Howard Weaver Award for Leadership in Journalism

DEADLINE: Materials must be submitted electronically to the Alaska Press Club by March 29, 2024. This should include a letter of recommendation and supporting materials. Email nominations to: alaskapressclubinfo@gmail.com.

Howard Weaver was a born-and-raised Alaskan who grew up in Anchorage’s Muldoon neighborhood in the 1950s and ‘60s. After college, he got a job as a reporter for the upstart Anchorage Daily News in 1972, and his reporting on the Teamsters union and corruption during the construction of the trans-Alaska oil pipeline was central to the ADN’s first Pulitzer Prize win in 1976. From 1976-1979, he founded and led the Alaska Advocate, a statewide alternative weekly newspaper with a crusading spirit of investigative journalism and, in Weaver’s words, butchering sacred cows. In 1979, he became the ADN’s top editor and led the paper to not only its second Pulitzer Prize but also to its position as the foremost print media outlet in Alaska, winning the newspaper war with the Anchorage Times in 1992. He went on to become vice president for news at the nationwide McClatchy newspaper chain, a position he held until his retirement in 2008.

Weaver was not just an excellent reporter and a talented editor; his true gifts to the newsrooms he served were his leadership and mentorship skills. He was able to pass on to others his own deep-rooted faith in journalism as a public service, what he described as, “an enduring belief that telling the truth would change things — that people would make good choices if only they understood.”

The Alaska Press Club’s Howard Weaver Award recognizes journalists who, over the course of their careers, have devoted substantial time and effort to Alaska journalism and who have been leaders or mentors in their newsrooms, making their organizations stronger through their own reporting and editing while also sharpening the skills of their colleagues. It celebrates those who used their journalism to embody Weaver’s mantra (and the title of his memoir), “Write hard, die free.”

The Howard Weaver Award is awarded at the discretion of the Alaska Press Club’s board of directors; it is not required to be awarded each year.