Longtime Bee reporter Sam Stanton to be honored with lifetime achievement award at SPJ gala

Retired Sacramento Bee reporter Sam Stanton will receive a lifetime achievement award Thursday from the Society of Professional Journalists Northern California chapter, honoring his four-decade career dedicated to government accountability and the public’s right to know.

Stanton will be awarded the Norwin S. Yoffie Career Achievement Award during SPJ NorCal’s 40th annual James Madison Freedom of Information Awards in San Francisco. The Yoffie award is named after the former Marin Independent Journal publisher and co-founder of SPJ’s Northern California Freedom of Information Committee.

“Stanton’s reporting is defined by not only a commitment to the right to know, but also journalistic excellence,” SPJ NorCal said in announcing the honor.

Stanton’s 42-year journalism career began in 1982 at The Arizona Republic, where he covered state and national politics. He joined The Sacramento Bee in 1991, quickly becoming a standard-bearer for accountability journalism in California’s capital. His byline became a mainstay of The Bee’s coverage for more than three decades.

Colleen McCain Nelson, The Bee’s executive editor, described Stanton as “irreplaceable.”

“His ability to source, report and make sense of chaos has set a standard few can match,” Nelson said in remarks to SPJ.

Stanton’s reporting often broke new ground in government transparency. His work securing public records and pushing for government accountability led to lawsuits by The Bee to enforce public access laws. He worked closely with attorney Karl Olson in high-profile cases, including the fight for internal affairs records from the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Office and police shooting files from the Sacramento Police Department.

Olson, who has represented The Bee and other McClatchy newspapers in California for decades, received the Yoffie award in 2024. The Bee and Stanton were honored by SPJ NorCal in 2020, recognizing work by Stanton and his colleagues in seeking compliance with Senate Bill 1421, a police transparency law, among other investigative work.

In 2017, Stanton and then-Bee education reporter Diana Lambert received SPJ’s James Madison Freedom of Information Award for their investigation of former UC Davis Chancellor Linda Katehi. Their reporting uncovered Katehi’s use of hundreds of thousands of dollars in taxpayer money to manage her online image, along with her participation in lucrative board appointments and international trips. The revelations led to a separate University of California investigation and Katehi’s resignation in 2016.

The investigation earned two first-place awards from the Inland Press Association for investigative reporting in 2016.

Over his 33 years at The Bee, Stanton won numerous awards for breaking news and investigative reporting. Among his notable work was a 2013 investigation of Carissa Carpenter, who proposed building a large movie studio in Dixon despite a history of failed projects and legal troubles. Stanton’s reporting, alongside longtime Bee reporter and editor Marjie Lundstrom, led to Carpenter’s conviction in 2018. Lundstrom, a 1991 Pulitzer Prize winner, retired after serving as deputy editor at CalMatters.

Before his retirement in May, Stanton was named Journalist of the Year by the Sacramento Press Club.

In honoring Stanton, the club remarked: “The Sacramento Bee editor who nominated Sam Stanton for journalist of the year called him a weight-bearing wall of a journalist. We agree.”

The Madison awards honor the “people and organizations who have made significant contributions to advancing freedom of information and expression in the spirit of James Madison, the creative force behind the First Amendment.”

Among other honorees at Thursday’s event is Fresno Bee reporter Melissa Montalvo, whose nine-month investigation into Pitman Family Farms in Hanford exposed unsafe working conditions following the death of employee Jesus Salazar. Her reporting prompted a state investigation into the company.

This story was originally published March 16, 2025 at 5:00 AM.