Honorees

The Sacramento Press Club has selected eight journalists to honor for their outstanding career achievements and strong commitment to journalism, particularly in the Sacramento region.

SPC is a nonprofit educational organization that educates and informs through monthly news events in which journalists interview politicians and other newsmakers about current issues. It is dedicated to supporting student journalists by awarding almost $60,000 in scholarships annually. 2025 scholarship applications are open until Jan. 19 at sacpressclub.org.

The eight journalists honored this year will each have a 2025 scholarship named after them. They are: Dan Morain, Lois Hart, Foon Rhee, Cristina Mendonsa, Samantha Archuleta, Mariel Garza, Molly Dugan and Doni Chamberlain. Their careers span the breadth of journalistic mediums and coverage.

Dan Morain has covered California and national politics, policy and justice issues for more than four decades, primarily at the Los Angeles Times. He also served as editorial page editor for The Sacramento Bee and wrote a daily newsletter for CalMatters. He is the author of “Kamala’s Way, an American Life,” the first biography of the outgoing vice president, and is currently working on another book.

Lois Hart is a household name in Sacramento, co-anchoring KCRA’s evening news for 18 years with her husband, Dave Walker. Her career took her across the country, including Atlanta, where the Hart/Walker duo anchored the first newscast for CNN in 1980. Hart anchored for several other programs, including CNBC Mornings and Money Wheel. She retired in 2008.

Mariel Garza has been a California-based journalist for more than 35 years. She worked at news organizations from the Pulitzer Prize-winning Point Reyes Light in Marin County to mid-sized dailies in Los Angeles and Sacramento and, most recently, at the Los Angeles Times. In October, she resigned from her position as editorials editor at the Times in protest of the owner’s decision to block the editorial board’s endorsement in the 2024 presidential race.

Foon Rhee retired in December from CalMatters, where he was deputy managing editor and oversaw Capitol coverage and elections for almost four years. Rhee’s career spanned four decades, including stints in North Carolina at the Charlotte Observer and The (Raleigh) News & Observer, and in Massachusetts for the Boston Globe, where he edited local news and national politics. Rhee joined The Sacramento Bee’s editorial page in 2010 and in 2018 became editor of the Sacramento News & Review.

Cristina Mendonsa is an award-winning journalist who in recent years founded Mendonsa Media and became director of content for MindMeld Studios. She has worked in newspapers, radio and television, and co-anchored the evening news at KXTV in Sacramento for over a decade. She reported high-profile news stories across the world, from political unrest in the Gaza Strip to the Oklahoma City bombing, receiving recognition from the Emmys, Edward R. Murrow Awards and more.

Samantha Archuleta was a high school English and journalism teacher at McClatchy High School, where she advised the student newspaper, The Prospector, for almost a decade. Last year, she and her students faced a firestorm of controversy over the publication of student comments, including one praising Adolph Hitler, which students later said was intended to reveal “deeply concerning” remarks overheard on campus. California law protects the rights of student journalists to publish and Archuleta vigorously defended those rights. She was suspended from her job despite support from First Amendment groups and local media coverage. Ultimately, she left McClatchy High for a job in the state of Washington.

Molly Dugan is a journalism professor at California State University, Sacramento, where she has taught students for nearly two decades. She recently finished a Fulbright Scholar research project at the Corvinus University of Budapest and was a visiting professor at the University of Lodz in Poland. Dugan previously reported for The Sacramento Bee and other news outlets early in her career, and is currently board president of Open California.

Doni Chamberlain has more than three decades as a journalism veteran in California. She was awarded the SPC’s Courage in Journalism award in 2024 for her work covering extremism in Shasta County, during which she has repeatedly been threatened and even assaulted. She has published the online magazine A News Cafe since 2007 and previously reported and wrote columns for the Redding Record-Searchlight.

The Sacramento Press Club also awards three scholarships each year that are permanently named for these honorees:

Nereida Skelton was a teacher at McClatchy and Kennedy high schools in Sacramento for 33 years. Her core job was teaching English, but her true calling was journalism, public speaking, and debate. Skelton took particular pride in the student newspapers she advised, including the McClatchy Prospector. She passed away in 2012 and her family supports the Sacramento Press Scholarship in her honor.

Dan Walters has been a journalist for nearly 60 years, spending all but a few of those years working for California newspapers. He began his professional career in 1960, at age 16, at the Humboldt Times in Eureka, while still attending high school. He was editor of the Hanford Sentinel before joining the Sacramento Union’s Capitol bureau in 1975 and began writing a column that he continued at the Sacramento Bee from 1984 to 2017. He now is a columnist for CalMatters.

Jerry Gillam was a longtime state government reporter who worked for the Los Angeles Times from 1961 until his retirement in 1995. He spent much of his career covering the California Assembly and saw the Legislature become a full-time body with passage of a ballot measure in 1966. Gillam passed away in 2009 and his family supports the Sacramento Press Club Scholarship in his honor.