John Hill

About

A journalist with more than two decades of experience at daily newspapers, much of it focused on investigative reporting, I am now investigations editor at nonprofit Honolulu Civil Beat. I am an expert on obtaining public records and analyzing data to pinpoint failures in government programs, and a compelling writer able to translate complicated public policy issues into human terms. I've won the George Polk Award and a variety of other national, state and local honors. I've covered local and state government at papers in New York City, New Orleans, Albuquerque, the Bay Area and Sacramento. I also have worked as an assignment editor, overseeing the local news report and orchestrating large projects, including one that won a national award for environmental journalism. In 2008, I was one of 12 U.S. journalists to be selected for a Knight-Wallace Journalism Fellowship at the University of Michigan, where I spent an academic year studying administrative law, public policy, fiction writing and video production. After leaving newspapers, I worked for five years for the non-partisan Senate Office of Oversight and Outcomes. My reports led to laws and administrative changes in a wide variety of areas, including elder abuse, drug treatment, and state-subsidized home loans. I testified in legislative hearings, responded to media inquiries about my reports, met with the Senate's committee and policy staff to set priorities, wrote press releases and edited the work of my colleagues. I also worked for a year-and-a-half as press secretary for the California Controller