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Lynn La

Newsletter Writer

Lynn La is the newsletter writer for CalMatters, focusing on California’s top political, policy and Capitol stories every weekday. She produces and curates WhatMatters, CalMatters’ flagship daily newsletter with more than 150,000 subscribers.    

In the newsletter, Lynn analyzes the state’s policy issues for a broader audience, through original reporting and by summarizing and compiling stories from CalMatters and other news sources. Recently, she has reported on bills to address California’s worsening fentanyl epidemic, tackle retail theft and legislate happiness. She also reveals more about lawmakers by interviewing them for an occasional series on first-term legislators in 2023 and new committee chairpersons in 2024. 

Through WhatMatters, Lynn also plays a crucial role in CalMatters election coverage, helping to keep track of daily developments in key campaigns, including legislative and congressional races and ballot measures.  

Prior to joining CalMatters in March 2023, she wrote for the education technology startup Guild and was a senior editor at CNET. She also covered public health at The Sacramento Bee as a Kaiser media fellow and was an intern reporter at Capitol Weekly. 

Lynn is based in the Bay Area. She graduated from UC Davis and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.

Other languages spoken: Vietnamese (basic)

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Latest Stories

Pam Holland stands in the doorway of her apartment in Tehachapi on April 20, 2023. Photo by Larry Valenzuela, CalMatters/CatchLight Local
Madeline Maye, a video editor based in Burbank on Feb. 12, 2023. Maye lost $5000 to the Bank of America EDD debit card fraud of 2020. She had been laid off from her job just months earlier and was struggling to find freelance video editing work in the pandemic. The situation was compounded for Maye by the fact that she had just come out as transgender, was navigating hormone therapy, and trying to pay for essentials like rent and feminine-presenting clothes and products. Photo by Alisha Jucevic for CalMatters
Gov. Gavin Newsom unveils his revised budget proposal for 2023-24 during a press briefing at the state Natural Resources Agency in Sacramento on May 12, 2023. Photo by Rahul Lal, CalMatters
Young pigs in a pen on a hog farm in Ryan, Iowa, on May 18, 2019. Photo by Ben Brewer, Reuters
A young boy peers through the border wall as migrants gather between primary and secondary border fences in San Diego as the United States prepares to lift COVID-19-era restrictions known as Title 42, that have blocked migrants at the U.S.- Mexico border from seeking asylum since 2020, near San Diego on May 8, 2023. Photo by Mike Blake, Reuters
The Assembly floor at the state Capitol on April 24, 2023. Photo by Miguel Gutierrez Jr., CalMatters
Fast food workers from across the state rallied at the state Capitol in Sacramento on Tuesday, Aug. 16, 2022, urging lawmakers to pass AB 257. Photo by Rahul Lal, CalMatters
The AB 3121 Task Force to Study and Develop Reparations Proposals for African Americans meets in Oakland on Dec. 14, 2022. Photo by Martin do Nascimento, CalMatters
California Attorney General Rob Bonta speaks at a press event in San Francisco on Sept. 21, 2022. Photo by Martin do Nascimento, CalMatters
Assemblymembers on the Assembly floor at the state Capitol in Sacramento on March 27, 2023. Photo by Miguel Gutierrez Jr., CalMatters

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