Oakland Report welcomes its first managing director, Joe Turner

Oakland Report began with a clear mission—delivering articles for local citizens¹ that provide deep understanding, reasoned arguments, and evidence-based conclusions on topics that are important for Oakland to thrive. That mission continues, and today we are announcing a big step forward as we welcome our first Managing Director, Joe Turner.

Oakland Report is designed specifically to address what we saw as a gap in traditional news and other media around Oakland—insufficient depth of investigation and analysis of root causes that shape the lives of Oaklanders and the functioning of our government. Such stories require time, effort, and coordination. As Oakland Report’s first staff member, Joe will be able to devote more attention to this continued in-depth coverage of Oakland than we could reasonably ask for from a staff made solely of volunteers.

We are truly delighted to welcome Joe to Oakland Report. This step could not have been possible with the generous donations of our readership. Thank you!

We share below a message from Joe to you.

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I am excited to speak directly with the readers, volunteers, and donors who make Oakland Report possible. I will share what Oakland Report is looking to accomplish, and how I will support those efforts. I will finish with a bit of background about me.

In December of last year, Jacob and Tim wrote a piece detailing their goals for the Oakland Report, and the creation of a non-profit organization to expand the Report from a volunteer effort into something more. Hiring a managing director is a step towards those goals, and is a reflection of what readers, subscribers, and volunteers have given to the Oakland Report. Your attention, critical feedback on stories, and donations have made this possible.

The Oakland Report’s mission is to provide in-depth, well-researched, quantitative, high-quality stories that are accessible to the layperson. This means that we necessarily seek to differentiate ourselves and the content we provide in a few key ways:

• Clear editorial goals. Oakland Report’s uniqueness lies in the way in which articles are shaped—with editing that seeks to limit the number of extraneous adjectives, make clear the difference between evidence, claims, and conclusions, and frame the information with adequate context.

• Analysis beyond the food fight. Much of today’s news simply presents different perspectives of interested and impassioned parties. Not only does this promote controversial and inflammatory personalities over reasoned opinions, it is often a poor way to inform a citizenry. At Oakland Report, we are seeking to find a better way to inform and educate, while also challenging some of the voices that have dominated Oakland’s discourse until now.

• Deeper focus. Investigative journalism and government/policy analysis takes lots of time and resources. It also does not easily fit into the 24-hour news cycle, much less the seemingly 24-minute cycle of social media. At Oakland Report, we transmute this limit on our reporting bandwidth into a strength—we choose stories carefully, and spend time to get the best information and analysis into the final product, even if that is not a 24-minute cycle.

• Context, evidence, and causes. Oakland Report will continue to provide a reasoned perspective, and will seek to frame issues in a way that both provides information but also exposes a larger point. As always, we will justify all perspectives, framing, and conclusions with verifiable evidence and analysis. And we will continue to place a priority on primary data, not simply the opinions or assertions of others.

The vision of Oakland Report is to compound each of these differentiation areas, and others we discover along the way, into something that gives Oakland value— value for decision-makers and the workers that make the city work, and value for the residents, business people, visitors, and voters who have a huge stake in making Oakland successful. Civic discourse is nothing without high-quality information, and we aim to be one of the top sources for that information.

Excellence in anything requires professionalism, rigor, and a self-critical commitment towards continuous improvement. These values are particularly critical when exposing unconventional information and ideas. The quality of stories that you have read on this site so far attests to the skills, talents, and efforts that our volunteers put into the Report. To maintain that standard and achieve our vision, we needed to grow and invest in organizational development, administration, steady writing, and training of a growing pool of stakeholders. This is something that is beyond the means of Oakland Report’s current stable of community volunteers.

That’s where I come in. I am happy to have the opportunity to take on these roles (and more!) as the inaugural managing director at Oakland Report. I’m deeply invested in Oakland; I’ve lived here for almost 25 years, worked for the city as a police officer for nearly 17, and am looking forward to raising the next generation of my family in Oakland.

I started working at Oakland Police Department (OPD) 17 years ago to help others and serve my community. As I rose through the ranks at the department to my most recent role in the Policy and Publication Unit, I dedicated my energy to improving the department’s performance, while also addressing the need for just, constitutional, community-based policing. I wrote and shaped policy, and took a leading role in effecting that policy through guidance, mentorship, and formal training of our officers.

I am no longer part of OPD, but not by choice. Instead, I found myself as collateral damage in the ongoing conflict involving the department, the city, various oversight bodies, and interested third parties (the lines and sides of which are often murky and shifting). Simply put, I was the person who reported that someone had shot the wall of the elevator at police headquarters. I was the one who initiated an investigation. And I was the one who discovered the identity of the officer responsible and secured that person’s admission. Since then, several investigations have made claims about my behavior and integrity—claims that I categorically refute. I am looking forward to clearing my name, but due process reviews stretch out over years and reputational damage can be done in an instant.

Departing OPD is a sad transition for me, but one that affords new opportunities for public service. I look back at my time at OPD not with bitterness, but with gratitude, for it is through those experiences, good and bad, that I learned how leadership, accurate information, and strong values can impact the success (or lack thereof) of an organization. I often succeeded in my roles—delivering safety to the community and effecting meaningful improvements in OPD operations. But I sometimes failed. I faced resistance in my efforts to bring change— both from the city and OPD leadership—experiences that have illuminated why OPD is not working effectively.

The next chapter of my life will be dedicated to making public organizations, like OPD, work better for the people they serve and for the employees who do the work everyday. This goal motivated me to earn a Master’s Degree in management, strategy, and leadership from Michigan State University while I was on leave from the department, and it is one of the reasons why I decided to take this position at the Oakland Report. Oakland, and the people who live and work here, deserve better—this publication is one of the ways that I hope to give back, and to help Oakland realize its extraordinary potential.

Oakland is a place of many perspectives, value systems, and beliefs. Oftentimes, these come into conflict—this is a natural part of a healthy civic discourse. I firmly believe that people who are committed to civic success share deep commitment to critical thinking, decision-making based on knowledge and thought, and respect for each other. These commitments are the ones that I bring to Oakland Report, and are what I look forward to furthering in the writing and reporting I will be doing here.

Joe Turner

Tags: Announcements

1. As was written in the Oakland Report’s inaugural post, "Citizens" does not refer to citizenship in the legal sense, but instead refers to anyone and everyone who resides in our city and is eager to engage thoughtfully and critically in our politics and future. As citizens, we have a duty to engage civically, and with knowledge. This is, after all, our home. We can’t leave the job of tending it to “someone else.”