Bay Area News Group reporters, photographers honored with NorCal journalism awards
East Bay Times and San Jose Mercury News reporters and photographers won top honors in this year’s annual Excellent in Journalism awards, which highlights the best journalism in Northern California.
The NorCal chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists named Nate Gartrell the 2023 Journalist of the Year, the organization’s highest annual honor.
The SPJ board acknowledged Gartrell’s prolific nature of the past year — he had more than 600 bylines — but said it was “the depth of his criminal justice reporting” that “demands the attention of the Bay Area, especially in Antioch.”
Gartrell, a courts reporter, led news coverage of a police corruption scandal in Antioch and Pittsburg that led to policy changes within the Antioch police force, before ultimately ending in the indictment of 14 police officers.
“Gartrell has woven together extensive records and key leaks that shined a bright light on Antioch,” SPJ NorCal’s board wrote in a press release Tuesday. “During this time, the public learned of the revelation of a federal grand jury considering indictments of multiple Antioch Police Department officers for civil rights violations, police dogs severely injuring 13 unarmed people and eye-opening details of the department’s racist text messages.”
His uncovering of closely-held documents showing some of the same Antioch police officers sent racist texts to each other got him another award for “ongoing coverage” of the troubling scandals.
Gartrell is one of five Bay Area News Group reporters and photographers who will be honored next month by SPJ NorCal in San Francisco, the media organization announced Tuesday.
Longtime columnist Jon Wilner, a must-read on the Pac-12 beat and college sports beat, won the competitive “best scoop” award for being not only first with news that USC and UCLA were leaving the Pac-12 for the Big 10 but for his later analysis of the shakeup.
Bay Area News Group photographers Shae Hammond and Ray Chavez won the photojournalism award in the breaking news category for their compelling pictures of the devastating floods in Pajaro, in Monterey County.
This news organization’s Elissa Miolene won in the education reporting category “for reporting on miscalculations in teachers’ retirement benefits, how artificial intelligence is affecting education and using remote learning to counteract a shortage of math and science educators.”
Other Bay Area-based outlets that took home top honors include Voices of Monterey Bay, KQED, Mission Local, KTVU, El Timpano, San Francisco Public Press, Open Vallejo, KALW and The Daily Californian.
The SPJ board also awarded Bob Butler of KCBS radio and Lydia Chavez of Mission Local with Career Achievement; Geeta Anana, dean of the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, and state Sen. Steve Glazer, D-Orinda, with the Distinguished Service to Journalism; Samie Hartley of the Napa Valley Register as Unsung Hero; Han Li of the San Francisco Standard with the Silver Heart award and Michael Bott of NBC Bay Area as the John Gothberg/Meritorious Service to SPJ Norcal recipient.
The winners will be honored on Dec. 7 in San Francisco. A full list of the winners can be seen here.