By Richard Bammer
A 24-year Reporter employee, Bammer this year earned a John Swett Award for Media Excellence for a series of six stories in the category of continuous coverage of schools/education issues. He competed in the Community Daily Newspaper class, for publications with up to 100,000 subscribers.
And as he did last year, he earned another Certificate of Merit, this time for a news story about Buckingham Charter High students and the American Civil Liberties Union taking Vacaville Unified to task for censorship of a Black Lives Matter article in the school’s yearbook. After The Reporter story was published, the student article, as written, and a photo showing several female students raising a “black power” salute were eventually restored to the yearbook.
“For us at The Reporter, we appreciate Richard’s hard work and attention to detail,” said Managing Editor Melissa Murphy. “He offers experience and knowledge to his colleagues and maintains great relationships with the community he covers. He appreciates being recognized for his work, but that’s not what drives him. Rather, he strives for producing great community journalism and he’s very successful at that.”