The Guild congratulates San Francisco Chronicle unit member Daniel Lempres, former member Jason Fagone, and former Mercury News unit member Julia Love on getting James Madison Awards that the Society of Professional Journalists’ Northern California Chapter gives annually to champions of government transparency and press freedom.

Lempres and Fagone, along with colleagues from the Chronicle and the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, spent a year investigating unintended consequences of the California Voting Rights Act. Love, now with Bloomberg News, was part of a team that, through public records requests and meticulous reporting, detailed how law enforcement officials across the country use search warrants to obtain innocent Google users’ search history and location information in trying to combat crime.

SPJ NorCal will hold its 39th annual James Madison Awards Banquet on Thursday, April 18, at the Marines’ Memorial Club in San Francisco. Click here for the full announcement, and click here to purchase tickets to the event.