Former UC Berkeley Journalism Faculty and San Quentin News Win Honors

Rob Gunnison, a former instructor and Director of School Affairs at UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism, will be honored with the Beverly Kees Educator Award for his years of mentoring aspiring journalists and for the re-establishment of required course work to access public records.

The award is named for a former SPJ NorCal president who was an educator and nationally recognized journalist.

“I am thrilled for the recognition of the public records curriculum at Berkeley,” Gunnison said. “This could not have happened without the help of many people and the pioneering work of my colleague and friend, Paul Grabowicz.”

The San Quentin News will also be honored with a News Media Award for accomplishing extraordinary journalism under extraordinary circumstances. In the only inmate-produced paper in California, and under the scrutiny of prison authorities, the inmate journalists and volunteers covered a prison hunger strike, overcrowding and denial of compassionate release for a dying inmate.

Rob Gunnison spent two decades as a journalist for United Press International and the San Francisco Chronicle, giving him the kind of hands-on experience journalism students covet. Gunnison taught at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism from 1999 to 2013, mentoring dozens of students in the realities of newsgathering. In the years before he left, Gunnison also served as the Director of School Affairs. He guided the school through trying periods of transition and pushed to reinstate requirements that students understand and are able to use public records laws.

The News Media Award was created after Lake County News co-founder Elizabeth Larson questioned sheriff’s candidate Frank Rivero in 2010 about his arrest record in Florida. Rivero, upon winning the election, withheld routine media information from the Lake County News for its inquiries into his background. Larson and her husband, John Jensen, took Rivero to court and in March 2013, with the help of attorney Paul Boylan of Davis, restored access to public media information and the county had to pay $110,000 to cover the pair’s legal fees.