John Schwada is an American political-government and
investigative reporter. After he won the
Los Angeles Press Club's Lifetime Achievement Award in 2001, the
Los Angeles City Council declared August 12, 2011 as John Schwada Day in the City of Los Angeles, although in July 2011, Schwada's contract with
KTTV expired and was not renewed.
Early life and education
Schwada was born in
Columbia, Missouri
Columbia is a city in the U.S. state of Missouri. It is the county seat of Boone County and home to the University of Missouri. Founded in 1821, it is the principal city of the five-county Columbia metropolitan area. It is Missouri's fourth ...
. He earned a bachelor's degree in 1970 and a master's degree in history in 1975 from the
University of California, Berkeley.
[
]
Career
He began his career in journalism covering the Imperial Valley for the ''San Diego Union
''The San Diego Union-Tribune'' is a metropolitan daily newspaper published in San Diego, California, that has run since 1868.
Its name derives from a 1992 merger between the two major daily newspapers at the time, ''The San Diego Union'' and ...
''. After completing his master's degree he worked as a freelancer in the San Francisco Bay Area, then after moving to Los Angeles, worked at the '' Riverside Press-Enterprise'' for a year before being hired by the ''Los Angeles Herald-Examiner
The ''Los Angeles Herald Examiner'' was a major Los Angeles daily newspaper, published in the afternoon from Monday to Friday and in the morning on Saturdays and Sundays. It was part of the Hearst syndicate. It was formed when the afternoon ' ...
'',[ where he was a political and City Hall reporter until the paper folded in November 1989. He was then hired by '' The Los Angeles Times'', where he helped develop a weekly political column for the Valley Edition and covered politics and City Hall.][ He joined KTTV in 1996.
]
Honors
While a freelancer, Schwada won the San Francisco Press Club award for best investigative story of the year for a ''San Francisco Bay Guardian
The ''San Francisco Bay Guardian'' was a free alternative newspaper published weekly in San Francisco, California. It was founded in 1966 by Bruce B. Brugmann and his wife, Jean Dibble. The paper was shut down on October 14, 2014. It was relaun ...
'' piece on a CIA
The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA ), known informally as the Agency and historically as the Company, is a civilian intelligence agency, foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States, officially tasked with gat ...
listening post in the Bay Area.[
He was awarded a Los Angeles-area Emmy award in 2002 and 2003 and ]Golden Mike
Golden means made of, or relating to gold.
Golden may also refer to:
Places United Kingdom
*Golden, in the parish of Probus, Cornwall
*Golden Cap, Dorset
* Golden Square, Soho, London
*Golden Valley, a valley on the River Frome in Gloucestersh ...
s in 2003 and 2010 for investigative reports. The LA Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists
The Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ), formerly known as Sigma Delta Chi, is the oldest organization representing journalists in the United States. It was established on April 17, 1909, at DePauw University,2009 SPJ Annual Report, letter ...
named Schwada as its 1989 newspaper journalist of the year.
In the spring of 2009, Schwada and producer Pete Noyes were honored by The Sidney Hillman Foundation
The Sidney Hillman Foundation is an American charitable foundation that awards prizes to journalists who investigate issues related to social justice and progressive public policy. The foundation, founded in 1946, is named for Sidney Hillman, who w ...
for their investigative reporting that led to the arrest of a con-man
A confidence trick is an attempt to defraud a person or group after first gaining their trust. Confidence tricks exploit victims using their credulity, naïveté, compassion, vanity, confidence, irresponsibility, and greed. Researchers have de ...
who was preying on victims of the 2008 Mortgage Crisis. Schwada was awarded the Associated Press TV and Radio Artists award for the best "light" blog of the year on a TV station website.
In the 1980s, Schwada won LA Press Club
The Los Angeles Press Club is an American journalism organization founded in 1913. It honors journalists through its annual National Arts and Entertainment Journalism Awards and SoCal Journalism Awards.
The Board of Directors includes the organi ...
awards for his series investigating Councilman Richard Alatorre
Richard Alatorre (born May 15, 1943) was a member of the California State Assembly from 1973 to 1985—"one of the most influential Latino politicians in the state"— and a Los Angeles, California, City Council member from 1985 to 1999, the sec ...
's illegal use of campaign money in his 1985 council race and for his investigation of Mayor Tom Bradley's questionable ties to Far East National Bank
Far East National Bank (FENB; ) was founded in 1974 by Henry Y. Hwang as the first federally chartered Asian American bank in the United States. FENB has over 600 employees and total assets exceeding US$1.7 billion. It became a wholly owned subsid ...
.
References
Living people
Year of birth missing (living people)
People from Columbia, Missouri
University of California, Berkeley alumni
20th-century American journalists
American male journalists
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