Media contacts: Thomas Peele (510) 499-4944 | Laura Wenus (650) 996-3112 | spjnorcalfoi@gmail.com
SAN FRANCISCO – The Northern California chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists announces its 40th Annual James Madison Freedom of Information Awards, recognizing people and organizations who have made significant contributions to advancing freedom of information and expression in the spirit of James Madison, the creative force behind the First Amendment.
This year we honor student journalist Dilan Gohill for diligently covering a protest at Stanford University and asserting his right to do so despite facing arrest, the seizure and attempted search of his devices, and academic setbacks. We also honor the career achievements of Sam Stanton, two whistleblowers who showed great courage in bearing public witness to malfeasance and systemic abuse and many others who did excellent work furthering the public’s right to know in 2024.
We invite you to join us in celebrating these First Amendment stalwarts at the James Madison Awards dinner on Thursday, March 20 at the Marines’ Memorial Club. Tickets are available here.
At a time when journalism is under threat, the Freedom of Information Committee is honoring three reporters with Golden Sledgehammer Awards.
Golden Sledgehammer Awards
The Golden Sledgehammer is awarded to those who stand up to abuses of government and institutional power while practicing journalism. It is given in the spirit of San Francisco journalist Bryan Carmody, whose home and office were raided in 2019 by police executing a wrongfully obtained search warrant with guns drawn. As Carmody was detained and handcuffed for six hours, police used a sledgehammer to break into his office and seize work product that was clearly protected by both the First Amendment and California’s Shield Law. Carmody challenged the unlawful raid, winning a financial settlement from the city and upholding the right of journalists to keep source identities and unpublished materials private.
This year, the committee is recognizing three individuals with this award.
Dilan Gohill, Stanford Daily
Stanford Daily reporter Dilan Gohill wins a Golden Sledgehammer Award for his reporting on a pro-Palestinian demonstration on campus on June 5, 2024. While engaged in constitutionally protected newsgathering, Gohill followed protesters into the office of the university president, where the protesters barricaded themselves. Despite wearing his student press credentials and a Stanford Daily sweatshirt, Gohill was arrested and jailed for 15 hours when police cleared the area. His reporting materials and laptop were seized despite California’s strong Shield Law protections. University officials backed Gohill’s prosecution and initiated disciplinary proceedings against him.
While Stanford dropped the disciplinary case in December without immediately informing Gohill, Santa Clara County District Attorney Jeff Rosen is still weighing whether a criminal case against him will proceed.
The Northern California Chapter of The Society of Professional Journalists continues to join other advocacy groups such as The Student Press Law Center and The First Amendment Coalition, as well as prominent Stanford alumni, in demanding that Rosen reject the criminal case against Gohill immediately. Read more about Gohill’s saga here.
Doni Chamberlain, A News Cafe
A Shasta County Board of Supervisors turned into a standoff between Sheriff’s deputies and journalists the night of Nov. 7, and culminated with a deputy using physical force to remove Doni Chamberlain, publisher of the Shasta news site A News Cafe. Chamberlain and other reporters were covering the arrest of a protesting citizen. Chamberlain asserted her First Amendment right to document the confrontation. After deputies escalated and threatened to arrest the reporters, Chamberlain alone stayed, documenting everything. The sole journalist remaining, she was grabbed and shoved by a deputy as he removed her from the room.
Chamberlain, a reporter with 30 years of experience, has been covering Shasta County under thankless conditions, weathering frequent death threats and menacing behavior, as well as two assaults while on the job. The Committee honors her tenacity and commitment to the public’s right to know about government proceedings in the face of government overreach.
Annelise Pierce, Shasta Scout
As publisher and managing editor of the Shasta Scout, Annelise Pierce has worked tirelessly to advance freedom of information in Shasta County and provide high-quality information to the public.
Pierce was among the reporters documenting the arrest of a protester at a Board meeting the night of Nov. 7, and has resisted efforts from officials to erode access to public meetings. Her reporting, live coverage, and collaboration with organizations like the First Amendment Coalition and legal counsel have helped challenge anti-transparency policies. When county officials moved to limit press access, Pierce’s coverage and pressure from the First Amendment Coalition likely prompted them to retract the policy. Her coverage has also brought critical attention to Shasta County’s practices and compelled the repeal of a public records ordinance assessing illegal fees, ultimately resulting in the release of public documents.
Norwin S. Yoffie Career Achievement Award
Sam Stanton
Reporter Sam Stanton dedicated the lion’s share of his 42-year career in journalism to holding the powerful accountable and shedding light on the affairs of government, with a focus in recent years on courts, crime and law enforcement. Stanton regularly exercised — and was a powerful advocate for — the public’s right of access to public records and proceedings. Stanton joined the Arizona Republic in 1982, and covered state and national politics. He then joined the Sacramento Bee in 1991, where he worked until his retirement in 2024.
Stanton’s work for the Bee covered a broad range of issues, but in more recent years he focused on courts and crime and became a familiar and respected presence in Sacramento’s courthouses. Stanton’s work led to the first lawsuit brought to enforce SB 1421, a police records access law. He also motivated the Bee’s litigation to secure what was at the time the largest-ever trove of internal affairs complaints from the Sacramento County Main Jail. Stanton The Bee prevailed, and Stanton put these records to excellent use in his reporting. (SPJ NorCal honored the Bee with a James Madison Award in 2020, in part for Stanton’s work.) He played a major role in a second SB 1421 case brought by the Bee a few years later against the Sacramento Police Department, which defeated an attempt by the Department to delay disclosing police shooting records.
Stanton also pushed through barriers to access when reporting on Sacramento court proceedings. For example, he and the Bee fought for greater access to records and proceedings related to the investigation and prosecution of Phillip Garrido, the attempted extradition of a Sacramento area resident to Iraq based on terrorism and murder allegations in Iraqi court (a magistrate judge found no probable cause for the allegations). Stanton’s reporting is defined by not only a commitment to the right to know, but also journalistic excellence. He has received at least seventeen awards for his work from organizations across the nation. As Bee Executive Editor Colleen McCain Nelson noted, Stanton was “irreplaceable — a journalist whose ability to source, report and make sense of chaos has set a standard few can match.”
This award is named in memory of Norwin S. Yoffie, a former publisher of the Marin Independent Journal and co-founder of SPJ NorCal’s Freedom of Information Committee.
Beverly Kees Educator Award
Cheryl Phillips, Stanford University, founder of Big Local News
Cheryl Phillips had a long and successful career as a reporter before joining the faculty of Stanford in 2014. At the university, Cheryl founded Big Local News, which provides tools, code, information, and support to reporters and news organizations. Under her leadership, Big Local News launched the Stanford Open Policing Project, an effort to promote government transparency by collecting, analyzing, and releasing records from millions of law enforcement traffic stops around the country. Cheryl is also a founding member of the California Civic Data Coalition, working to make campaign finance data more accessible. Above all, she ignites a passion for data journalism in her students, supporting and inspiring the next generation of data and investigative journalists.
Student Journalism Award
Elizabeth Wilson, Mustang News of Cal Poly San Luis Obispo
Reporter Eizabeth Wilson did not back down when university administrators refused to release records related to sexual assault and harassment complaints at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, which she found had among the highest rates of sexual assault reports in the CSU system. After Cal Poly administrators refused to comply with the California Public Records Act and release documents to Wilson, she sued, obtaining legal representation from the First Amendment Coalition. Last fall, school officials settled Wilson’s lawsuit, agreeing to not only release public records but also to train staff on compliance with the Public Records Act, and to meet with Mustang News student journalists moving forward to ensure that their records requests are being fulfilled as required by law.
Professional Journalist – Print/Digital
Melissa Montalvo, Fresno Bee
Over nine months of investigation spurred by the death of employee Jesus Salazar, Fresno Bee government accountability reporter Melissa Montalvo scoured hundreds of pages of regulatory documents, court records, and law enforcement reports to reveal the brutal conditions workers face at the Pitman Family Farms poultry processing plant. Montalvo also interviewed workers who endure these dangerous work environments, as well as family and colleagues of workers who were killed on the job. The investigation revealed serious safety violations, settled fines, unsafe work practices and a high injury rate at the plant, which produces poultry products considered ultra high-end. Montalvo’s reporting was followed by a state investigative report into one of the deaths her reporting scrutinized.
Professional Journalist – Video
Sabrina T. Sanchez, ABC10
Investigative producer Sabrina T. Sanchez scoured more than 8,000 pages of school, court, and legislative records to create ABC10’s video series, “The Wild West of Education.” The series showed how Highlands Community Charter School, one of California’s largest, spends millions of dollars in public funds. Sanchez and ABC10 uncovered a range of questionable activities, including potential falsification of student attendance records, conflicts of interest, and misuse of state funds for gifts, luxury travel, staff bonuses, and political contributions. The investigation also revealed troubling allegations about how Highlands treats its employees, including telling employees that “there’s going to be some problems for some people.” Sanchez was instrumental in protecting scared sources and using public records to corroborate and verify their information.
Four legislators cited ABC10’s work in a letter to the California Joint Legislative Audit Committee, requesting an audit of Highlands and affiliated organizations. The California State Auditor’s report is expected in summer 2025.
Professional Journalist, Audio
Sukey Lewis and Julie Small, KQED
In the KQED podcast “On Our Watch: New Folsom,” reporters Sukey Lewis and Julie Small investigated the untimely deaths of two California state prison correctional officers. Guided by records that KQED fought to have released under a landmark California transparency law, SB 1421, the reporters found that Officer Valentino Rodriguez Jr. and Sgt. Kevin Steele faced increasing ostracization after reporting the misconduct of fellow guards. Remarkably, many current prison officers broke the code of silence to speak with the reporters. Lewis and Small also plumbed internal records, interrogation tapes, and the two officers’ personal writings, emails, and texts to weave together a full account of what happened. The podcast revealed that the lack of accountability in California’s prisons fails to keep anyone safe, including the people who work there.
Newsroom
The North Coast Journal
This small newsroom has established itself as a beacon of transparency that speaks truth to power in Humboldt County. The staff of the North Coast Journal, led by news editor Thadeus Greenson, relentlessly shed light on how university administrators at Cal Poly Humboldt initially mishandled — and in several instances subsequently misled the public about — a high-profile student protest last spring. In the wake of the Journal’s reporting, the university’s president, Tom Jackson Jr., resigned. Separately, the Journal’s reporting on a backroom property deal by Eureka City Schools and an undisclosed buyer revealed a prominent billionaire’s influence. Despite repeated attempts by school board officials to obscure the identity of their business partner, including plain violations of California’s Brown Act, the Journal revealed that real estate magnate Rob Arkley was involved in the deal. The reporting offered clarity about how money and power were wielded behind the scenes in a story that captivated the local community.
Legal Counsel
F. Mario Trujillo, Electronic Frontier Foundation
When a San Francisco Police officer illegally obtained a search warrant on the San Francisco Bay Area Independent Media Center — the news website better known as Indybay — to identify the author of an anonymous post, Indybay fought back, with pro bono legal representation by an Electronic Frontier Foundation team led by attorney F. Mario Trujillo.
The warrant sought identifying information about the author of a communiqué published on Indybay claiming credit for smashing 18 windows at the San Francisco Police Credit Union. It included a 90-day gag order, barring Indybay from disclosing receipt of the warrant. Well-established shield law protects news outlets from being forced to reveal unpublished information, but Indybay says the judge who signed the order was never made aware that the warrant was for a news organization subject to the shield law. Even after SFPD agreed not to take further action on the warrant, Indybay and EFF kept fighting, moving to quash the warrant and vacate the gag order. The judge approved these motions. EFF and Indybay are now calling on the court and SFPD to meet with journalist organizations to prevent future unconstitutional search warrants and gag orders.
Whistleblower
Irene Graham, former Contra Costa County public nurse manager
Irene Graham showed unwavering courage in protecting California’s most vulnerable Medi-Cal patients despite retaliation and threats to her career. When Graham witnessed misappropriation of funds in a multi-billion-dollar Medi-Cal program, she spoke out.
Graham had noticed that, under a Contra Costa County program intended to meet patients’ medical and social needs, medical records had been altered to show nurses performed assessments that never took place. She reported the fraud and patient harm and death cases to county officials. Over the course of two years, Graham says she was berated, internally investigated and escorted out of her office by law enforcement in front of colleagues. Refusing to be silenced, Graham reached out to NBC Bay Area’s Investigative Unit, which reported on her findings. A wave of action followed the stories, including an ongoing criminal investigation by the California Department of Justice’s Medi-Cal Fraud & Elder Abuse Unit, a state audit, the resignation of Contra Costa Health’s CEO, a settlement and a public health director’s signed acknowledgement of Graham’s dedication to patient care.
Whistleblower
Mary Ann Jones, Westside Community Services
As CEO of the nonprofit Westside Community Services, Mary Ann Jones, PhD. collaborated with San Francisco’s Dream Keeper Initiative, a program designed to enhance services for marginalized Black residents. When Jones received disbursement requests that were unusual and in some cases violated city contract laws — including instructions to spend more than $10,000 to rent a house on Martha’s Vineyard — Jones filed a complaint with the city controller. The complaint animated an audit by the controller’s office and investigations by the San Francisco Chronicle and Standard. The audit found a “litany of problems,” including overpayments of tens of thousands of dollars and the approval of expenses without documentation. Journalists exposed prohibited expenses like lavish parties, hotels for guests, catering, basketball games, black tie galas and Target gift cards.
Following Jones’ complaint, Human Rights Commission Director Sheryl Davis, who had overseen the Dream Keeper Initiative, was forced to resign. Tainted contracts were cancelled. The Dream Keeper Initiative is being reformed. Jones risked community recrimination for challenging a much-needed social program, but did so anyway to expose mismanagement and push for professionalism and accountability.
Citizen
Dan McNevin, Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests (SNAP)
While navigating his own healing journey after being abused as an altar boy, Dan McNevin spent years compiling a list of hundreds of Bay Area Catholic priests and other clergy accused of sexual abuse.
McNevin and other members of the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests combed through court filings, news reports and church documents. While some local dioceses have released internal lists of suspected abusers, McNevin’s work shows how incomplete those disclosures are. In Oakland, McNevin’s list is more than three times as long as the list of alleged abusers published by the Bishop. And in San Francisco, where Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone has steadfastly refused to name accused priests within the Archdiocese, McNevin’s list has filled that void.
McNevin’s advocacy helped lead to a vast body of investigative work by local reporters in 2024. The reporting holds California dioceses accountable for how they have handled the child sexual abuse scandal. His work fighting for the public’s right to know has also shown other survivors they aren’t alone, in many cases leading survivors to realize they were not the only victims of a certain priest.
Electronic Access
John Mills, Watch Duty
In 2020, Sonoma County resident John Mills narrowly avoided becoming yet another victim of California wildfires. With the Wallbridge Fire bearing down, he was frustrated, looking for specific local updates and evacuation information. Seeing a need, Mills applied his tech skills. In just 80 days of coding, he created Watch Duty, a wildly popular app that combines from numerous official sources, fire location maps, evacuation orders, and wind direction into one easily-accessible location. Initially only in Sonoma, Lake and Napa counties, the nonprofit service Watch Duty now covers 22 states across the western and central U.S. In 2024, Watch Duty formed new partnerships and added new capacities that helped the app become a one-stop dissemination hub for all of the essential information individuals, agencies, first responders and journalists rely on when a fire breaks out. The organization doubled its volunteer and paid staff and reached nearly four times as many people as the year before. “I built Watch Duty to help myself survive out here in the woods,” Mills told the Mercury News. Today, Watch Duty helps millions.
Nonprofit Organization
U.S. Right to Know
By filing more than 160 requests under the Freedom of Information Act, initiating 30 lawsuits to uncover documents held by federal officials, and combing through tens of thousands of documents, U.S. Right to Know unearthed crucial information about the potential origins of COVID-19 and the high-risk research being conducted at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
The extensive research conducted by U.S. Right to Know, an Oakland-based nonprofit dedicated to government transparency and public health, found drafts of aborted grant proposals involving the Wuhan Institute of Virology and collaboration with U.S. scientists. Emily Kopp’s reporting highlighted the risks of “gain-of-function” research, which involves genetically modifying organisms to test how viruses evolve and spread.
U.S. Right to Know faced heavy criticism from U.S.-based media outlets and politicians, who claimed their work was furthering misinformation. But the nonprofit pressed on, and in January the Central Intelligence Agency stated that it believes COVID-19 likely originated from work done in a laboratory. U.S. Right to Know’s work, and their dedication to pursuing government documents in the face of widespread pushback, has helped the public better understand a pandemic that claimed millions of lives.
The James Madison Awards are hosted by SPJ NorCal’s Freedom of Information Committee. Judges recused themselves from voting in categories in which they have a conflict.
Co-Chairs: Laura Wenus and Thomas Peele
Members
Freddy Brewster
Matt Drange
Derek Kerr
Richard Knee
Randy Lyman
Karl Mondon
Candice Nguyen
Christine Peek
Aaron R. Field
Lauren Smiley
Larry Sokoloff
Lauren Sonnenberg
Ex Officio: SPJ NorCal President Joe Fitzgerald Rodriguez