Guild members Sam Stanton and Melissa Montalvo are to receive prestigious awards that the Society of Professional Journalists’ Northern California Chapter gives each spring to champions of government transparency and freedom of expression.
Stanton, who retired in 2024 from the Sacramento Bee, is to receive the Norwin S. Yoffie Career Achievement Award named for a co-founder of SPJ NorCal’s Freedom of Information Committee. In heralding this year’s awardees, SPJ NorCal said 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.”
Montalvo, who covers government accountability issues for the Fresno Bee, is one of more than a dozen winners of this year’s James Madison Award named for the guiding force behind the First Amendment. In a nine-month-long investigation spurred by the death of Jesus Salazar, who worked at the Pitman Family Farms poultry processing plant in Sanger, Calif. “Montalvo scoured hundreds of pages of regulatory documents, court records, and law enforcement reports to reveal the brutal conditions” that workers at the plant face, SPJ NorCal said. “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.”
The Guild extends hearty congratulations to Stanton and Montalvo, who will be honored at SPJ NorCal’s 40th annual James Madison Awards Banquet on Thursday evening, March 20, at the Marines’ Memorial Club in San Francisco. Click here for details on the event.
SPJ NorCal holds the celebratory banquet on or near Madison’s birthday, March 16. It is one of several outstanding organizations that the Guild works with to uphold government transparency and the First Amendment. Guild members Thomas Peele of EdSource, Karl Mondon of the Mercury News and Richard Knee of the Guild Freelancers are on SPJ NorCal’s FOI Committee.
