Society of Professional Journalists Announces 21st Annual James Madison Award Winners

TV Anchor Ken Bastida and Radio Host Michael Krasny to Emcee Mar. 16 Awards Dinner

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Feb. 17, 2006

CONTACT:
Matthew Hirsch
Freedom of Information Committee
Society of Professional Journalists – NorCal Chapter
Phone: (415) 749-5451
E-mail: mhirsch@alm.com

The Society of Professional Journalists' Northern California chapter will recognize retired publisher David Mitchell with the Norman S. Yoffie Career Achievement Award at the 21st annual James Madison Freedom of Information Awards dinner next month. A fervent advocate of public records access throughout his career, Mitchell was editor and publisher of the Point Reyes Light for 30 years. In 1979, he won the Pulitzer Prize for reporting on the notorious Synanon cult.

Mitchell and 13 other winners will be honored March 16 at a banquet at Sinbad’s Restaurant on the San Francisco waterfront. KPIX-TV anchor Ken Bastida and Michael Krasny, host of KQED’s “Forum,” will emcee. Tickets are available by calling (415) 749-5451. Ticket prices are $50 for SPJ members, $65 for non-members and $40 for students. Visit www.spj.org/norcal for more details.

Named for the creative force behind the First Amendment, the James Madison Freedom of Information Awards honor local journalists, organizations, public officials and private citizens who have fought for public access to government meetings and records and promoted the public’s right to know. Award winners are selected by the Freedom of Information Committee of the Northern California chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists.

A complete list of the winners follows:

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NORWIN S. YOFFIE CAREER ACHIEVEMENT AWARD
David Mitchell
David Mitchell is best known for wining the Pulitzer Prize in 1979 for reporting on the Synanon cult. The cult sued Mitchell for defamation, a tactic that had successfully staved off investigations by major media outlets in the past. During the court case, the cult sought the identity of Mitchell’s confidential sources within the cult and access to all other unpublished information. Mitchell resisted and the resulting decision by the Court of Appeals remains the leading case both locally and nationally for the common law protections a reporter enjoys to protect sources.

BEVERLY KEES EDUCATOR AWARD
Paul Grabowicz
Paul Grabowicz directs the New Media Program at the U.C. Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism and teaches classes in multimedia reporting, new media publishing and computer assisted reporting. After a career spanning more than 25 years as a professional journalist, mostly as an investigative reporter at the Oakland Tribune, Grabowicz has been teaching new generations of journalists how to use the tools available and expand access to public information.

DISTINGUISHED SERVICE
Center for Investigative Reporting
In 2005, the Center for Investigative Reporting uncovered information that’s hard to find and produced a steady stream of top-notch journalism, much as it has done throughout CIR’s 29-year history. Its recent series, No Place to Hide, recounts how the government and industry increasingly collect information about private citizens.

CARTOONIST
Mark Fiore
Mark Fiore, whose animations appear on SFGate.com and other news Web sites, is redefining what it means to be a cartoonist in the age of the Internet. Fiore routinely uses his medium to needle government officials who operate behind a shroud of secrecy.

JOURNALIST (4 winners)
Vanessa Hua, San Francisco Chronicle
In pursuing a story about the crossover between political fund-raising and government grants to non-profits, Vanessa Hua followed a trail of documents — obtained under the California Public Records Act, campaign filing forms, assessor and property tax records — to uncover a trail of money that eventually led to former Secretary of State Kevin Shelley’s doorstep. In part because of Hua’s reporting, Shelley stepped down from office and the San Francisco Board of Supervisors gave a fresh look at nonprofit oversight.

Tanya Schevitz & Todd Wallack, San Francisco Chronicle
In response to a University of California proposal seeking to solicit money from private donors to increase the salaries of top university administrators, Tanya Schevitz and Todd Wallack uncovered irregularities in the university’s hiring practices and found that the university was not being honest with its own Board of Regents about how much top officials were paid. Among other things, Schevitz and Wallack’s persistence has already led to the resignation of U.C. Provost M. R. C. Greenwood and reform measures by the university.

Barry Witt, San Jose Mercury News
Using the California Public Records Act, Barry Witt obtained e-mails and memos detailing internal discussions between San Jose Mayor Ron Gonzales and the city manager’s staff regarding a secret deal for garbage disposal. The Mercury News then published copies of all relevant e-mails and memos, both the private documents that revealed the true reason for a garbage rate hike approved in 2003 and those that contained the false public reasons, in the newspaper and on its Web site. Gonzales became the first San Jose mayor to be censured for misleading the public in his actions related to the secret garbage pact, and soon afterward the saga forced City Manager Del Bergsdorf to resign.

Dion Nissenbaum, San Jose Mercury News
Dion Nissenbaum discovered the existence of something called the California National Guard Information Synchronization, Knowledge Management and Intelligence Fusion program. He obtained documentary evidence that the unit was tracking protesters at an anti-war rally, but the National Guard denied that and covered its tracks at the same time. Members of Congress and the state Legislature became so concerned that the state might be spying on innocent civilians that the program was dismantled within six months of when the first story appeared in print.

LEGAL COUNSEL
Peter Scheer
Peter Scheer, the executive director of the California First Amendment Coalition, aggressively developed strategies to define and expand the scope of Proposition 59, California's landmark open-government initiative, which Scheer helped bring before the voters. Later, he sued Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and won access to the governor's appointments calendar, thereby putting pressure on politicians up and down the state to open up their calendars too. He also developed a public records request template and made it available on the CFAC Web site, www.cfac.org. And in a separate legal action, Scheer negotiated a settlement with CalPERS, the nation's largest pension fund, to allow the public for the first time to know how much it pays venture capitalists and hedge fund managers and how well these investments perform.

NEWS MEDIA (2 winners)
Marin Independent Journal
Last year, the Marin Independent Journal filed a public records request to obtain information about Marin County’s generous and costly public retirement plan. The county turned down the IJ’s request, but rather than duke it out in court the newspaper assigned a reporter to investigate the pension plan. As a result, the IJ and reporter Keri Brenner produced a powerful series explaining how the retirement system works.

KGO-TV
Dan Noyes, Beth Rimbey, Ken Miguel and the local ABC News investigative unit used public documents to reveal in the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina that there are serious problems with San Francisco’s emergency disaster plan. In the last year, the ABC I-Team has also shown that while the Oakland school district is under state control because of financial mismanagement, school officials still managed to budget for a weekend retreat at an exclusive Santa Cruz resort.

ONLINE FREE SPEECH
CNET News.com
CNET helped make the question of whether bloggers should be viewed as journalists a national political issue. CNET stuck with the story throughout the year, contributing excellent reporting and valuable commentary from CNET staff and key figures in the debate, such as Congressman John Conyers.

PUBLIC OFFICIAL
Dr. Tom Campbell & Elizabeth Patterson
In 2003, Benicia councilmember and former vice mayor Elizabeth Patterson and Dr. Tom Campbell, a former councilmember, helped create a Sunshine Committee that has grown into a movement for open government. Through the committee, Campbell and Patterson helped draft a Sunshine ordinance for Benicia, modeled on the Sunshine ordinance in Oakland. That ordinance was approved by a 4-1 vote last summer.

SPECIAL CITATION
ANG, The Argus, Barry Shatzman, Duffy Carolan
The Freedom of Information Committee received a flurry of nominations this year for the Alameda Newspaper Group of Bay Area newspapers, its individual reporters and their attorney, Duffy Carolan, who represents ANG when it goes to court on behalf of the public’s right to know. ANG, Carolan, The Fremont Argus and its staff set a model for how the media should act in the face of government secrecy.

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