impromptu champagne celebration. The newsroom’s skeleton crew was joined by Kuznia, who recently left the paper to work in public relations at the USC Shoah Institute, along with Kimitch, who works at the Daily Breeze’s sister paper in the San Gabriel Valley. Publisher Ron Hasse, who oversees all nine daily papers in the Los Angeles News Group, and executive editor Michael Anastasi joined in as well.
“It was almost like I was in a dream state,” Kuznia said. “It didn’t get surreal until the champagne part, when we were all reconnecting in the newsroom. The realness of the day took a break. We all adjourned to the back where there was a table with hor d’oeuvres. Anastasi was showering me with champagne and it was stinging my eyeballs. Then I’ve had a half bottle of champagne on an empty stomach and I’m doing an interview with the New York Times.”
Ed Pilolla, editor of the Palos Verdes News, who works from the Daily Breeze offices, described the scene as “Christmastime for journalists.”
The Daily Breeze’s prize-winning series of stories detailed how Fernandez managed to take home a $750,000 salary and benefit package in 2013 despite working in a low-performing and cash-strapped school district that includes Hawthorne and Lawndale. The reporters conducted a roughly six-month investigation and filed dozens of investigative and news stories over the course of last year. Fernandez was fired as a result, and FBI investigations and criminal probes are now underway, according to the Daily Breeze.
Kuznia had the sole byline on the initial story, published February 9 of last year. Right away, Anastasi knew the paper was onto something big. He told Suraci to put Kuznia on the story full time — a bold move in the face of all-time low staffing levels at the paper. Anastasi also assigned Kimitch, who was working at LANG’s San Gabriel Valley paper, to work on the story full time.
Suraci credited Anastasi for giving him the ability to commit fully to the story, even at the expense of publishing other local stories that could not be covered due to a lack of reporters.
“The difference between this story and the other ones we’ve done was our executive editor pushing us to have Rob work on this full time to get to the bottom of the story no matter what,” Suraci said. “That’s not a call I would have made. I’m working at a small suburban newsroom and I have other stories to do. I wasn’t prepared to sacrifice those other stories to do this. But that’s why we won.”
The decision to devote such resources would have been less surprising in better times. But LANG has been under financial pressure for years, and cutting staff. The five Daily Breeze reporters are already down from seven last year. There were twice as many reporters just five years prior, and many more before that.
With parent company Digital First Media mulling a sale of its various newspaper groups across the country, including LANG, an air of uncertainty has hung over the newsroom. Suraci said he has four reporter openings that he would like to fill, but management has been waiting for a resolution to the uncertainty before hiring.
“You have a company that’s been cut dramatically and in the process of a sale but it shows that journalists go on and do what they need to do, and do it under trying circumstances,” said Ken Doctor, a Bay Area news industry analyst.
A day after the celebration wound down, Kimitch said she was still tracking the Fernandez story, but has more or less gone back to business as usual.
“When there’s still some digging that needs to be done or there’s another story that’s out there, we’ll keep tracking this,” she said. “We had some good celebration yesterday, today it’s back to the deadlines.”
