RANDY ECONOMY: MY WORLD: Where's that Pulitzer: The Scoops and Acclaim Keep on Coming for Enterprising Los Cerritos News Duo

Thursday, October 18, 2012

Where's that Pulitzer: The Scoops and Acclaim Keep on Coming for Enterprising Los Cerritos News Duo

Thursday has been AMAZING for BRIAN and I here at Los Cerritos Community Newspaper. We ARE LOVING RICHARD HORGAN FROM FISHBOWLLA TODAY! Great profile about our efforts....and that darn "P-Word" keeps cropping up from our fellow media pros here in the Land of LA!

By Richard Horgan on October 18, 2012 12:45 PM

The last time a pair of reporters did this much damage on the municipal corruption front, it led to a Pulitzer Prize for the LA Times. Whatever awards the Los Cerritos News tandem of Randy Economy and (owner) Brian Hews win in the near future for their enterprise reporting about the massive scandal tainting the LA County Assessor’s office will be equally well-deserved.

Every other day, the duo have been detonating another bombshell, the culmination of many thousands of hours of investigative work and dozens of thoroughly documented articles. On September 27 for example, Economy (pictured) and Hews wrote about some bogus property value breaks given to The Grove developer Rick Caruso. More recently, on October 12, it was about how a modest Huntington Beach home owned by the man at the center of the graft – John Noguez – had somehow earned historical status.

On the top left-hand corner of the Los Cerritos News website, there is a quote given byWarren Buffett to the LA Times this spring on prominently display. It reads: ““In towns and cities where there is a strong sense of community, there is no more important institution than the local paper.” A principle that is at the very heart of Economy and Hews’ reporting for the website and weekly print edition.

Economy has also been blogging about his diligent efforts. About a year ago, when he first revealed that assessor Noguez’s real name is actually Juan Reynaldo Rodriguez, people laughed. No one is laughing now, and Economy has a career-crowning achievement blowing up nationally. In his own words:

If you have read my blog in the past number of years, I was one of the loudest voices about the seedy political ways of Juan Reynaldo Rodriguez, aka John R. Noguez, the Assessor of Los Angeles County who on Tuesday was arrested in the “biggest political scandal” in Los Angeles County history. I have never been more proud to call myself a “Community Newspaper Reporter!” The system works. Community Newspapers are the backbone of America’s news rooms. Going to be in an court room tomorrow [October 18] to see Noguez, Ramin Salari and Mark McNeil all in handcuffs, and all in Los Angeles County jail garb.

By the way, the Bell corruption scandal that led to that aforementioned LAT Pulitzer is a story that the Los Cerritos News initially had, and turned over to the paper. Economy has been doing all kinds of media since D.A. Steve Cooley gave his paper credit at press conference. And as far as Caruso is concerned, well, the developer is no longer running for mayor.

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Meet Randy Economy

You may know me from my role as the Senior Advisor and Official Media Spokesman for the Recall Gavin Newsom campaign that established a worldwide blitz of interviews. I conducted more than 2,200 media interviews on behalf of “The People’s Recall” during a 10-month period from November 2020 to September 2021. The iconic magazine Mother Jones in a dramatic feature article called me “A ‘Superhero Pirate’ Radio Host, (and) Gavin Newsom’s Strangest—and Most Dangerous—Threat. Meet Randy Economy, the man behind the effort to recall California’s governor.” I appeared on more than 330 media outlets around the world in my capacity with RecallGavin2020. Fox News, CNN, MSNBC, Newsmax, NBC Nightly News, ABC News, as well as the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Politico, and dozens of other media outlets aired featured reports on my work on behalf of “The People’s Recall.” I am and will always consider myself to be a journalist. Sometimes I think I bleed ink. My talents as an Investigative Journalists in California earned me FIVE top awards from the prestigious Los Angeles Press Club in 2013, 2014, and 2016. I am tenacious. My reporting over the years has led to the prosecution of several elected officials in California. While working for a tiny community newspaper in Southeast Los Angeles County, I worked doggedly to expose the biggest public corruption case in Los Angeles County history when I unearthed a massive pay to play scheme inside the Assessor’s Office that led to the arrest of then Assessor John R. Noguez and four others. However, politics has been in my DNA since I was a child. I have worked on more than 300 political campaigns as a consultant and advisor since 1982 for candidates from all sides of the political spectrum including Democrats and Republicans, and even Libertarians. I am also a small business owner, serving as the President and CEO of Hot Water Studio & Production, LLC. My company works with media outlets across the state, nation, and world exposing public corruption via several new media platforms. I have also overcome personal challenges. I am legally blind with zero vision in my right eye and only 40 percent vision remaining in my left eye. I sometimes wear an eyepatch due to my failed vision. (Hence the nickname of “America’s Political Pirate.”