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The David Stolberg Meritorious Service Award recognizes an SEJ member for their exceptional volunteer work. Nominees may not be a board member or anyone who is paid by SEJ.
Volunteers are the lifeblood of this organization. Member-volunteers organize tours and panels for the conference, implement the awards program, contribute to the SEJournal, serve as mentors and sit on any number of committees. This conference could not happen and SEJ could not be successful without our members lending their time and sweat in selfless service as volunteers.
This annual award honors exceptional volunteer work by an SEJ member. It was created by the SEJ board in 1998 and named in honor of one of SEJ's founders, David Stolberg.
The 2020 Stolberg award goes to Robert McClure. Robert spent many productive years working in Florida in between ever stronger storms. He decided to try the other coast and went to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, covering the changing environment in the west till the paper folded in 2009. Rather than return east, Robert helped start InvestigateWest, a nonprofit publication focused on government and corporate accountability and the environment. It is still going strong.
As if that wasn’t enough to do, Robert never stopped giving time and energy to SEJ. Robert was particularly active with SEJ publications, volunteering to edit the SEJournal, EJToday and other publications. By 2016, Robert was Chair of the Publications Advisory Board and coordinated the quarterly editorial meetings. That year, he guided the migration of SEJournal from a print to an online publication and last year was at the center of the transition of EJToday, with Joe Davis as an independent twitter editor.
Two years ago, the SEJournal launched the first of an ongoing series of regional climate guides. Robert edited the first in that series, covering the Pacific Northwest. That created the template for the following guides featuring issues in the Southeast and then the Southwest (upcoming).
If it’s been published by SEJ in the last decade, Robert has had an ink-stained hand in it.
Thank you for everything, Robert. You are appreciated more than you know!
This annual award honors exceptional volunteer work by an SEJ member. It was created by the SEJ board in 1998 and named in honor of SEJ founder David Stolberg. Nominees may not be a board member or anyone who is paid by SEJ.
Much of SEJ's best work is accomplished by member-volunteers: tour and panel organizers for the conference, awards program leaders, contributors to SEJournal, SEJ-talk and www.sej.org, freedom-of-information watchdogs, mentors, and leaders in diversity outreach. Volunteers define the heart and soul of SEJ, and they expand the group's reach and significance in ways that are not easily measured.
David Stolberg had a 38-year career with Scripps Howard that included duties for the Scripps Howard Foundation's annual Meeman Awards for excellence in environmental reporting. Stolberg always believed in "the value of networking, of the subliminal training that comes from an association with one's peers." In the 1980s, when Stolberg was assistant general editorial manager of Scripps Howard, he came up with the SEJ idea and kept suggesting it to Meeman winners until he found one who was willing to put in the volunteer time to organize with other journalists and make something happen. That person was SEJ's founding president, Jim Detjen.
Stolberg died May 24, 2011 at age 83.
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