SEJ Board Election

David Hammer
Active Board Candidate

I have been a professional journalist for 20 years and have had a real passion for environmental reporting ever since I led The Times-Picayune’s investigation of what went wrong on the Deepwater Horizon rig in April 2010 when a well blowout set off the worst oil spill in U.S. history.

My reporting on that story won the SEJ’s Small Market Beat Reporting Award for 2010. After attending the annual conference in Miami to accept my award, I was hooked… and joined the SEJ.

I have been blessed to learn from the best environment reporters in the business, Mark Schleifstein and Bob Marshall, during six years with them at The Times-Picayune. In 2012, I moved to television at WWL-TV, the CBS affiliate in New Orleans, and have continued to produce long, in-depth environmental stories for broadcast, and also in print for our partners at The New Orleans Advocate.

I have won several broadcast awards for that work, including the top TV reporting award from the New Orleans Press Club in 2014 for an investigation of a deadly platform explosion; the Press Club’s environmental reporting award in 2016 for exposing the U.S. Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement’s gutting of its own Environmental Division; and the same award in 2017 for “Oil & Water,” a series about a whistleblower who caught his supervisors dumping oil into the Gulf of Mexico.

I want to serve on SEJ’s board because the Gulf Coast, and especially Louisiana, needs a strong voice for environmental reporting at the national level. Louisiana is Ground Zero for so many environmental and energy issues affecting the nation and the world, including sea-level rise, subsidence, wetlands loss and conservation, offshore drilling and pipeline safety, fossil-fuel refineries … and the list goes on.

In addition, I want to represent local television reporters as we push for more — and more detailed — coverage of environmental issues in the visual media. I hope SEJ members give me that opportunity, and all my best for a great conference in Pittsburgh!

David Hammer
Investigative Reporter
WWL-TV New Orleans (CBS)
[email protected]

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