Honorees

The Sacramento Press Club has selected 10 journalists this year to honor for their outstanding career achievement and strong commitment to journalism in the Sacramento region and beyond: Sammy Roth, Amy Chance, the Lee Family (Larry Lee, Dr. William H. Lee and Kathryn C. Lee), George Skelton, Viviana Páez, K.W. Lee, Jack Ohman and Karl Grubaugh.

The scholarships in their names will range from $5,000 to $8,000.

Sammy Roth, a Los Angeles Times environmental columnist, was named Journalist of the Year at the Sacramento Press Club’s annual awards for California politics and policy reporting in April. Roth writes a twice-weekly climate newsletter while at the same time digging into complex stories to help readers understand how our world is changing, and, importantly, how he finds optimism.

Amy Chance retired last year as political editor after almost 40 years as an editor and reporter in The Sacramento Bee’s Capitol Bureau. She has covered many of the state’s major political figures, starting with the second term of Gov. George Deukmejian.

Larry Lee is the president and publisher of the Observer Media Group, which was founded by his parents, Dr. William H. Lee and Kathryn C. Lee. Among its many awards, The Observer was named the country’s best Black newspaper last year by the National Newspaper Publishers Association.

George Skelton, a Los Angeles Times columnist, reached his 50th anniversary with the Times earlier this year. He has covered governors and other politicians dating back to then-Gov. Ronald Reagan, and has repeatedly funded an annual SPC scholarship for his late wife, Nereida Skelton.

Viviana Páez is an executive producer and anchor for Univision who has won multiple Emmy awards for her work, including coverage of the lack of COVID-19 testing in agricultural fields.

K.W. Lee is a pioneering former reporter, editor, and publisher in both mainstream and ethnic media. Lee’s reporting dates to civil rights struggles in the 1960s in the South and includes deep reporting on the 1973 conviction of Chol Soo Lee in a San Francisco Chinatown gang murder. That reporting led to Lee’s acquittal and the 1989 film, “True Believer.”

Jack Ohman is a winner of the Pulitzer Prize for editorial cartooning for his sharp and insightful commentary on California and national politics. Ohman left The Sacramento Bee last year when McClatchy cut its editorial cartoonists. He continues to syndicate his cartoons through Tribune Content Agency and is a contributing columnist and cartoonist for the San Francisco Chronicle.

Karl Grubaugh has taught journalism and social studies to high school and college students for more than 40 years. He edited copy for almost 20 years at The Sacramento Bee and is an adjunct journalism professor at Sacramento State University.

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.