Celeste Fremon is WitnessLA’s creator and editor. She is also an award winning freelance journalist specializing in gangs, law enforcement, criminal justice and education policy. She’s the author of G-Dog and the Homeboys, and is working on a new book, An American Family, about the life of a parolee, his wife and kids, during his first four years out of prison (based on her LA Weekly series of the same name). She’s a senior fellow for social justice and new media at the Institute for Justice and Journalism, on the Board of Directors for PEN USA, a Visiting Lecturer at UC Irvine where she teaches literary journalism as it relates to social justice. She also teaches at the Annenberg School of Journalism at the University of Southern California. Most importantly, Celeste rafts the Middle Fork of the Flathead River in West Glacier, Montana, whenever practicality, work and weather allows, and is wildly proud of her 22-year-old son all year round.

Alan Mittelstaedt (WLA’s illustrious contributor, whenever I can drag him away from his other responsiblities) is a high school dropout who mimeographed his first article called “Deschooling Society: The Evils of Compulsory Education and handed out 1,000 copies of the Ivan Illich-inspired screed at his rural Virginia high school in 1972 over the protests of his principal, who threatened to suspend him. He left school during his junior year and attended St. John’s College in Annapolis, Md., and even got a diploma, albeit 18 years late. He lucked into his first journalism job in 1979 when he went home early from his job as a landscaper near Palm Springs to shoot pictures of a rare desert snowstorm. He gave them to the editor of a small weekly paper in Desert Hot Springs; the next day, he was hired as a part-time photographer and, when the editor was fired a few months later, he took his job. He produced all stories and photos for the 22-page weekly for 18 months until taking his first daily newspaper job at the San Luis Obispo County Telegram-Tribune. During his 28-year newspaper career, he was city editor at the Portland (Maine) Press Herald and at the Pasadena Star-News and worked as an investigative reporter and an editor at the San Bernardino County Sun, where he somewhat surprisingly was named Employee of the Year in 1992 even though he was outspoken and openly critical of decisions of his Gannett bosses. Believe it or not, he’s only been fired once twice, and that happened in November of 2006 when new owners took over at the L.A. Weekly. He’d been news editor there since 1999.

He was most recently the news editor for LA Citybeat.

Will Mason is WitnessLA’s web applications guru and site builder. A born engineer, Will began building computers at the age of 7 and mastered web development by 15. Hours of Apache Doc reading, open source code reversal, and a “No One Can Stop Me” attitude have led to his cutting edge technical abilities. One of the first developers to be hired at NewCars.com, Mason wore many hats as the webmaster of the company’s three main websites taking on the additional challenge of internal tool developer, writing web applications used by the company’s sales and support teams, as well as accounts receivable. Will became a partner in Don’t Blink Design with the focused intention of developing a top tier web development firm.

(By sheer and marvelous coincidence, Will also happens to be the editor’s aforementioned extremely smart son.)

Kevin Fremon is WitnessLA’s talented graphic designer, responsible for the entire look of the site. Kevin has over ten years of professional experience in the web/design field. A hands-on leader, he strongly believes in consistently raising the industry standards of visual media communication. Creating original concepts in web design and online application development, Fremon’s clients have ranged from those in the entertainment industry, health information community, to various other small business avenues.

Kevin earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from The Art Institute of California majoring in advertising and design. Joining Vivendi Universal Games as a graphic designer, he maintained a full time corporate position while meeting the demands of the increasing volume of his freelance clientele eventually leading to the creation of Don’t Blink Design
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NOTE: The above profiles might lead one to assume that there’s some nepotism going on here. But, in truth, WitnessLA would never have been able to afford the services of the Don’t Blink Design team had editor Fremon not harped a great deal about the importance of family, while simultaneously employing unseemly amounts of emotional blackmail. (And she is not anywhere near as sorry about doing this as others might want her to be.)