By Alex Vejar

Former Daily Breeze reporter Rob Kuznia made headlines last year after he won a Pulitzer–only for the journalism world to learn he had left the industry. Shocking to some, he had left the Torrance, California newspaper for a role in PR.

Kuznia told reporters he left the industry because he could barely afford to support himself. A year later, he’s still working in PR, but has been given an opportunity to write for major news publications like The Washington Post.

One year ago this week, Kuznia — along with colleagues Rebecca Kimitch and Frank Suraci — won the Pulitzer Prize for local reporting after uncovering corruption in the Centinela Valley Union High School District.

Kuznia’s stories led to the firing of the District’s superintendent, who received an exorbitant amount of pay through his salary and a litany of abnormal incentives. Several programs the District cut were reinstated as a result of Kuznia’s work.

But those results took years of work, and a little bit of luck.

In 2010, Kuznia was hired to cover education for the Daily Breeze, a Los Angeles newspaper servicing the South Bay area of LA County. He wrote stories about several school districts, much like any young reporter would.

During that time, the City of Bell was caught in its own controversy in which its City Council found a way to pay themselves massive salaries upwards of $100,000 a year for what are part-time positions. Bell’s city manager at the time earned nearly $800,000 a year.

So when the compensation of Centinela Valley superintendent Jose Fernandez came into question by the teacher’s union, the Bell scandal was fresh on Kuznia’s mind.

In December 2010, he wrote a story reporting on Fernandez’s $300,000 salary, but it didn’t gain much traction in the community. “Nobody really cared that much,” Kuznia said in a phone interview.

But an anonymous email changed everything.

A year and a half after that initial story, Kuznia received a message providing details about Fernandez’s then-current contract. The user previously worked in the school finance department, and the specifics of their message were difficult for Kuznia and his colleagues to ignore.

The emailer, who had read Kuznia’s 2010 story, suggested that he request Fernandez’s W-2 forms from LA County, which the newspaper had not thought to try. The user also used so many specific figures that Kuznia felt confident to monitor Fernandez’s pay more closely, which he did for the next year and a half.

When Kuznia’s investigations confirmed the data given to him via email, he wrote the first of many stories detailing Fernandez’s lofty contract and compensation, along with the systemic corruption in other aspects of the Centinela Valley school district.

“We knew it was a big story in part because of Bell, and in part also because the school district just had a long, sordid history of corruption,”Kuznia said. “And so we knew this was a place that was ripe for a story like this.”

Reporting the Investigation

Kuznia’s first big story on Fernandez’s salary came in February 2014, reporting that the former superintendent earned over $663,000 in total pay in the 2013-14 school year for a district with only four high schools and just over 6,600 students. John Deasy, former superintendent of LA Unified School District — which consists of 900 schools and over 655,000 students — earned only about $390,000 in total pay in the same school year.

The story sparked a Daily Breeze investigation that brought other details about Fernandez and the Centinela Valley high school district to light. Kuznia was taken off his other beats to free him up to solely research and report developments regarding Centinela Valley.

In the midst of reporting the first story, Kuznia received a surprise call from a retired high-ranking finance administrator of the LA County Office of Education who had recently retired. Upon hearing that Kuznia was looking into Fernandez’s compensation package, the man offered to help him understand the language in the former superintendent’s contract.

“A lot of [the contract] was written in such a way where a reasonable person just isn’t going to be able to spot all the goodies,” Kuznia said. “He sat down with me and pointed out some things I wouldn’t have spotted.”

Kuznia also consulted with at least two payroll experts about Fernandez’s contract to confirm its novelty, he said.

Throughout his reporting process, Kuznia spoke to several anonymous sources, some of whom had to provide him with verifiable documentation to validate their claims. In addition, in order to use information told to him under condition of anonymity, Kuznia had to hear the information from two sources.

Some of Kuznia’s sources included people who had been spurned in some way by the school district, he said. After the first story about Fernandez’s hefty contract, deputies of the former superintendent became more helpful, especially after Fernandez was put on leave as a result of the fallout from the Daily Breeze’s reporting.

“After we were kind of able to crack the nut with that first big story, a lot other stuff started to come a lot more easily than it otherwise maybe would have,” Kuznia said.

After a few stories on the investigation were published, it became clear that the Centinela Valley story required more time and resources. Kimitch, a reporter at one of the sister papers of the Los Angeles News Group, joined Kuznia, who said she excelled at public records requests, poring over documents and investigating.

“From the first day she came in, we hit it off really well and worked together really well,” Kuznia said. “I was really glad to have the help because a story like that is a lot of pressure to put on one reporter, especially a beat reporter who’s got other stories to worry about too.”

After months of stories about Centinela Valley, Kuznia’s responsibilities widened to reporting on education throughout the entire Los Angeles area. While he enjoyed covering one topic for quite some time, Kuznia was happy that he got back to reporting a breadth of stories.

“It was a balancing act,” Kuznia said. “I didn’t want to let [the Centinela Valley story] slide. I didn’t want this to slip out of our grasp and lose the story to competitors. But I also like writing other kinds of stories that are maybe more explanatory or enterprise-y or kind of feature-y. After a certain point, I think I probably, on my own, started gravitating toward writing stories about other districts again.”

In Centinela, Fernandez was replaced and programs were added to the district’s schools, but Kuznia said the investigation impacted the district on a larger scale.

“I think beyond those specific examples, I think there was a culture shift where the people who were running the district took pains to say how they were now going to start putting the students first,” Kuznia said. “It felt like they were being sincere for the first time in my time that I’d been there.”

‘I Won’

Like any other day, Kuznia woke up on April 20, 2015 and hopped into his 1989 black Honda Accord named Rhonda, drove to the LA Metro train station and rode the Expo Line to his job at the USC Shoah Foundation, where he has worked for the past two years.

The only difference about that day — a Monday — was the highly anticipated announcement of the 99th annual Pulitzer Prizes. Kuznia’s editors had submitted his work for the local reporting category, so he checked on his phone to see if he had, by chance, been among the finalists. But the prizes wouldn’t be announced until noon on the West Coast, meaning Kuznia had to wait four hours.

During the waiting period, Kuznia employed every strategy he could think of to take his mind off the impending announcement. He attempted to work, check his Facebook and read articles online.

Right at noon, Kuznia decided to take a short walk around the USC campus. When he heard the clock tower chime 12 times, Kuznia walked for five more minutes. No one contacted him in that time, which led him to believe he did not win the prize.

Just as he walked back inside his office building and sat down at his desk, his phone began buzzing in his pocket. It was Suraci screaming in Kuznia’s ear that the Daily Breeze had won the Pulitzer. Kuznia said at that moment, he screamed “holy shit” in front of his colleagues.

“At that point, my phone kind of turned into a fire hose,” Kuznia said. “All these congratulations were just pouring in.”

The first person Kuznia told of his win after hanging up with Suraci was his then-girlfriend, Alta. He informed her with a simple text message saying, “I won.”

That same day, he returned to the Daily Breeze offices for a celebration with his former colleagues. During the party, Kuznia was flooded with interview requests from The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times and others. In fact, he received so many calls, he skipped work the next day to accommodate all the reporters who wanted to speak to the Pulitzer Prize-winning man who no longer worked in journalism.

Life After the Pulitzer 

Kuznia recalls how he left the Daily Breeze in 2014 not because he was tired of being a reporter, but because his job wasn’t paying him enough money. While he was able to pay his rent, he was not able to save any of his earnings.

With his position in public relations at the Shoah Foundation, he’s in a much more comfortable financial position.

But that’s not to say Kuznia doesn’t miss journalism. He has recently taken on various freelance assignments from The Washington Post, reporting on stories such as the Bill Cosby controversy, the California drought and the shootings in San Bernardino.

Kuznia said that even though working for The Washington Post is not his main gig, he feels he as though he has moved up in the journalism world.

“That’s been a big deal for me because it’s freelancing at a level that I’ve never worked at before when I was a full-time journalist,” Kuznia said. “In a way, even though I’m not doing it full time anymore, it feels like I’ve sort of advanced in this field a little bit just because I’ve had this opportunity to publish some stories in an outlet that’s national.”

Kuznia said he loves the work he’s doing at the Shoah Foundation. However, if a national newspaper outlet came knocking, he may consider a move. He said it would be a “dream” to work at a large outlet.

But Kuznia is not thinking about that possibility — yet.

“I haven’t gotten to that bridge yet,” Kuznia said. “If and when I do, I will address that question at that point.”

Full Circle

This isn’t the first time Kuznia has had to “reassess” his path. He grew up in Grand Forks, North Dakota and based on a high math score on this ACT exams, Kuznia’s college counselor suggested he become an engineer. But a chance encounter with his high school English teacher while working as a bag boy at a grocery score shifted his thinking.

Kuznia, then a high school senior, recalled his former teacher and her husband standing in line at the store. With her Southern accent, she turned to her husband and bemoaned Kuznia’s choice of becoming an engineer. In her eyes, Kuznia was the finest writer in her class, and called it “a waste” that he would pursue any other career.

“I thought I’d had my whole future plotted out,” Kuznia said, “but that kind of threw me for a loop again, so I had to reassess what I wanted to do.”

While in college, Kuznia decided to write for the school newspaper, the Minnesota Daily, but he only occasionally contributed articles in his freshman and sophomore years.

Kuznia landed a job as a columnist for his college paper, and also freelanced for a few local weeklies in Minneapolis during his senior year. However, upon graduation, it took him some time to land a reporting job.

He worked as a janitor in Minneapolis and temped at a bank. Then, after moving back to Grand Forks, he worked at a sugar beet factory, delivered pizzas, mowed lawns and chalked football fields as a member of a maintenance crew — all the while littering the country with resumes seeking a job in journalism.

One attempt finally stuck: a job in Oregon for the Rosenberg News Review, which paid him $9.50 per hour and gave him his first beat — covering city hall.

In 2000, he visited a job fair held by the Bay Area News Group and was offered a position at the Fremont Argus, where he covered night cops and eventually transitioned to his first school district beat.

Kuznia wanted to be in the Bay Area so badly that he would have taken almost any job offered to him, he said.

“I was going for location before job,” said Kuznia, who had friends in the area. “I don’t know what the dream job would’ve been anyway, but I really wanted to get to the Bay Area, and so it was sort of like I was willing to to take whatever reporting job opened up.”

Ten years later, he started at the Daily Breeze, setting him up to cover the biggest story of his career.

First Edition: Linda Kramer Jenning

By Ali Boone

From the first moment you listen to Linda Kramer Jenning speak, you are immediately taken by the way she shares her experiences. There is a sort of soothing and thoughtful way she approaches her words, a way that can only come from someone who has dedicated her entire career to getting at how to tell a solid story. Having come from a background consisting of work at People, Glamour, Time, and the Associated Press to name a few, Linda is a seasoned journalist with a passion for her craft.

Linda’s interest in reporting began when she wrote for her high school paper and then continued into her college years where she had the opportunity to report for the Associated Press during the summers. Upon graduation, those summer gigs led her to a full-time position with the AP – taking her from New York to San Francisco and places in between.

Having watched the journalism world transform over the years, Linda agrees that one thing hasn’t changed: the need for good storytelling. She thinks that stories need to engage the audience but also make a difference. Of course, they also need to be factual and balanced.

While she started as a print journalist, Linda did a stint as a broadcast supervisor at the AP and later reported for the CBS affiliate in Portland, Oregon. She found working in broadcast created different challenges.

With broadcast, there are things you have to think about like how the reporter or anchor is going to read the script. “You can’t have five words that start with P in a row,” Linda says. Another consideration is how the visuals are going to play in. She also learned how to do stand ups and voiceovers, among other skills.

“It’s a rich way to be able to tell a story,” she says. Writing for broadcast was maybe the steepest learning curve in her career, but one that helped her when she returned to print because it gave her a better understanding of the visual element of stories.

Like many magazine journalists, Linda began her career as a freelancer. While living in Oregon, she reported as a stringer for Time magazine. Looking to take on more freelance articles, she moved to Washington and met with the bureau chief who suggested she take her pitches to People (owned by Time Inc.) because it was very freelance-driven at the time.

Freelancing with People quickly turned into a full-time position in 1990. During her time there she focused on political profiles and breaking news stories. She also covered the occasional celebrity who came to advocate a cause.

While working for People, she witnessed four presidential cycles and was able to report firsthand on some of those campaigns. There were times when she was one of a handful of media allowed access to sit on a plane with presidential candidates like Bill Clinton and George W. Bush.

She remembers moments she was able to chat with the candidates, witness memorable speeches, and even experience the “hanging chad” presidential election in the year 2000 when George W. Bush and Al Gore faced off in the close race for the title of commander in chief.

Linda says that it’s in those moments when you’re in the front row seat of history, when unexpected things happen, that you’re reminded of why you got into this crazy business.

While she has had many incredible journalism experiences, she says that it’s difficult to find someone in the business that has not been laid off at some point.

After spending close to two decades at People, the managing editor in New York unexpectedly announced that they were shutting down all the domestic bureaus except for its New York and Los Angeles locations. This led Linda to her career at Glamour magazine that started in 2007.

Linda knew that along with fashion and beauty, Glamour had a great reputation for writing about politics, among other issues of interest. So when she heard that Glamour was looking for a part-time editor in Washington D.C. she decided to go for it.

Being a “little older” and not a typical fashionista, Linda admits that she met with a personal shopper prior to her interview. She believes it’s true that you dress for the job you want and also that first impressions make a difference. While her outfit was not the reason she got the job, she knew taking the steps to look the part helped with creating a good first impression.

Despite her efforts to dress for success, Linda didn’t go into fashion reporting at Glamour – although she says working with the magazine gave her a deep appreciation for the intensity and challenges of good fashion reporting and how well Glamour executes it.

One aspect of her job was to create regular memos to the editors in New York suggesting younger women in D.C. who were doing things that could make stories for the magazine, and also to keep the editors up-to-date on issues that were important to their readers like violence against women.

One of the projects Linda was a part of while at Glamour was assisting with the Glamour Women of the Year festivities. She constantly kept an eye out for women all over the world who might merit consideration for becoming Glamour Women of the Year, and part of her responsibility was to try and get those women to agree to participate.

Back in 2008, Glamour decided to honor presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, and because of the contacts Linda had made while at People, she was able to help get Hillary to agree. She also had the opportunity to conduct interviews for a few of the magazine’s cover stories, one of which was the interview with former First Lady Laura Bush and her daughters that ran in November 2011.

Assisting with Glamour Women of the Year events and interviewing these powerful women was such an incredible and inspiring experience that Linda says it makes you ask yourself, “What have I done with my life? Not enough because women are so awesome!”

Linda is passionate about seeing women grow and excel in her own industry, too. Throughout her years working in journalism, Jenning has noticed positive changes for the role of women in the business. She’s thankful that there are more women working in news today than when she first started.

There were times she remembers being the only woman in the newsroom, and when she wasn’t the only one, there were rarely more than two. Linda notes that women are also covering more types of stories and are not limited to a few, stereotypical beats.

As to how she was able to defy the odds and continually advance to new positions as a female journalist, she says, “You need to be your own best advocate. I was one of those women who thought if I did really good work I would get noticed and rewarded for it. And sometimes that did happen, but I learned over the years that you do need to also speak up and put yourself out there for that next job that you want and not be afraid to take risks.”

After eight years with Glamour, Linda decided to pursue new challenges and more writing opportunities. Linda currently teaches as an adjunct professor at Georgetown University and is very active with the Journalism and Women Symposium, or JAWS. In 2014, she served as the president for the organization where she mentors and encourages the women of JAWS to tell their stories.