Joe Mathews
Joe Mathews is the California editor of Zócalo Public Square, a not-for-profit daily Ideas Exchange that blends live events and humanities journalism. He is the author of The People’s Machine: Arnold Schwarzenegger And the Rise of Blockbuster Democracy and coauthor of California Crackup: How Reform Broke the Golden State and How We Can Fix It, books that established him as one of the premier translators of the state’s politics and policy. Previously, he was a reporter for the Los Angeles Times, The Wall Street Journal, and the Baltimore Sun.
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Could the San Joaquin River, long a dividing line in the heart of California, unite the state in pursuit a more metropolitan future for the Central… -
Greater Fresno, with 1.1 million people and growing, is in the process of becoming California’s next big metropolitan area (it’s already fifth—after L.A.,… -
Can you imagine Southern California without Hollywood? Or the Bay Area without Silicon Valley?No? History suggests that the identities of cities and… -
Fresno regularly ranks as one of the poorest metro areas in the United States. So why do people keep moving there?The short, if incomplete, answer: Fresno… -
On Christmas Eve, it felt like the park was all ours.When I was growing up in the 1980s and early ’90s, Disneyland was so reliably empty on the day before… -
I am a California dairy cow. Mmmm—oo.Surprised to hear from me? In normal times, I wouldn’t be inclined to cooperate with the anthropomorphic scheme of a… -
I’m not talking about secession or flying Sarah Palin down from Alaska but about what may be the most important California arts event most Californians… -
I miss the days when Thanksgiving felt as big as all of California.When I was growing up in Pasadena, we’d drive out to my great grandmother’s place in… -
I’m not a big fan of trains, but my oldest son, Ben, 4, loves them. He’d been lobbying to go on a “big train trip,” and his school would be closed for a… -
There’s a nasty California disease spreading so fast that even our baseball teams have caught it.Last year, the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim kept their…
