Great newspaper stories — like the shocking L.A. County tax scandal involving Assessor John Noguez — usually don’t come from attending government meetings or going to press conferences.
The tip that ignites a reporter’s passion almost always comes in a telephone call, as it did last December for Randy Economy, investigative reporter for the Los Cerritos Community Newspaper, a 55,000-circulation weekly with a staff of five, including owner-publisher Brian Hews.
What happened over the next eight months shows just how important professional news media still are in the age of the blogosphere — even small community and weekly newspapers — at a time when the total audience for local TV news and large daily newspapers is smaller than what the No. 1 station and dominant paper in a market used to attract.
For Economy, 52, who is legally blind, with only partial vision in his left eye, and Hews, whose family owned the Wave newspapers until 1998, it has been the adventure of a lifetime.
“The first call we got back in December was from an employee deep inside the assessor’s office and he was angry, and very passionate about what was going on inside the office,” Economy recalled last week.
“He said, ‘There’s this guy who’s always in John Noguez’s office, and he’s going around telling everybody what to do. You got to check this guy out. It’s creepy. I called the L.A. Times. I called Channel 2. I’m reaching out to everybody and nobody is taking my calls.”
“I’ll take your call, I’ll listen,” responded Economy, 52, who spent most of his career as a political consultant and government relations aide in the cable TV industry until joining the Los Cerritos staff two years ago.
In meeting with his source and getting other calls from insiders, Economy learned the guy in Noguez’s office was tax agent Ramin Salari, one of half-dozen slick operators who rounded up contributions to Noguez’s campaign and got favorable treatment for their clients in the form of massive property tax assessment reductions on luxury homes and buildings — reductions that were worth hundreds, even thousands, of times the value of donations.
Just before Christmas, David Demerjian, head of the county district attorney’s Public Integrity Division, confirmed to Economy that “inquiries” were opened into two possible cases involving the assessor’s office.
“I still remember Randy walking in and saying he just got a phone call saying the D.A. is going to investigate Noguez,” recalled Hews.
“I said, ‘Go for it.’ A few weeks later we met our source, our ‘Deep Throat,’ and he handed us a stack of documents, campaign donations all marked up. We started getting more and more calls from people inside saying, ‘Thank you, thank you.’ It was like you can’t make this stuff up.”
The big story is every journalist’s dream, but for Hews and Economy, it sometimes felt too big. So they were cautious and clued in the Los Angeles Times about where they were at.
Sure they had it right, Hews green-lighted the story for an early preview online on Feb. 7 and for publication in that week’s print edition. Economy posted this on his own blog: “I broke this news story wide open this afternoon … John Noguez is under an official inquiry … look for coverage in the Los Angeles Times on Thursday. Is this the tip of the iceberg? Hummm.”
The story exploded in the pages of the Cerritos weekly and in the Times: What could be worse — if you can’t trust the tax man, who can you trust?
Do I hear Pulitizer?!?
Los Angeles has the worse tabloid newspapers and TV news in the nation. Look at all the dumb coverage Justin Bieber got just for getting a speeding ticket. They all should be called the National Enquirer because so much of their coverage is on entertainment and celebrities and not about hard hitting stories on all the corruption within City Hall. The FEDS are knocking down doors in the small communities arresting their politicians. I’m waiting for them here in LA to do the same inside City Hall.
A now defunct local paper (free of course at the time) called the “Garment Worker and Local City or something like that” had a story about THEN COUNTY ASSESSOR RICK “I’m a Traitor” Aurbach (the guy before Johny No-Good-Ez) of which HE SENT TO THE SACRAMENTO RUN EQUALIZATION BOARD AN “INQUIRY” OF WHETHER HE COULD RE-ASSESS COUNTRY CLUBS, ASSOCIATIONS, GOLF COURSES AND OTHERS FOR MORE TAX $$$ UNDER PROP 13 BECAUSE THEY WEREN’T PAYING THEIR “FAIR SHARE!” In fact this little tiny paper even came up with the fact that clubs Like Wilshire Country Club and the huge and powerful L.A. Country Club were paying LESS ANNUAL PROP TAXES THEN ALOT OF SINGLE FAMILY HOMES!
I called the then KRLA “Kevin James Show” and told this goodie on the air. A FEW MONTHS LATER THE COUNTY ASSESSOR RESIGNED AND DECIDED IT WAS TIME AFTER DECADES TO NOW RETIRE!!!!! HA HA HA!!!!!!!
I’m sure Golfers like Mr. Riordan, Mr. Villaraigosa, Mr. Burkle, and Mr. Caruso CALLED THAT SCUMBAG AND TOLD HIM WHAT THEY THOUGHT ABOUT HIS
“INQUIRY!”
Now came the new Assessor, Mr. Noguez (No-Good-Ez.) He was installed by THE 75 CAMPAIGN DONORS to LOWER THE TAXES OF THE RICH! Problem is—He only did it for the 75