Transcript for The Staff of Lookout Santa Cruz: The People vs. the Storms

Recorded in Santa Cruz, California.

Nicole Carroll: This is the Pulitzer on the Road podcast connecting Pulitzer Prize winners with audiences around the country. I'm your guide, Nicole Carroll. I’m a member of the Pulitzer Prize board and a faculty member at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University. Each spring 23 Pulitzer Prizes are awarded for distinguished journalism, books, drama and music. On this podcast, we talk with many of the winners and hear the stories behind their prize-winning work.   

The 2024 Pulitzer Prize for breaking news reporting was awarded to Lookout Santa Cruz, a small digital news-site covering communities in - and around - the coastal California city of Santa Cruz. The Pulitzer Prize Board commended the staff for their, quote:
“Detailed and nimble community-focused coverage of catastrophic flooding and mudslides, that displaced thousands of residents…and destroyed more than 1,000 homes and businesses.”

On this episode of Pulitzer on the Road, we’re going to take you back in time, to the night the first of these destructive storms hit Santa Cruz.

It's New Year’s Eve, the last day of 2022. And while Santa Cruz is known for its beaches and sunny weather…today is not a normal day…

Tamsin McMahon: The really sort of big storm started the day of New Year's Eve, December 31st.

Nicole Carroll: Tamsin McMahon is the managing editor of Lookout Santa Cruz. The news site had been around for a couple of years and there were six reporters on staff at the time. They covered everything from local elections to college football games to restaurant openings. Tamsin was the only one working that New Year’s Eve.

Tamsin McMahon: I’d essentially planned a lot of, you know, holiday features to run. And a lot of people had left town. And I got up in the morning and the sky was dark, really dark. And the rain was really coming down like it was really pounding. You could hear it.

Nicole Carroll: Tamsin figured it would be a slow news day. And even when the wind started to pick up, she didn’t think too much of it. 

Tamsin McMahon: I didn't really think it was an emergency. But then I started to get these alerts on my phone from police from city from county officials, press releases saying, this road is closed because of a landslide. There's a flooding risk. We're going to do evacuation warnings that were upgraded into evacuation orders. And I just thought, oh my goodness, this is really terrible, like we need to get on this. But it was kind of just me at that point.

Nicole Carroll: The storm continued to build…the alerts kept coming in. So the next day, Tamsin started making some calls.

Tamsin McMahon: The first person I called was our photographer, Kevin because he will go to any assignment anywhere, regardless of how dangerous that might be.

Nicole Caroll: Photojournalist Kevin Painchaud has covered wildfires, protests, and severe thunderstorms over the years. 

Kevin Painchaud: There wasn't a question of, you know, if I'm going to be working or not. It was like, yeah, of course I'm going to be working. And so I just kind of went out there and just. Kept her up to date with what I was doing and what I saw. sent images and gave her an oral breakdown of what I saw, the damage I saw. So that she could write it up. 

Nicole Carroll: So when you’re out doing this type of coverage do you have a go bag in your car? Do you have bottled water? Do you have extra batteries? Talk about your preparation. 

Kevin Painchaud: So when I go into any storm situation I, of course, bring my boots that are about knee high and I have waterproof pants and a waterproof jacket. And then I have rain gear for my cameras. And then of course I bring a lot of water, and always bring snacks, granola bars stuff like that because I know that most of the time I’m going to be out there for the majority of the day and so I bring anything I can just to sustain myself for the day.

Nicole Caroll: Over the next few days, winds started to reach 60 miles per hour. Wifi and power lines were going down all across the county. And Kevin had to figure out how to get his photos to Tamsin.

Kevin Painchaud: Electricity was out everywhere. Communication was kind of nonexistent except for you know texts. And so I would shoot, pull over, process, download the photos on my phone and then send them that way. 

Nicole Caroll: It wasn’t long before Tamsin reached out to the rest of the staff, asking for more help. 

Tamsin McMahon: And so Max Chun our general assignment reporter jumped in along with myself and Kevin to help report that coverage. 

Max Chun: We spoke to law enforcement agencies. We spoke to the cities and counties when possible. I mean, they were obviously swamped as well.

Nicole Carroll: Max Chun, Lookout’s general assignment reporter, hit the ground running. 

Max Chun: It was really just getting stuff out as much as possible and getting stuff from uh the National Weather Service and the local agencies, just like, you know, here are places you can get sandbags or here are uh places that will be open for shelter like here's the path the storm we think is going to take. 

Nicole Caroll: As businesses near the Lookout office shuttered their windows and loaded sandbags...  Max and Tamsin wanted to get information to people faster. Faster than just publishing stories on their website. So they launched a rolling liveblog where they continually posted updates and bits of information. 

Tamsin McMahon: I was like, how do I build a blog? I've never built a blog before, but I the beautiful thing about like doing digital journalism, being a startup is you you don't necessarily have to have a playbook for everything. You just have to try and kind of figure it out as you go. So I just opened a story and called it a blog and just started to post information. And and actually readers were writing and saying, ‘Hey, can you add timestamps? I really want to know, like, how old this information is,’ which I thought was great. 

Max Chun: A lot of it was working the phones, calling the emergency services, calling the cities and counties, to sort of get a feel of the preparations and what people could do, because this type of storm had not been seen in quite some time.

Nicole Carroll: And it wasn't just one big storm that came and left. Between late December and march, storm after storm battered the area… affecting nearly everyone in the county: near the sea, up in the redwood forest, in the farm lands to the south… Waterlogged soil created landslides…trees toppled over roads…and seaside cliffs just washed away. Those first days of coverage turned into weeks of diligent reporting and communicating with residents throughout the county. In downtown Santa Cruz, the Lookout office became command central… where reports were edited, fact-checked, and published as fast as the team could work.

Max Chun: We had a lot of documents flying around. And if somebody was writing out in the field, somebody would share a document with us that would go through in edits as quickly as possible. If there was something that needed to be checked on or another call that needed to be made, I would do that or the most available person would do that and get it into shape for a blog or a story, depending on, you know, we’d kind of have to make a snap decision on uh where it would fit best. 

Nicole Carroll: On top of posting stories on their blog, Max started sending text updates to readers who had opted in for breaking news alerts. The texts included links to news stories with critical information about things like evacuation notices, hotels with open rooms…and road closures caused by landslides.

Max Chun: So I sent out a text message that reads, “Wednesday closes out with road closures, power outages and dwindling shelter space, though there may not be as much rain as initially expected. Showers and high winds are still expected through Thursday afternoon. Tap the links below for the latest coverage.” And then the the next morning, somebody sent me a message back saying, ‘you are the only news that we can get. landlines out. Power is out.’ Having our constant email and text alerts and social media alerts, people could engage in a way that they can't necessarily do with just a story that you publish on your website. And this made me feel like you know, we were really giving a public service we were really we're really reaching people in a way that that really only we could at that time. And that was a that was a big deal, I think, for us. 

Nicole Carroll: Lookout's reporters covered pretty much every corner of the county. One was focused on the damage done to the city's iconic beachfront restaurants. Another was covering unhoused residents and the ongoing crisis at shelters. 
Others were fanned out over the more rural parts of the county, where flood and mudslide damage was wreaking havoc on people's lives.

Hillary Ojeda: I just went knocking door to door in mud… 

Nicole Carroll: Hillary Ojeda is an education reporter at Lookout Santa Cruz. But when storms like this hit, there’s only one beat: disaster coverage. 

Hillary Ojeda: …like really, really thick mud. And just some people let me into their homes and I could just see, you know, the water level really, really high.

Nicole Carroll: In addition to knocking on doors and wading through flood zones, Hillary also attended a forum hosted by a local nonprofit. The meeting was organized to help people figure out how to file insurance claims for storm damage.

Hillary Ojeda: This was at like a community center. And so I just was asking around, you know, for folks who'd be interested in sharing their experiences. And someone pointed me to Benjamin Short…

Nicole Carroll: Benjamin Short lives in Lompico, a remote mountain community about 12 miles from downtown Santa Cruz. To get to this meeting, he dodged fallen redwood trees while making the treacherous drive down steep windy roads. Hillary sat with Benjamin and asked him if she could record their conversation.

Hillary Ojeda: Is your house red tagged?

Benjamin Short: My house is red tagged. My house has a series of retaining walls holding it up and they all collapsed. Half of my septic tank fell down uh the edge. The main part of the tank is still there, but the pumping station. I don't want that to fall. I don't want it to be, you know, a bunch of sewage to fall in my neighborhood.

Hillary Ojeda:  Did anything happen this past couple of days? 

Benjamin Short: We've had constant road closures, roads collapsing. We've been we've been stuck in several times without a way out of Lompico. The power has been out most of the time since New Year's. And when the power goes out the Internet goes out, Comcast goes out soon after that. We've had significant outages with the landlines. So, 

Hillary Ojeda: Since New Year's Eve it's been. 

Benjamin Short: Since New Year’s Eve. It's been hell. I'm, you know, sleeping with car keys and wallet and cell phone in my pants just in case anything... 

Hillary Ojeda: Wow. 

Benjamin Short: You know, crazy happens. And I need to, like, sprint out of there. All I really want to do is curl up in a ball and, you know, sob. But I've, you know, been kind of just focusing on the day to day and, you know, trying to save my house and, you know, trying to, you know, manage the slide as best I can…

Nicole Carroll: A few days later, Hillary decided to brave the steep drive up to Ben’s house in the mountains.  

Hillary Ojeda: There were still storms coming and I wasn't sure if I was going to have service. And there were still rocks, big rocks in the road. So at any moment, I you know, thought the soil is so saturated any of these redwoods could come down like they’re at like, breaking point after all of this wind, all the saturation. And there weren't that many cars in the road so it felt odd to be going up there. Definitely a little scary. 

Nicole Carroll: For Hillary, it was worth the risk. Ben says that Hillary was one of the only reporters covering his community at that time. And that – after Hillary published her article about him – he met other neighbors facing similar challenges…he says that her coverage helped inspire him and his neighbors to organize community meetings…and local politicians are now more aware of the infrastructure challenges in the area.

Hillary Ojeda: In these kinds of environmental disasters, you have to go out, you have to drive around in questionable areas. it's much more important to get the information out there in many different ways. And so, I tried to go where we thought the people were most impacted.

Nicole Carroll: This was vital to Lookout's mission -- paying close attention to communities that were going unnoticed by larger, legacy media groups and regional papers. Between December 31st, 2022 and mid-January 2023, there were nine “atmospheric rivers” … belts of intense moisture that moved over the area. And heavy rains persisted until mid-march. During those four months, Santa Cruz experienced more rainfall than they had in any other four-month period in over a hundred years. And Lookout continued to cover these stories for months.

Kevin Painchaud: And It was just relentless, just nonstop, you know, for three months. 

Nicole Carroll: Lookout photojournalist, Kevin Painchaud. 

Kevin Painchaud: There would literally be one three day break in between them and then the next one comes hammering in. And you never knew how bad it's going to be. You just roll your eyes and you're like, my God, is this ever going to end?

Nicole Carroll: With so many storms, and so much rain many Santa Cruz residents couldn’t just resume their regular lives. It became an ongoing battle to protect themselves and their property and to try to figure out how they might ever recover.
Lookout’s reporters stretched themselves thin, to investigate why local officials didn’t send evacuation notices and storm warnings in some areas sooner… Why plans to relocate flood-prone communities had failed… And what the government was doing to protect its citizens against future storms… especially those already underserved communities …  

Hillary Ojeda: Watsonville and Pajaro, those communities were devastated 

Nicole Carroll: That’s Hillary Ojeda again. Watsonville and Pajaro are two farming communities that sit side by side. Most of the people who live there are Spanish-speaking migrants. The two communities are divided by a river. And back in the 1940s, the state built a levee to help protect nearby farms from flooding. That levee had never been updated in the nearly 80 years since it was built. So it wasn’t shocking when the levee breached after so much rain. Hillary, one of the only Spanish speakers on the Lookout staff, drove down to Pajaro and Watsonville with photojournalist Kevin Painchaud to assess the damage.

Hillary Ojeda: We went down not knowing what we were going to find. Kevin and I, and we went to the Watsonville side of the river right next to the bridge. And there were just like, dozens of people standing along the levee. 

Nicole Carroll: Standing up on the bridge above the levee, the crowd looked down at their flooded homes.

Hillary Ojeda: When the levee breached, it was Friday night into Saturday morning. Law enforcement, firefighters went door to door telling people they had to leave. A lot of people stayed, but majority of folks left. And they were, you know, running away from the water. And as the floodwaters came in, law enforcement sectioned off this town because the floodwaters stayed for days. 

Nicole Carroll: Officials wouldn’t let them back into their homes.

Hillary Ojeda: They had medication in their homes. They had nowhere to stay. And as they’re you know Spanish speakers and most of the material and announcements and news is in English, they didn't know where they could go for help. So their lives essentially stopped. These families you know they had whatever they were able to take with them the night that they had left. So no clothes, essentially, you know, just one pair of shoes, maybe. 

Nicole Carroll: Until this moment, Hillary and Kevin didn’t really know what the residents of Watsonville and Pajaro had been going through. 

Hillary Ojeda: I couldn't believe that there was just absolutely no access for folks who had been evacuated. There were many families that were experiencing things like this. They're Spanish speakers and news organizations here were stretched very thin, and there's not many Spanish speakers, journalists.

Nicole Carroll: When we visited almost two years after the storms, Hillary and Kevin took us to the very spot where the levee breached. And I think when some people picture a levee, they might picture these massive concrete walls or something like that. But this levee looks like a pile of soil and rocks. And it’s hard to imagine that it’s expected to protect people from massive amounts of water.  

Kevin Painchaud: It -- that's where the water started. It literally just went as far as the eye can see. It was all just water. 

Nicole Carroll: Hillary and Kevin introduced us to Norma and Rafael. When they were evacuated from their mobile home, they didn't have a lot of options. 

Hillary Ojeda: They were staying with family members, Norma, she and her family were staying at her brother’s. When we met with them and there was seventeen people in one apartment.

[Rafael speaks Spanish]

Nicole Carroll: Even now, as we talk to them almost two years later, they still can’t live in their home because of all the destruction. 

Hillary Ojeda: He says, you know, at first it was really difficult. They were really impacted the kids. And so they didn't go to school for maybe 15 days. And so yeah they went to school and they were just totally disoriented. her daughter was crying a lot in school. because she was worried that if it flooded, if there was another flood her mom was going to be too far away to reach her.

Nicole Carroll: After the levee breached, officials said that roughly 2,000 people were evacuated from the Pajaro valley. In many ways, this area is a microcosm of the system failures that occurred during the storms. There was the failure to anticipate. Since 1963 the levee has been deemed unable to provide adequate protection. The US Army Corps has been drafting and re-drafting plans for reconstruction but nothing has actually been fixed. There was the failure to notify residents of evacuations in time for them to pack everything they’d need. And lastly- there was neglect: while so much of the government recovery efforts focused on the wealthier coastline neighborhoods, many Pajaro residents were left to fend for themselves, pleading … often to little avail …for resources from local nonprofits and church groups. In the aftermath of their reporting, having seen up close just how neglected the needs of migrants are within the larger Santa Cruz county, lookout has launched a fellowship for Spanish speaking reporters to exclusively cover these communities. 

Nicole Carroll: Did any other reporters reach out to you? Did you talk to anybody else in the media?

[in Spanish]

Hillary Ojeda: Just with us.

Nicole Carroll: Did it make a difference, do you think, to the area that the Lookout and Hillary and Kevin wrote about and took photos of what was happening? Did it help?

[in Spanish]

Rafael: Bastante. Bastante.

Nicole Carroll: Bastante. Bastante. A lot. A lot. 

Nicole Carroll: In what way? 

[in Spanish]

Hillary Ojeda: Well, he said of course just putting eyes on this community and so that people could hear us and listen to us so that people could see what happened to us so that the government could help. 

Nicole Carroll: It can be hard to tell if your reporting has made a direct impact, but we do know that today, roughly two years after lookout was one of the only outlets to report deeply on the destroyed levees in Watsonville and Pajaro, public pressure appears to be resulting in action. Chris Neely is Lookout’s policy reporter. 

Chris Neely: The Army Corps of Engineers and the Pajaro regional flood management agency, which is kind of the overarching agency between governments down there, they broke ground on what is going to be a several year levee reconstruction project that is going to be built to much better standards and is going to provide way greater protection for the residents down there in the farmlands so there is movement on that. You know, no one saying, ‘yeah, well, you know, we read that Lookout story and uh and now we're going to do this thing.’ But I think over time, you know, regular pressure and also officials, decision makers, knowing that we're going to be on a story, has its own influence. 

Nicole Carroll: As climate change gets worse, local governments across the U.S. are trying to figure out how to prepare for future disasters. And Lookout’s influence is not just local. Santa Cruz has really diverse terrain and geography. That means that the county is vulnerable to a lot of different kinds of environmental disasters – storms, mudslides, wild fires. You name it. So, Santa Cruz has become a kind of test case for addressing climate change. What’s happening there is influencing conversations in other communities. The impact of Lookout's reporting is undeniable, and it was an important aspect of its Pulitzer consideration. But what they achieved went far deeper than the reporting on systemic failures.

Chris Neely: We knew that it was really important to not just tell the kind of government story you know it's it's not a government versus storms, you know, it's it’s people versus storms. you know, but it is ultimately people who are dealing with these things and as we reported, dealing with it in incredibly different and diverse ways.

Nicole Carroll: For the reporters at Lookout, their work is about and for the people of Santa Cruz. The outstanding effect of Lookout's work was that it operated on every level at once ... As news, as public service, and as a kind of emergency glue that bound a community together and offered hope in the midst of despair. Alongside almost every explainer of the forces unleashed by climate change was a story of resilience in the face of those forces. Neighbors drinking beer in a generator-powered bar to keep a business afloat. Neighbors pitching in to repair each other’s roofs. Neighbors driving buses through dangerous mountain passes to help evacuate assisted living communities. In some cases, the stories of neighbors helping neighbors inspired even more connection. The kind of change that isn't evident in legislation or levees being built, but is no less meaningful. Take Benjamin Short for example. He’s the guy who slept with his keys and wallet in his pockets after his mountain home was red-tagged. 

Benjamin Short: It looks like a construction site now. Before that it just looked like a weird [fade under]

Nicole Carroll: Benjamin’s still repairing the damages on his property that were caused by the storms…but there have been some silver linings for him…

Benjamin Short: After she wrote her story, a neighbor who lives up the hill kind of, you know, said, my gosh, this poor man's in this horrible situation like and I just want to do something, anything. And so she found me on next door and just said, you know, I’m living up here with my son. And, you know, I know you're having a difficult time. Can I cook you a nice, warm, homemade meal? I know your plumbing is all messed up. And I was like, that would. That would be wonderful. Thank you. And yeah, and so She brought me a lovely, delicious, home cooked meal and… We like fell in love. And she's the love of my life. And we're. We're engaged. 

Nicole Carroll: Hillary, how does it feel to hear that story? 

Hillary Ojeda: I couldn't believe it. And, you know, like. As a reporter, you always have. You always hope for like policy change. And you just never imagine that someone will find love and get engaged after the story that you wrote. Yeah, it was really great to hear. Super happy for him. And yeah, it was quite a surprise. 

Nicole Carroll: Months after that stormy New Year’s Eve, Tamsin McMahon decided to submit Lookout's work for a Pulitzer prize in Breaking News. She didn't tell anyone on her team. She figured it was a long shot.  But she was so proud of what they'd done that she thought, why not? And in the spring of 2024, she sent a message to her newsroom…

Chris Neely: We got a slack message from Tamsin McMahon, who is a very sober Canadian. She does not show a lot of emotion. She said: Mandatory meeting at 10 a.m. tomorrow. Which one is not something you want to hear in the journalism industry. This is a mandatory meeting with no other context that sends chills down your spine.

Max Chun: My colleagues and I had like a group text that we were messaging and we were like, what could this possibly be like? She's never this, like insistent on the news meeting. 

Hillary Ojeda: Chris joked that it was a Pulitzer or the Nobel or something. 

Chris Neely: I said out loud, oh maybe it's a Pulitzer. But then immediately I was like why would I even say that aloud? I'm just going to be disappointed tomorrow when it's not the Pulitzer, because it's not the Pulitzer. Like, there's no way. 

Hillary Ojeda: Once everyone was on the screens, Tamsin could just not contain her smile. She was just like beaming. She just said it: We won a Pulitzer! 

Max Chun: And it's just like dead silence for like, I don't know, a couple of seconds and everyone's just like, you're going to need to run that by me one more time. 

Chris Neely: Everyone is just hugging I mean I was I was so excited.

Hillary Ojeda: I think I just started crying immediately. I think Kevin did too.

Kevin Painchaud: I had so many emotions of feeling just so honored to be a part of some of the greatest journalists like ever to exist and to be a part of that was just unbelievable. 

Hillary Ojeda: We were just in shock. I definitely didn’t expect it. It's definitely like years of folks just generally not understanding, why you would do this job. But it's a, it's a really great validation that I would never imagine getting. 

Kevin Painchaud: I felt for the first time like really seen like my stuff that I do it does matter and it’s being seen -- I can never thank Tamsin enough for submitting us for that award

Nicole Carroll: Days after learning about their win, the Lookout team held a celebration at their office. They invited their readers to join the party, and over 100 community members showed up. For Tamsin McMahon – who spent day after day and night after night directing coverage – the 2024 Pulitzer for breaking news is an amazing recognition of her team’s dedication. But she knows their work is not done. 

Tamsin McMahon: What was important was for us to continue to go back and to continue to cover like, hey, this is the storm, that there was an emergency. People left their homes, they went to a hotel or a shelter. But then what happens to them in the in the months and years after that?

Nicole Carroll: Recently, in December of 2024, record breaking swells tore off a massive chunk of Santa Cruz’ iconic wharf.
The wharf is a long stretch of pier that’s home to some of the city’s most beloved shops, eateries and vistas. Lookout reporters have been covering the story... Reminding us – yet again – that these climate threats are not going away.  

Tamsin McMahon: There are people living on the edge and they've lost their housing and they've been pushed out. And there's really very little shelter system. And the government hadn't really had to pay attention to it before, before this. And now they are. 

Nicole Carroll: Lookout was just over two years old when they did the reporting that won them a Pulitzer. Since then, Lookout’s average monthly pageviews have increased by about 50 percent. By any measure, they’re a success story. But like Santa Cruz itself, they are also a test case ... A beacon in a larger ongoing crisis.

More than half of the country has limited or no access to local news.  In the last twenty years, the U.S. has lost close to 3,000 newspapers. And yet we know that a vibrant local press is critical to public safety and to democracy.

Local newsrooms, like Lookout Santa Cruz, provide crucial services. This year, Lookout is launching another office in Eugene, Oregon. Lookout’s founder, Ken Doctor, promises that like Lookout Santa Cruz – Lookout Eugene will be robust, trustworthy, and community-oriented. He also hopes to open in other locations.

And with each new news site, another community becomes more equipped with critical information to help them face the unknown.  

I hope that – as we move forward – all who care about well-informed communities and credible local newsrooms - the readers, the funders, the community leaders - will continue to support the tireless work of their local journalists in towns and cities across the us.  

That’s it for this episode of Pulitzer on the Road.

Thank you to the staff of Lookout Santa Cruz, the 2024 Pulitzer Prize Breaking News winners.

A special thank you to: Ken Doctor, Tamsin McMahon, Max Chun, Hillary Ojeda, Kevin Painchaud, Christopher Neely, Benjamin Short, Norma and Rafael, Wallace Baine, Lilly Belli, and Josh Whitby for taking the time to talk with us.

For more details about this work and the work of all Pulitzer winners please visit our website at pulitzer.org. Please subscribe and rate the show wherever you get your podcasts.

Pulitzer on the Road is a production of the Pulitzer Prize Board and is produced by Audacy’s Pineapple Street Studios.

This show is hosted by me, Nicole Carroll.

This episode was produced by Marialexa Kavanaugh.  Our Senior Producer is Justine Daum.

Our executive editor is Joel Lovell.

The Head of Sound & Engineering at Pineapple Street is Raj Makhija.

This episode was mixed by Marina Paiz. With additional audio engineering by Pedro Alvira.

Music licensing by APM and Epidemic Sound.

Editing, promotion and other support by Pamela Casey, Edward Kliment and Sean Murphy. Bari Finkel and Marjorie Miller are our executive producers.