Palisadian ‘Watch Dog’ Journalist Brings Home Hardware

By MATTHEW MEYER | Reporter

Palisadian Joshua Preven and his brother Eric are making waves for their work as a thorn in the side of local government officials.

The duo netted an LA Press Club Award for Best Online Political Commentary last month for a City Watch LA article they wrote last September.

The piece was critical of LA’s county and city government for frequently entering “closed session” meetings—periods where journalists and members of the public attending otherwise open board meetings are asked to leave the room and officials discuss matters in private.

The article, titled “It’s Time to End LA’s Secret Meetings: What Do City Council Members and LA’s County Supervisors Have to Hide?” was a relatively brief commentary, but it drew on years of self-described “watch dog” journalism by the Preven brothers.

“It’s helpful particularly because we’re kind of ‘poking the bear’ a lot,” Joshua, a Palisadian for more than 20 years, said of winning the Press Club award. “You always want to try to marginalize the critic. So it’s harder [to do that] when you win an award … It’s a kind of credibility.”

The Prevens have been “poking the bear” as a two-man team since about 2012, working freelance for multiple LA publications and for the recurring “Preven Report” column on City Watch.

Joshua credited Eric for “doing the dirty work” on most of their pieces, attending “weird little meetings on the 15th floor” when a City Council or Board of Supervisors agenda item catches the brothers’ eye.

The two correspond back and forth on the phone from there, with Joshua often drafting a rough version of the article before Eric has even returned from downtown.

The two have written commentary and analysis on all manner of local government affairs, with a heavy emphasis on transparency.

“How can we bring the public into City Hall?” Joshua said of the duo’s guiding query.

To that end, the dreaded “closed session” has presented a constant obstacle.

Closed sessions are legal under a particular set of circumstances laid out in the Brown Act, a landmark California statute outlining the public’s right to attend and participate in local legislative meetings.

The circumstances generally involve delicate internal dealings, from salary discussions to consulting a lawyer or discussing whether an applicant with a criminal history is “sufficiently rehabilitated” to obtain a license.

Proponents often say the closed sessions protect employee privacy and guard the city’s legal strategy.

But the Prevens insist that shielding internal dealings from the public can have disastrous consequences.

In “It’s Time to End LA’s Secret Meetings,” they highlight a key example from 2012, in which City Council privately decided to fight four major lawsuits over disabled-access housing issues that ultimately cost the city hundreds of millions.

“The entire horror story played out in a series of closed session meetings, which denied the public its right to weigh in on the matter,” the Prevens wrote.

And with the threat of such major decisions being made behind closed doors, Joshua told the Post that he finds the lingering arguments for closed sessions unconvincing.

“If you look at them closely and you push back on those ideas, they actually fall away,” he told the Post. “Transparency always improves things.”

It’s that uncompromising philosophy that draws the ire of “Preven Report” critics.

But the brothers’ now award-winning pursuit of LA’s inner workings undeniably sheds light on a City Hall that to many Palisadians—Joshua among them—can often feel worlds away.