|
| State senator-turned-media-baron Joe Dunn |
With the Orange County Register and Los Angeles Times experiencing shrinking staffs and budgets, another player may fill the perceived investigative news vacuum.
A group that includes former state lawmakers, high-profile attorneys and veteran former newspaper reporters plans to launch a nonprofit online news organization to provide watchdog and investigative journalism in Orange County.
It's called “The Voice of OC,” its editor is former Register investigative reporter Norberto Santana Jr. and its board of directors includes former state Sen. Joe Dunn (D-Santa Ana), UC Irvine School of Law dean Erwin Chemerinsky, LA trial lawyer Thomas Girardi, San Francisco attorney James Brosnahan, former Times legal affairs reporter Henry Weinstein and former Times Capitol reporter-turned-UCI law school faculty member Dan Morain.
]
The Voice of OC, which hopes to begin posting reports by year's end, is not to be confused with Orange Coast Voice, also known as OC Voice, an “independent” newspaper and website out of Huntington Beach manned by liberal activist John Earle.
Indeed, one can imagine the confusion that could ensue when those searching for The Voice of OC content land on the OC Voice website.
Nor is the Voice of OC affiliated with Village Voice Media, a.k.a. “The Voice,” the media giant that owns OC Weekly, this very website and apparently some other things as well.
OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.