SAN FRANCISCO — The James Madison Freedom of Information Awards recognize Northern California individuals and organizations who have made significant contributions to advancing freedom of information and/or expression in the spirit of James Madison, the creative force behind the First Amendment. SPJ NorCal presents the awards near Madison’s birthday (March 16) and National Sunshine Week.
David Weir wins the Norwin S. Yoffie Career Achievement award. For 50 years, Weir has been a force for public interest journalism. He inspired a culture of investigative reporting at Rolling Stone and in 1974 broke “The Inside Story of the Patty Hearst Kidnapping,” still considered one of the magazine’s biggest scoops. He co-founded the Emeryville-based Center for Investigative Reporting and launched a diversity-in-journalism fund at San Francisco State University, named for his old friend Raul Ramirez.
More recently, Weir has mentored and inspired the next generation of investigative reporters as KQED’s senior editor for digital news. At KQED, Weir pushed to sue public agencies who preferred to conduct the people’s business in the shadows, resulting in a successful lawsuit against the city of Hayward that exposed questionable contracts funneled to the former police chief’s husband. Weir is not a boisterous advocate, but rather a soft-spoken editor who leads by example and whose work has had an outsized impact on local journalism. His award is named in memory of Norwin Yoffie, a former publisher of the Marin Independent Journal and co-founder of SPJ NorCal’s Freedom of Information Committee.
David Weir. (Photo by Laila Comolli)
No comments:
Post a Comment