Major investigations in the 1980s resulted in reporting of the toxicity of ordinary consumer products, an exposé of nuclear accidents in the world's navies, and coverage of questionable tactics by the FBI during the administration of President Ronald Reagan.

[5] In 1990, CIR produced its first independent TV documentary, Global Dumping Ground, reported by Bill Moyers on PBS’s Frontline.

It featured correspondent Robert Krulwich, and was produced by Stephen Talbot with reporters Eve Pell and Dan Noyes.

An investigation for the New York Daily News and FOX's Front Page revealed lethal dangers in a common diet drug.

[5] He had more than thirty years of experience as a journalist and editor at the San Francisco Chronicle, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Boston Globe, and The New York Times.

[13] Rosenthal hired Mark Katches as the editorial director of the start-up news organization called California Watch in 2009.

Katches would later be named editorial director for all of CIR, a position he held until 2014, when he left to become the editor and vice president of content at The Oregonian, in Portland Oregon.

The organization's reports have been published in news outlets around the country and in California including NPR News, PBS Frontline, PBS NEWSHOUR, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, San Francisco Chronicle, The Sacramento Bee, The Daily Beast, Salon, Al Jazeera English, and American Public Media's Marketplace.

CIR announced a partnership with Univision News in 2012 to bring investigative stories to Hispanic households in the United States.

[18] The site acted as a watchdog team focusing on government oversight, criminal justice, education, health, and the environment.

The On Shaky Ground reporting team won a Scripps Howard National Journalism Award for Public Service.

California Watch won a second Polk award in 2012, this time for Ryan Gabrielson's series about the failures of a unique police force to solve crimes committed against the developmentally disabled living in state board-and-care hospitals.

In April 2012 CIR merged with The Bay Citizen, a nonprofit, investigative news group based in San Francisco.

In 2012, "On Shaky Ground," an investigation into seismic safety in California public schools, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Local Reporting.