About this site

The Benicia Bridge is a local news outlet launched in January 2026 by two professional journalists who recently returned to our hometown of Benicia. We were raised here. We live here. We care about this community.

Why The Benicia Bridge? A bridge helps people traverse obstacles, brings people together and provides the structure needed to move forward.

About us

Laura López González is an award-winning journalist with more than 20 years of experience writing for outlets such as The Guardian, El País, and The New Republic. Her award-winning reporting often explores the intersection of medicine, equity, and public policy.

She still remembers when Benicia was pronounced, "Ben-ish-a."

Monica Vaughan is an investigative reporter and editor serving California communities since 2013. A local newspaper reporter for over a decade, she covered criminal justice, county government, housing and environmental health issues. She has worked as a reporter for McClatchy newspapers and as a senior fellow and community engagement editor at the USC Center for Health Journalism. In 2019, she was awarded a McClatchy President’s Award for coverage of the health effects of bad air quality on the Central Coast. In 2021, she won first place for Public Service Journalism from the California News Publishers Association and the George F. Gruner Award for public service for a series about contaminated drinking water in the Central Valley.

The first news story she ever wrote was about mercury contamination in fish off the First Street pier for a Benicia High School chemistry class. Sadly, it never aired publicly.

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