by Richard Knee, Local 39521 VP-California
The Guild congratulates members Joel Engardio of the Guild Freelancers unit, Cynthia Hubert and Stephen Magagnini of the Sacramento Bee, and recent Mercury News retiree Pete Carey as recipients of the prestigious Excellence in Journalism Award that the Society of Professional Journalists, Northern California chapter, will present on Tuesday evening, Nov. 15.
Carey is to receive SPJ NorCal’s Career Achievement Award for his 49 years at the Mercury News, where he won a Pulitzer Prize in 1986 for reporting on the Ferdinand Marcos regime in the Philippines, and was on the Pulitzer-winning team that investigated the collapse of the Cypress Structure, part of Interstate 880, in Oakland during the October 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake. He also covered the emergence of Silicon Valley as an information technology hub and probed mortgage fraud behind the recent housing market bubble.
Engardio’s accolade is for “In My View” columns in the San Francisco Examiner, which SPJ NorCal said “represent well-crafted, compelling storytelling and positive prescriptions for public action.”
Hubert is being applauded for “Genny’s World – Homeless in Sacramento: A Death on the Streets,” which SPJ NorCal described as “an exhaustively reported story about Genny Lucchesi and the challenges her family and community faced in trying to help her secure a safe, secure home.”
Magagnini is on a team of reporters receiving an award for “No Safe Place,” a video and print series examining harsh treatment in Sacramento of Afghan refugees admitted with Special Immigrant Visas into this country for risking their lives helping U.S. troops.
The complete list of Excellence in Journalism awardees is at http://www.spjnorcal.org/new/2016/10/24/spj-norcal-honors-2016-excellence-in-journalism-award-winners/.
The awards banquet is to take place at The City Club, 155 Sansome St., San Francisco. To reserve a seat or table, visit http://bit.ly/EIJ2016AwardsDinner.
