The Brief

The head of Southern California Public Radio has announced his plans to retire, after leading a jump in fundraising and a growth in diversity at the organization — as well as controversial layoffs earlier this summer that roiled the company.

SCPR President and CEO Herb Scannell, a longtime media executive who has led the news organization for the last three-and-a-half years, announced his plans to the nonprofit’s full board and employees on Tuesday afternoon.

SCPR includes LAist 89.3 (formerly KPCC), LAist.com and LAist Studios, the organization’s podcast unit. LAist 89.3 is the region’s largest NPR affiliate.

Board members plan to start searching for Scannell’s successor quickly. In an interview, Scannell said he will stay on as long as the board needs for a transition to his eventual successor after the search.

He said he’s retiring for personal reasons, after the deaths of his brother and his best friend, and working for a long time far away from his wife and a daughter, who live in New York.

“It's really a matter of wanting to have another chapter of life where you're with the ones you love and doing things that you've always wanted to do,” said Scannell, adding that he’s 66 years old and hopes to travel in Europe after retiring.

“I’m so proud of the work that was done here,” he added, pointing to essential health information the station provided during the coronavirus pandemic.

“We were providing useful information every day, and people started to really look to us for whatever they could to try to figure out how they could mitigate their lives,” Scannell said of LAist’s pandemic coverage.

Drew Murphy, who chairs the board of Southern California Public Radio, said he’s sorry to see Scannell go and is appreciative of his work over the last few years.

“Personally I have really enjoyed and valued getting to know Herb and getting to work with him,” he said in an interview.

“I think all of the board feels that way,” added Murphy, who is CEO of Southern California Edison’s subsidiary Edison Energy.

The search for a new CEO

Murphy said the board will look internally and externally for candidates, including a national search. That process is expected to take months — with a successor likely to be identified sometime next year, Murphy said.

“I hope we can do this quickly, but as thoughtfully as possible,” Murphy said. That will involve bringing in stakeholders to help the board identify what the needs are for the next CEO, he said.

In a news release, the station said it’s seen a 38% growth in revenue during Scannell’s tenure, “including substantial contributions during the pandemic that enabled the preservation of jobs and initiatives.”

The move comes after Scannell led a rebrand that transitioned the radio station from KPCC to LAist in February. He also oversaw a major push to expand diversity in hiring and content after the police murder of George Floyd in 2020, and spearheaded a fundraising campaign to keep the station afloat during the coronavirus pandemic.

Recent layoffs were largest in station’s history

The announcement also comes three months after controversy erupted in and outside the organization about the sudden elimination of 21 positions in June — the largest in the station’s history. At the time, 20 people lost their jobs the day the announcement was made and one unfilled position was cut.

The cuts took staff by surprise, coming just after a successful on-air fundraising campaign and the release of public disclosures on executive compensation from a year earlier. Scannell received $625,000 in base pay and bonuses, plus benefits — up from $368,000 two years earlier. Scannell had said SCPR executives had taken large pay cuts to help sustain the company during the pandemic and the increases made them whole.

The disclosures also showed former CEO Bill Davis was paid around half a million dollars for a third year after leaving the organization, with no hours of work performed each week on average during that time, under the terms of his employment agreement.

Scannell and other leaders have said the layoffs were needed to redirect the organization on a more sustainable path focusing on daily online news.

The layoffs have continued to draw concern from many in the newsroom over how they were conducted. At the station’s quarterly board meeting Tuesday, staff members represented by the SAG-AFTRA union read a letter of concern to the board, signed by 44 station employees, including most of the rank-and-file reporters and producers.

In an interview in June about the layoffs, Scannell said the station had seen its underwriting revenues drop by “a couple million dollars” amid the writers’ and actors’ strikes.

“We had a shortfall, and we also needed to think about the way we were structured and we needed to make up for the shortfall and we needed to re-allocate jobs to create a daily news habit on [LAist.com] and that's what we did,” Scannell said.

“I believe we're set up better because of it right now.”

Since the layoffs, LAist has made 13 new hires, according to details shared by Carlo Giovanni, the organization’s vice president of people and culture, during the public portion of Tuesday’s board meeting. There are currently 189 staff members.

An uncertain financial future

Asked where things stand financially, Scannell said revenues from underwriting — a form of advertising that includes sponsored messages — are still down and will become more of a challenge the longer the strikes go on.

“Hollywood is the cash crop of our underwriting,” Scannell said.

“It’s still too early to call if we’re deeply affected,” but there’s “no alarm right now” for the organization, Scannell said.

Murphy, the board chair, said “the board feels very comfortable about where we’re at financially.”

“We did have some challenges that we had to manage around and through over the last year, and we are, I think, well-positioned to continue to be in a position of financial stability and hopefully growth going forward,” he said.

Reactions from inside SCPR

Megan Garvey, the newsroom’s executive editor, said she appreciated Scannell’s support of the station’s journalism and efforts to keep everyone employed when revenues took a hit early in the pandemic.

“I feel like he’s been a strong supporter of our news operation and the vision to try to do things differently,” Garvey said in an interview. “Herb has a lengthy media background, but not really a lengthy news background. So it was great to see him really understand what we did as a news organization and why it mattered.”

Mary Hawley, LAist’s vice president of underwriting, said that Scannell encouraged his colleagues to always think about how to improve. She said he’s had a tireless mantra: How can we be better? How can we do better?

“At his core Herb is a marketing guy. He thinks about everything through a marketing lens,” Hawley said. “As a result, he championed a lot of critical things that will take us into the future.”

Scannell on his biggest accomplishments 

Asked what he feels were his biggest accomplishments at LAist, Scannell pointed to two initiatives: the fundraising campaign to save jobs during the pandemic, and expanding diversity and inclusion.

“When COVID happened we were staring down the loss of potentially up to 50 jobs. And we immediately just went and mobilized,” including sending letters and appealing to listeners on-air, Scannell said. He credited the organization’s fundraising executives Carla Wohl and Rob Risko for their work on that campaign.

“We came through,” he said. “That, to me, was an incredible accomplishment.”

The diversity efforts included more staff training and efforts to hire people who are more reflective of the communities LAist serves, Scannell said.

“To me that’s a source of great pride,” he said. “I think it’s been an important part of our culture that I think makes us a better place to work.”

Scannell’s career included time at Nickelodeon

Scannell took the helm of SCPR in March 2019 after a long career as a cable TV executive overseeing Nickelodeon and working as vice chair at MTV Networks, and later led the BBC’s entertainment operations in North America.

He made the decision early this year to rebrand the public radio station from KPCC to LAist 89.3, the name of the news website the station acquired in 2018.

Asked if he would receive any compensation after leaving the organization, Scannell said he doesn’t have an exit package and doesn’t have a contract with the station.

Murphy said compensation of Scannell after he leaves is “not something that’s been addressed or decided at this point.”

Scannell said he’s grateful for his time at the station.

“It’s been a pleasure to work with the folks at Southern California Public Radio. I think they’re incredibly smart, talented and committed,” Scannell said.

“It’s been a great experience for me…I’ve done a lot in my career and I’m glad I did this.”

Disclosure: This story was reported and written by Senior Reporter Nick Gerda and edited by Senior Editor Mary Plummer and Managing Editor Tony Marcano. 

Under LAist's protocol for reporting on itself, no corporate official or news executive reviewed this story before it was posted publicly. Gerda, like all LAist reporters, is a member of SAG-AFTRA. He co-signed the letter presented to the board. He did not discuss the reporting of this story with any SAG-AFTRA members prior to publication. 

Biking on river trails, going on picnics and surfing in the ocean are activities California residents cherish every summer. But headlines about the use of toxic chemicals in flood control channels around Orange County have created anxiety for those looking forward to their favorite activities this summer.

Dozens of environmental activists and Orange County residents packed the Orange County Board of Supervisors meeting this week to urge the county to halt the routine use of toxins they say poison waterways and wash out into the ocean.

But several supervisors said it wasn’t that simple. The chemical prevents overgrowth in flood control channels, and that overgrowth could lead to backups and flooding, affecting neighborhoods and businesses during heavy rains.

Controversy over the chemical use led to an announcement last month by Orange County Supervisor Katrina Foley, declaring that chemical usage would be halted for the moment. The issue then came before the board this week for further discussion.

Supervisors decided to study the issue and revisit it in the months ahead, and directed the OC Public Works department to evaluate methods for clearing overgrowth of vegetation that crowd flood channels, and look for alternate methods of doing so.

Brent Linas, founder of the Orange County Creek Team, which has succeeded in bringing the environmental issue to the public’s attention through salty Instagram posts and other social media tactics, blasted what he described as the board’s inaction.

He feels that the board is “deeply dysfunctional” and plans on using the meeting as momentum to spread awareness about the chemicals' negative effects on the environment. “There’s palpable outrage in Orange County right now around this and we fully intend to tap into that,” Linas said.

Foley also plans to reintroduce public noticing requirements at the next meeting June 23. The notices would alert residents to the planned use of any pesticides and herbicides. “Orange County residents deserve transparency to help make informed decisions about where their families recreate,” Foley said in a statement released the after the meeting. “I remain encouraged by the overwhelming public support in exploring nontoxic solutions for our waterways.”

How to watchdog your local government

One of the best things you can do to hold officials accountable is pay attention. Your city council, board of supervisors, school board and more all hold public meetings that anybody can attend. These are times you can talk to your elected officials directly and hear about the policies they’re voting on that affect your community.

• Read tips on how to get involved.
• The Orange County Board of Supervisors meets on alternating Tuesdays at 9:30 a.m. at 400 W. Civic Center Drive, Santa Ana. You can check out the O.C. Board of Supervisors full calendar here.
• Learn how to submit a public comment to the O.C. Board of Supervisors.

A program dedicated to providing low-income California residents with extra money for fruits and vegetables is likely to go under this summer if additional funds are not allocated in this year’s state budget, according to concerned food justice advocates.

The CalFresh Fruit and Vegetable EBT Program provides CalFresh recipients with up to $60 a month of free produce each month, in addition to their benefits. In May alone, the program disbursed over $5 million and “served 95,520 California households,” said Grecia Marquez-Nieblas, senior manager at food policy nonprofit Fullwell, which has backed the program.

“Overwhelmingly, folks have been telling us that they want it to continue, that it’s made a really positive impact on them,” Marquez-Nieblas said. “Their diabetes is better managed; their high blood pressure is better managed.”

Those people are now at risk of losing access to that support as funds whittle down. The state budget is set to be finalized on June 15, and “as far as we know, there is no continued funding that has been proposed,” Marquez-Nieblas said.

“When this program ends, we’ll have less money to spend, [at] a time when groceries are incredibly more expensive. Gas is more expensive. Everything is more expensive,” she said. “It’s just, unfortunately, a compounding effect. There’s lots of stuff that’s impacting the same people.”

The program is simple to use: When customers purchase food at participating markets, like Arteaga’s Food Center in San José, they just swipe their EBT (electronic benefit transfer) card.

For every purchase of fresh fruits and vegetables with that card, customers receive an instant rebate each month, applied to their card. The rebate money can be spent on any food or goods covered by CalFresh, like meat, eggs and dairy — it is not limited to fruits and vegetables.

Marquez-Nieblas explained that the pilot program has been implemented in three phases — the latest of which received a limited, one-time allocation of $36 million from the state budget. That seems like a large number, “until we realize that there are hundreds of thousands of individuals across the state using the program.”

“It’s been proven many times that CalFresh — and programs like this that support people having more money for food — are incredibly impactful for lifting children out of poverty, for supporting seniors with limited incomes, for anybody,” Marquez-Nieblas said. “Foundationally, these programs are good. They’re good for public health.”

Food policy advocates said they are hoping for $100 million for the program to continue to operate year-round. Instead, it was reappropriated around $4.8 million — the remaining funds from last year’s budget cycle, in Gov. Gavin Newsom’s “May Revise” proposal, according to H.D. Palmer, spokesperson for the California Department of Finance.

“The program will operate until funds are fully utilized,” Palmer said in an email to KQED.

The program’s end would come at a particularly stressful time for CalFresh recipients. This month, for the first time since the COVID-19 pandemic began, California has begun enforcing new and expanded federal guidelines that require some CalFresh recipients to work 20 hours a week, or an average of 80 hours a month — with a stark reduction in food benefits for those who don’t.

The changes were prompted by the passing of President Donald Trump’s H.R.1 last year.

“Not only does it add in the onerous work requirement — a lot of people who are already receiving CalFresh are working — but now they have this bureaucratic paperwork to provide,” said Kathy Saile, California director of national nonprofit No Kid Hungry. “There’s some real concern that people could lose benefits just because they couldn’t figure out the paperwork.”

H.R. 1’s impact, which also cuts food benefits for some refugees and asylum seekers, is apparent, according to federal data analyzed by the nonpartisan research group Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

The center estimated that nationwide, SNAP participation fell by almost 9% — more than 3.5 million people — between H.R.1’s start in July 2025 and February 2026.

Palmer said the state was taking proactive steps to maintain residents’ enrollment in the program.

“This includes leveraging existing data to determine possible exemptions from the new SNAP work requirements, implementing automation, and conducting client outreach,” he said.

He added that the latest budget revision has “a total of $38 million for the CalFood program — which funds food banks for the purchase, storage, and transportation of food grown and/or produced in California.”

In a time of rising bureaucratic barriers implemented by H.R. 1, Marquez-Nieblas said the CalFresh Fruit and Vegetable EBT Program is part of the state’s food safety net.

“This is not just about backfill,” she said. “It’s not just about responding to the impacts (of H.R. 1), which are incredibly awful. It’s also about setting ourselves up for success in the future, knowing we have to invest proactively.”

Marquez-Nieblas said CalFresh recipients should keep their eyes on the California Department of Social Services website for any possible updates and changes in the future.

While implementation of California’s high school ethnic studies mandate has stalled, districts across the state are rolling out classes that encourage students to explore the lesser-told histories of their communities.

Freshmen at Duarte High School this year unearthed the history of a San Gabriel Valley community that was all but erased by commercial development and the construction of the 210 and 605 freeways.

Newspaper headlines often focused on incidents of violence and segregation in the majority Black and Mexican American community of Rocktown, but when the students interviewed former residents, they heard a different story.

“It was a great community for us,” said Alfred Hernandez Zamora. “We just don't want to be forgotten.”

The study of Rocktown was a central theme in the school's first ethnic studies course.

“Ethnic studies is providing space to hear from communities and from points of view that are not traditionally covered in our history classes,” said Casey Ramirez, who teaches the class at Duarte High in addition to government, economics, world and U.S. history.

California legislators passed a law in 2021 that required all schools to offer the course by the 2025-26 school year, but have yet to provide the funding needed to enact the mandate. Duarte Unified, like many other districts, passed its own one-semester ethnic studies graduation requirement ahead of the expected state deadline.

Duarte High School’s curriculum is the result of a collaboration between educators, research into the region’s history and the students’ own interests.

“I've only seen one part of Duarte, and that's the Duarte that I was raised in,” said Leslie Martinez, a rising sophomore. “There's a lot of things that Ms. Ramirez is teaching me, and that's making me more curious to dig deeper [into] my city and where I grew up.”

An opportunity to create an ‘engaging class’

California’s model ethnic studies curriculum describes the field as an “interdisciplinary study of race, ethnicity, and Indigeneity, with an emphasis on the experiences of people of color in the United States.” Districts could develop their course based on this framework or from scratch.

“It was our opportunity to create a really engaging class that really speaks to our student body,” said Luis Haro, Duarte High’s principal for the last eight years.

The majority of Duarte High School’s population is Latino, but there are also Filipino, Asian, white, Black and multiracial students. Most students qualify for free-and reduced price lunches, a proxy for being low-income in public schools.

“In my experience, our students don't know our history, and they don't really have a true understanding of their own identity,” Haro said.

Haro joined a committee of administrators and teachers, including Ramirez, that collaborated with the UCLA History-Geography Project to develop the new course.

UCLA staff guided Duarte educators through reams of local history research and helped the team develop goals for the class, including a student-led civics project.

“Getting to learn and feel like a college student again,” Ramirez said. “It really did make me excited to teach the class.”

They also developed units on students’ personal identity, Indigenous, Latino, Black and Asian American Pacific Islander history. The committee also met with parents and presented their work to the district’s board.

“[Ethnic studies] gave us a path to this project to see people in our community that aren't really talked about,” Ramirez said.

Uncovering the history of the ‘Davis Addition’

The region is the original home of the Gabrielino/Tongva Nation. The then-governor of Alta California granted former soldier Andres Avelino Duarte nearly 7,000 acres in 1841, including what became the city that shared his name. The area was eventually subdivided into farms and eventually, homes.

From the late 19th century through the 1970s, Black and Mexican American families settled in the “Davis Addition,” a subdivision of the land grant that became better known as Rocktown.

Ramirez first read about Rocktown in the research UCLA gathered for the curriculum development process, but couldn’t find much else about the community online.

She started downloading news articles from Newspapers.com and sharing them with the class. Many of the stories often focused on crime and violence in the community, from police raids on drinking and gambling establishments, to fires.

The articles also alluded to the segregation of the early 20th century.

A 1928 article from the Monrovia Daily News described the schedule for a new municipal pool. Mondays were “reserved for the use of colored people.”

“ Why are we not allowing people to do things simply because of the color of their skin or like their origin?” said Khloe Carter, a rising sophomore who took the ethnic studies class.

Carter said it felt important to her, as a person of color, to learn about people’s experiences with discrimination in the past.

“I'd say that has made me smarter and more aware of other people's struggles and what other people have to deal with and other people's cultures and other people's traditions,” Carter said.

The first wave of Rocktown displacement preceded the construction of the 210 and 605 freeways in the 1960s. The last several dozen families were moved to make way for a business complex in the 1970s. Stories referred to the area as blighted and “depressed.”

“ We took it as our job to dig further, deeper, to find out if it was true or not,” Martinez said.

With Ramirez’s help — and several volunteers from the Facebook group Rocktown Oldies Club — the students started to schedule interviews with former residents. The school’s film class volunteered to record the conversations.

The students heard stories about everyday life that were absent from the news coverage of time — Sunday barbecues, roller skating, fishing, picnicking and swimming near the Santa Fe Dam.

Zamora, who was born in Rocktown in 1949, offered a first-person history that isn’t available elsewhere — down to the community’s name: “ You could not even dig a, a foot into the ground without running into rocks,” he said. “ You could throw water on the ground and a rock would grow, you know?”

Many of the residents raised goats, pigs, pigeons and chickens in their backyards. Zamora said a routine car repair could quickly become a community gathering with neighbors joining in to help.

“That made it … so great to live there, 'cause everybody was like family,” Zamora said. “Even people that weren't related to you, it was really close friendships there.”

A typical gathering of Alfred Hernandez Zamora's family in an undated photo from their Rocktown days. Everyone gathered for Sunday dinners at his grandmother's house.

(

Courtesy Alfred Hernandez Zamora

)

Zamora's relatives Rayno Hernandez and Christina Hernandez Padilla as kids riding their bikes through Rocktown.

(

Courtesy Alfred Hernandez Zamora

)

Zamora said Rocktown offered a reprieve from the discrimination against Black and Latino residents in other parts of the San Gabriel Valley at the time.

“We played ball together. We swam together. We ate together,” Zamora said. “Even though there was different cultures there, we still were able to get along with everybody.”

These interviews gave the students new perspectives to consider.

“ People make a lot of stereotypes and a lot of guesses … like, ‘Oh, this community can be so ghetto,’" Martinez said. “But honestly, like I think if you haven't been in the community, you can't really say anything.”

Remembering Rocktown

The Duarte Historical Museum hosted a pop-up exhibition of the students’ capstone project.

“I was very impressed with the job that they did, being able to get all this history and the information and the interviews with people,” said Liz Reilly, president of the Duarte Historical Society and Museum and former mayor. "I thought that was really fabulous.”

Reilly, who moved to Duarte in 1987, had heard of Rocktown, but knew little about the neighborhood.

Izzy Guzman, another student who took ethnic studies at Duarte High, said the account she heard from the three women she interviewed differed from these Rocktown headlines.   "They've all seemed really nice and really genuine," Guzman said. "I just feel like people should understand, even if they don't know what Rocktown is, they should understand that, it was just a basic community, and that they should be treated with the same respect as everyone else."

(

Mariana Dale

/

LAist

)

The exhibition included a map of Rocktown (still the subject of some debate) and dozens of historical photos, often provided by the people they interviewed.

“ I found it so amazing how much people showed up for our project and how much the community of Rocktown has shown up for our project,” Carter said.

Former residents, including Zamora, were among the dozens of people who attended the exhibition’s grand opening in mid-May.

“For them to recognize places that were forgotten, that meant a lot,” Zamora said. “ Nobody seems to remember it. I mean, except the people that lived there.”

Ethnic studies faces growing challenges

While the school’s principal, students and former Rocktown residents have embraced the ethnic studies class, Ramirez said she’s also heard criticism.

During Duarte High’s open house, Ramirez said a parent voiced her disagreement with the class and threatened to file a grievance even though her child had yet to enroll at the school.

“ I'm a parent, so I understand, especially if it's something that you're not familiar with and your kids are learning something different from what you learned, it can be scary,” Ramirez said. “My approach is never to impose my viewpoints. It's to provide alternative perspectives.”

Some lawmakers have also criticized school offerings that intersect with race and ethnicity.

In the last five years, 20 states have banned or restricted teaching critical race theory, an academic concept that race is a social construct and that racism is embedded in specific societal structures.

Teacher Casey Ramirez said teaching students to view history from multiple points of view and form their own opinions is a key feature of the ethnic studies class.

(

Courtesy Oscar Ramirez

)

California school districts from Los Alamitos to San Francisco have faced pushback over their ethnic studies curriculum despite passage of the state mandate.

State lawmakers’ decision to withhold money for teacher training and materials has delayed the ethnic studies graduation requirement.

Daniel Diaz, director of the UCLA History-Geography Project, said there was a flood of interest when the ethnic studies mandate was first passed, but now fewer districts are paying for related professional development.

“Which in turn then impacts what happens to our project and … who we're able to support in terms of staffing,” Diaz said.

In June, UCLA laid off one of the educators instrumental in helping Duarte develop its ethnic studies curriculum.

In a statement, John McDonald, director of media relations at the UCLA School of Education and Information Studies, said the History-Geography Project has laid off four staff members total after funded projects ended in the last year.

“UCLA Center X is committed to the work and actively seeking new funding for similar efforts,” McDonald said.

What that means for other districts looking for assistance with ethnic studies programs remains to be seen.

Ramirez said her UCLA collaborator was “phenomenal” and continued to support the project even after the contract with the district formally ended.

“ I don't think that this year and this project would've been what it was without having that support,” Ramirez said.

A business center now stands south of the 210 and west of the 605 where part of Rocktown once was. Some of the street names, including Evergreen and Flower, remain the same.

(

Mariana Dale

/

LAist

)

The Rocktown Project’s future

Duarte High School will continue the ethnic studies class.

More former residents have already contacted Ramirez hoping to be interviewed by next year’s students. She also plans to publish the students’ work on a website and a future goal is to memorialize Rocktown with a physical marker in Duarte.

“You need to know whose land you're on and who was there,” said Sylvia Gonzales Youngblood, who was born in Duarte in 1967 and grew up visiting the home her maternal grandfather built in Rocktown.

She said when she was a student there wasn’t an opportunity to learn about her family’s  Ohlone Mission Indian and Mexican heritage and she was discouraged from speaking Spanish.

“Now as I'm older, I realize just how much history and of ourselves we lose,” Youngblood said.

Carter, the rising sophomore, said after taking ethnic studies, she feels more connected to the city she moved to about a year ago.

“It's important that we know this side of history so a community like Rocktown doesn't get lost again,” Carter said. “Every voice should be heard, including Rocktown's.”