PhotosHow Alex Spanos Made Off with the Police Building Fund “Yeah, that’s right, they’re going to steal the money for Alex’s Chargers training field from the cops’ pueblo land fund. A big chunk of their ...
March 6, 2021
Matt Potter has been a staff writer and editor at the San Diego Reader since 1989. He reports on politics and local institutions such as the Union-Tribune, UCSD, SDSU, and the City and County of San Diego.
He is the author of the weekly Under the Radar column.
Besides breaking the Cheetahs corruption story a year before the FBI raided the offices of the San Diego city council, he has written extensively on governance, medical ethics, and human experimentation issues at the University of California San Diego.
Some notable Potter stories:
June 1, 1989:The Egg Women (Mayor O'Connor, Joan Kroc, Helen Copley, and the Faberge eggs)
April, 25, 1991 Mayor Moves to Create Death Valley-like Wasteland in Point Loma (O'Connor house landscaping)
June 20, 1991: A Son by Any Other Name (Helen Copley's adoption of son David revealed)
Aug. 8, 1996: Welcome, GOP Delegates to San Diego, City of Shame
May 22, 1997: La Jolla Gentlemen and the Party Boy (secrets of Andrew Cunanan, gay serial killer)
Oct. 25, 2001: Did Bin Laden's Brother Lead a Secret Life in San Diego?
Nov. 29, 2001: Did Casey Gwinn Try to Get Don Bauder Fired? (City Attorney vs. tough reporter)
July 31, 2003: Fun with Ralph (Inzunza's eating companions at Dobson's)
Articles by Matt Potter
Chargers loot city money, QB Stan Humphries gets another concussion, Chargers players 20-30 years later
Lobbyist deletes Bry-tied anti-short term rental client
One of the shortest lobbying gigs in San Diego city hall's history has ended less than two weeks after it formally began, amidst intrigue about ex-councilwoman Barbara Bry's role in one of her wealthy husband's ...
March 5, 2021
Union-Tribune’s Californian Local targets Temecula
A proposal to sell the Tribune Publishing chain, formerly known as Tronc, to controversial hedge fund Alden Capital Management has spawned a morass of bad online times for Patrick Soon-Shiong, owner of the Los Angeles ...
March 1, 2021
Had his hand in: Padres, Westgate Hotel, Westgate Tuna, Yellow Cab, Kona Kai, Fashion Valley
When Dick Nixon Came to Town San Diego entrepreneur Arnholt Smith, one of Nixon’s earliest supporters, remembered a melancholy evening in the early ’60s when Nixon was holding a meeting and asked him to get ...
February 28, 2021
Barbara Bry's husband hangs up on reporter
A so-called data mining outfit with a specialty of busting short-term vacation rentals has retained ex-San Diego Republican city councilman Jim Madaffer to lobby the city for a contract to use its services, per a ...
February 23, 2021
San Diego's climate change plan flying blind, auditor says
San Diego's so-called Climate Action Plan, frequently ballyhooed by ex-mayor Kevin Faulconer as part of his self-styled middle-of-the-road campaign to become California governor, lacks city council accountability and risks unknown expenses for taxpayers per a ...
February 19, 2021
Trump and Hunter donors kick in for Faulconer's governor try
Another top California donor to last year's reelection campaign for Donald Trump is backing the California gubernatorial hopes of San Diego ex-mayor Kevin Faulconer. Probity International, a real estate development outfit run by Robert Zarnegin ...
February 16, 2021
Covid-19 and the infection of the U.S.S. Theodore Roosevelt
A heavily redacted report by the Inspector General's office of the U.S. Department of Defense has critical words for the Navy and the leadership of the San Diego-based USS Theodore Roosevelt, one of two warships ...
February 8, 2021
New Yorker Al Sharpton trashes San Diego's paramedic selection
A national political figure has parachuted into San Diego's decades-long big-money war over which paramedic provider should get the city's exclusive contract, virtually guaranteeing another heated round of racially charged wheeling and dealing. "San Diego ...
February 8, 2021