Eric Newton, the winner of the Markoff Award for 2012, is honored. Since 2007, the U.C. Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism’s Investigative Reporting Program has hosted a “by invitation only” symposium each spring in honor of the Reva and David Logan Foundation, which endowed the program. The only symposium of its kind in the country, it routinely brings together a veritable “who’s who” of top journalists, law enforcement and government officials to address the critical issues confronting this specialized field. The symposium also unites media executives involved in both non-profit and commercial outlets, as well as media attorneys, academics, major foundations, and philanthropists who support journalism in the public interest."
Bio
Lowell Bergman
Lowell Bergman, Director of the Investigative Reporting Program, is also a producer and correspondent for the PBS documentary series Frontline, and the Reva and David Logan Distinguished Professor of Investigative Reporting at the Graduate School of Journalism. After working in the alternative press, Bergman co-founded the Center for Investigative Reporting in 1977. Soon after, he joined ABC News where he became director of investigative reporting and a producer at 20/20. In 1983, Bergman joined 60 Minutes, where over the course of 14 years he produced more than 50 segments. His 60 Minutes investigation of the tobacco industry was dramatized in the Academy Award-nominated feature film The Insider. In 1998, Bergman forged a unique collaboration between The New York Times and PBS Frontline, to co-report stories for print and broadcast with the participation of graduate students. In 2004, Bergman received the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service, awarded to The New York Times for “A Dangerous Business,” which detailed a foundry company’s egregious worker safety and environmental violations. Bergman was a New York Times correspondent until 2008. Bergman has received numerous Emmy’s, as well as five Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University silver and golden Baton awards, three Peabodys, a Polk Award, a Sidney Hillman award for labor reporting, the Bart Richards Award for Media Criticism and the James Madison Freedom of Information Award for Career Achievement from The Society of Professional Journalists. Bergman has lived for nearly 40 years in Berkeley, California. He is married to Ms. Sharon Tiller, the Director of Digital Media at the Center for Investigative Reporting.
Eric Newton
Eric Newton joined the Knight Foundation in 2001. Since then, as both journalism Program Director and later Vice President for journalism, he has developed some $300 million in grants to advance quality journalism, freedom of expression and media innovation worldwide. Before Knight, he was founding Managing Editor of the Newseum, the world's first major museum of news in Washington, D.C. Newton began his journalism career as a newspaper editor in Northern California. At the Oakland Tribune, he was Managing Editor when the newspaper won 150 journalism awards, including a Pulitzer Prize. Newton's books include Crusaders, Scoundrels, Journalists; Capture the Moment; and News in a New America. He co-founded the First Amendment Project, shared in a Peabody Award for "Mosaic: World News from the Middle East" and is a four-time Pulitzer Prize juror. He has a bachelor's degree in journalism from San Francisco State University and holds a master's degree in international studies from the University of Birmingham, England, where he was a Rotary International Scholar.