The Society of Professional Journalists, Northern California Chapter, has named San Francisco Chronicle reporter Jaxon Van Derbeken as Journalist of the Year for his hard-hitting coverage of the Pacific Gas & Electric Co. natural-gas pipeline explosion that killed eight people and destroyed 38 homes in San Bruno, CA, in September 2010.
Van Derbeken spent hundreds of hours combing through tens of thousands of pages of documents to prove that the explosion could have been prevented and that PG&E has consistently failed to protect customers in San Bruno and elsewhere in California. In the process of turning out dozens of stories, Van Derbeken, the Chronicle’s longtime criminal justice reporter, was forced to learn a whole new field. This past August, the National Transportation Safety Board essentially rubberstamped his efforts, concluding that PG&E’s cozy relationship with state regulators and a culture of shoddy safety practices caused the deadly explosion.
“Judges were impressed by the depth of reporting and the variety of story presentation Northern California journalists provided their audiences this year,” said Liz Enochs, SPJ NorCal chapter president. “The work of this year’s winners shows Northern California journalists are setting the pace for using all manner of media tools to dig for hidden facts and tell the stories that best serve Northern California’s citizens.”
Van Derbeken is the recipient of one of seven special awards chosen directly by the SPJ NorCal board of directors.
Entrepreneurial journalist Burt Herman, co-founder and chief executive officer of Storify, which builds social media tools for journalists and bloggers, receives the SPJ-NorCal Board of Directors’ Distinguished Service award. Herman also founded an international grassroots organization, Hacks/Hackers, which brings together journalists and technologists and has thousands of members across four continents. As a bureau chief and correspondent for The Associated Press for 12 years, he covered politics, war, culture and business around the world.
The Beat Within, a magazine incorporating the stories and art of incarcerated youth, receives the Silver Heart award, which was established in 2009 to honor those whose careers reflect an extraordinary dedication to giving voice to the voiceless. The Beat, a division of the Pacific News Service/New American Media, was founded in San Francisco in 1996 and is directed by David Inocencio.
The SPJ-NorCal board also honors the Career Achievements of two Bay Area journalists, Kai-ping Liu, city editor for the Chinese-language daily World Journal, for his work in print, and Pam Moore, an award-winning news anchor at KRON 4 News for two decades, for her work as a broadcast journalist.
Since arriving in the U.S. in 1982 with $40 in his pocket, the Shanghai-native Liu has covered political upheavals and natural disasters from the massacre in Tiananmen Square to the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, winning numerous New America Media awards. As an editor, he writes editorials on topics from racial tensions and San Francisco’s Chinese-American mayoral candidates to immigration issues.
Moore anchors KRON 4’s evening newscasts and has reported extensively on health and race issues, winning a prestigious George Foster Peabody award, among many other honors. She is also active in numerous community organizations that focus on such programs as advocating for low-income youth and providing assistance to underinsured women with breast cancer. Last year, Moore was inducted into the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences Silver Circle.
Oakland Tribune librarian Veronica Martinez receives the SPJ NorCal Board of Directors’ Unsung Hero award for her tireless service to both readers and newsroom employees. She not only is dedicated to helping Bay Area News Group reporters and editors find information and provide resource material, but also she regularly goes beyond the call of duty to protect the Tribune’s legacy of news clips going back to the 1800s and to cheerfully help families who are looking for their bit of reported history from decades ago.
Ricardo Sandoval-Palos, immediate past president of SPJ Northern California, is honored with the board’s John Gothberg/Distinguished Service award for his contributions to the health and leadership of the Northern California chapter.
The 2011 winners will be honored at SPJ-NorCal’s 26th annual awards dinner on November 15 at Jillian’s restaurant in San Francisco.
2011 AWARD WINNERS
JOURNALIST OF THE YEAR: Jaxon Van Derbeken of the San Francisco Chronicle
DISTINGUISHED SERVICE AWARD: Burt Herman, co-founder and CEO of Storify and founder of Hacks/Hackers.
CAREER ACHIEVEMENT AWARD: Kai-ping Liu, editor of World Journal (print), and Pam Moore, evening news anchor for KRON 4 News (broadcast)
SILVER HEART AWARD: The Beat Within, a magazine by incarcerated youth published by New America Media in San Francisco.
UNSUNG HERO AWARD: Veronica Martinez, librarian for the Oakland Tribune
JOHN GOTHBERG/DISTINGUISHED SERVICE TO SPJ: Ricardo Sandoval of the Center for Public Integrity
ARTS & CULTURE: (print/text daily): Joshua Kosman of the San Francisco Chronicle for reviews and criticism about classical music performances.
ARTS & CULTURE (print/text non-daily): Ian S. Port of SF Weekly for “Pomplamoose Calls the Tune.”
ARTS & CULTURE (radio/audio): Martina Castro of KALW-FM for “The Audiophiles,” a series about sound.
ARTS & CULTURE (TV/video): Jobin Panicker and Cody Gless of KSEE 24 News in Fresno for “Technology Turns the Page on How We Read.”
ARTS & CULTURE (multimedia): Eric Arnold, Stephan Allen, Susan Mernit and Kwan Booth of Oakland Local for coverage of the city’s hip-hop scene.
BREAKING NEWS (print/text): San Francisco Chronicle for coverage of PG&E’s natural-gas pipeline explosion in San Bruno.
BREAKING NEWS (radio/audio): KCBS News Team for coverage of PG&E’s natural-gas pipeline explosion in San Bruno.
COMMENTARY: Daniel Borenstein of the Contra Costa Times for “Oakland’s Fiscal Train Wreck.”
COMMUNITY JOURNALISM (radio): Holly Kernan, Ben Trefny, Martina Castro and the KALW-FM staff for “Crosscurrents,” a daily news program.
COMMUNITY JOURNALISM (print/text): the staff of Central City Extra for coverage of San Francisco’s Tenderloin neighborhood.
EMERGING JOURNALIST: Lisa Morehouse, an independent radio reporter, for an audio series about the future of small-town California.
EXPLANATORY JOURNALISM (print/text daily): Peter Hecht of The Sacramento Bee for a series that explored California’s marijuana industry and clash between state and federal laws.
EXPLANATORY JOURNALISM (print/text non-daily): Ted Genoways, Andrew Marantz, Clara Jeffery and Monika Bauerlein of Mother Jones for “The Speedup,” which looks at America’s squeezed workforce, working harder for less and less.
EXPLANATORY JOURNALISM (radio/audio daily): Scott Shafer of KQED-FM’s California Report for his coverage of the controversy over the videotapes of the Proposition 8 trial.
EXPLANATORY JOURNALISM (radio/audio non-daily): Brian Edwards-Tiekert of the National Radio Project for “Climate Change Gridlock: Where Do We Go from Here?”
EXPLANATORY JOURNALISM (TV/video daily): Thuy Vu, Vince Garrido, and Greg Marasso of KPIX/CBS 5 for “Vietnam Revisited,”
EXPLANATORY JOURNALISM (TV/video non-daily): The staff of KQED Quest and Climate Watch for “Going Up: Sea Level Rise in the San Francisco Bay.”
EXPLANATORY JOURNALISM (multimedia daily): Sarah Terry-Cobo, Carrie Ching and Arthur Jones of the Center for Investigative Reporting’s California Watch for “The Price of Gas.”
FEATURE STORYTELLING (print/text daily): Kim Zetter of Wired.com for “How Digital Detectives Deciphered Stuxnet.”
FEATURE STORYTELLING (print/text non-daily): Charlie LeDuff of Mother Jones for “What Killed Aiyana Stanley-Jones?”
FEATURE STORYTELLING (radio/audio daily): Sarah Varney of KQED-FM for “Private ‘Safe Houses’ Returning Due to State Budget Cuts.”
FEATURE STORYTELLING (radio/audio non-daily): Amy Standen and Andrea Kissack of KQED for the QUEST program “Chemistry by Smell.”
FEATURE STORYTELLING (TV/video daily): Jobin Panicker and Cody Gless of KSEE-44 in Clovis for “Cobbler Takes Pride in Saving Soles,” a story about how the craft of shoe repair is disregarded in our throwaway culture.
FEATURE STORYTELLING (TV/video non-daily): Gabriela Quirós, Joshua Cassidy, Linda Peckham, Amy Miller, Paul Rogers of KQED Quest for “Bats in Our Midst.”
FEATURE STORYTELLING (multimedia daily): Matt O’Brien and Jane Tyska of The Contra Costa Times for “Bhutan: A Journey from Conflict.”
INVESTIGATIVE (print/text daily): San Francisco Chronicle and reporters Jaxon Van Derbeken and Eric Nalder for digging through tens of thousands of pages of public records to reveal the laissez-faire oversight by PG&E and utility regulators before the San Bruno natural-gas pipeline explosion.
INVESTIGATIVE (radio/audio non-daily): Pauline Bartolone, Momo Chang, Andrew Stelzer, Kyung Jin Lee and Khanh Pham for the National Radio Project’s “The Toxic Truth About Nail Salons.”
INVESTIGATIVE (TV/video daily): Ben Deci and Tom Long of Fox 40-Sacramento for “Free Parking: DMV Employees Roll the Dice.”
JOURNALISM INNOVATION: California Watch for deftly combining traditional journalism with new ways to connect to communities, from coloring books that teach children earthquake safety to iPhone animations that explain why gas prices rise and fall.
PHOTOJOURNALISM (newspapers): The photography staff of San Francisco Chronicle for coverage of the San Bruno pipeline explosion.
PHOTOJOURNALISM (magazines): Danny Wilcox-Frazier of Mother Jones for “What Killed Aiyana Stanley-Jones?”
PUBLIC SERVICE: Tom Lochner and Daniel Borenstein of the Contra Costa Times for “Cleaning up Hercules City Hall,” a series of reports and editorials about corruption and conflict of interest in city government.
STUDENT PROJECT: Staff of the San Matean, of The College of San Mateo, for “The San Bruno Pipeline Fire.”
Tags: awards, honors, Journalism, norcal, Northern California, spj