A former JACC On-the-Spot sports writing winner will be the keynote speaker at the 55th JACC State Convention in Los Angeles, Calif., April 8-10, 2010
Mark Katches is the editorial director for California Watch, a project of the Center for Investigative Reporting and the largest watchdog team operating in the state.
He leads a team of 11 investigative reporters, editors and multimedia journalists that produces a Web site (www.californiawatch.org) and distributes stories and multimedia content to partners throughout the state.
Since California Watch launched in the fall of 2009, Mark's team has collaborated with more than four dozen news organizations across all platforms – newspapers, TV, radio and online.
His team's work has appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle, Sacramento Bee, Orange County Register, San Diego Union Tribune, Los Angeles Daily News, KQED Radio and many more outlets.
Before joining California Watch, Katches built and ran investigative teams at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and Orange County Register. He edited and directed the 2008 winner of the Pulitzer Prize in local reporting.
Since 2004, he has edited or managed three other stories that were Pulitzer finalists, one at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and two at the Orange County Register.
He has edited projects that won two George Polk Awards and two Scripps-Howard National Journalism Awards as well as projects that won the Worth Bingham Prize, the Sigma Delta Chi Award and the National Headliner Award.
In 2001, he was part of a reporting team at the Orange County Register that won the Sigma Delta Chi, Gerald Loeb and IRE awards for a series of stories detailing the rising profits from the human tissue trade.
He also wrote stories at the Register that led to the criminal indictments and convictions of four men who ran bogus charities in Orange County – charities that had not been on the radar of law enforcement until Mark exposed them.
Katches has worked as a journalist for 25 years, most of that time in California. He earned his associate in arts degree from Skyline College in San Bruno and earned his bachelor's degree in journalism from San Jose State University.
He also attended graduate school Down Under, where he earned a diploma in social sciences at Flinders University in Adelaide, South Australia.
A former adjunct professor at USC, Katches is the co-author of a children's book "Little Mahal and the Big Search for a Real Mom."
He served on the board of directors of Investigative Reporters and Editors and still oversees the IRE mentorship program.
Katches won a on-the-spot sports reporting award when he attended a JACC State Convention in 1982.
is a member of the 
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