Covering the Navy

By Alison St John / Reporter, Off Mic

Published September 3, 2008 at 9:03 PM PDT

This story was published more than 16 years ago.

Last week the KPBS radio newsroom received two phone calls from the Navy and an email, informing us of the decommissioning of the U.S.S. Kitty Hawk. They wanted us to cover the story. &

It was a good story and one that many old timers in San Diego & are interested in & hellip; the Kitty Hawk spent half of her 48 years home ported in San Diego. We followed up and did a radio spot to mark her departure.

But today, another fax eventually made its way to the newsroom from some far-off fax machine in the station, informing us that the Navy is holding public hearings on the traffic impacts of permanently home porting a third aircraft carrier in San Diego. When was that hearing? It started 20 minutes ago!

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I called to find out why we didn't get the information sooner. I was told that, due to Labor Day weekend, they had to fax out the information instead of emailing it. Hmm.

The web site on the press release led to a message: & ldquo;There is a problem with this website's security certificate. & rdquo; & When I asked where I could get information on the proceedings, the Environmental Public Information Officer didn't know the web site address.

I called another Navy contact who eventually found me the web site.

It is, conveniently, under the Navy's Engineering Command .

The public scoping period on the impacts of home-porting a third Nimitz class (that means nuclear powered) aircraft carrier starts next month, in October. Maybe by then the Navy will have figured out its public outreach.

Alison St John

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Alison St John currently serves as a general assignment reporter and occasionally co-hosts KPBS Midday Edition. She fell in love with KPBS Radio when she arrived in San Diego in 1985 and first heard NPR. She has been a voice on KPBS Radio since 1989, and has served as a news reporter for radio, TV and the web, as well as anchoring, hosting, producing and editing. Alison has reported on stories about North County and was based in the KPBS' North County Bureau. Alison covered the metro beat during the critical period of the San Diego City pension crisis, and the education beat while Alan Bersin was the controversial Superintendent of San Diego City School District. She covered health when the industry was converting to managed care and told welfare reform stories in the late 1990s when Clinton was “ending welfare as we know it.” She has covered land use issues extensively, looking at the challenges of meeting a growing population while preserving community character, and developing a better transportation system to meet environmental concerns. She has done many stories on the military in San Diego, and the series she edited on the challenges veterans face returning from active duty to civilian life won “Best of Show” from the San Diego Society of Professional Journalists. She occasionally hosts the KPBS Roundtable and KPBS Midday Edition. Alison has won awards from the San Diego Press Club, the Society of Professional Journalists, the Associated Press TV and Radio Association, and the California Golden Mike Awards. Alison was born in Tanzania, brought up in Scotland, and earned her degree in psychology and sociology from Durham University in England. Her postgraduate diploma is in student counseling. She worked in England, Nigeria, Switzerland, Belgium, India, and Japan before moving to the United States in 1981. She now lives in Oceanside and enjoys how her community is growing and changing.