Go back to News pageSAN FRANCISCO -- Nine reporters and editors in San Francisco's striking newspaper unions won professional achievement awards Thursday night at a celebration dinner that showed the strains of the ongoing labor dispute.
The annual event, sponsored by the Society of Professional Journalists of Northern California, brought union members and some of their bosses together for the first time since the strike began Nov. 1 -- but they didn't sit at the same tables.
More than two dozen journalists from Bay Area radio, television, magazines and newspapers were honored at the ceremony held at the Nikko Hotel.
Winners from the Examiner were reporters Jane Kay, Stephanie Salter, Dennis Opatrny and Elizabeth Fernandez and retired copy editor Bill Kong.
Winners from the Chronicle were columnist Art Hoppe and reporters Herb Greenberg, David Dietz and Glen Martin.
Support for the strikers from all nine Chronicle and Examiner unions -- plus hope for an end to the walkout -- rang out in many of the thank you speeches by striking journalists and their colleagues at other news outlets.
Six Examiner managers sat at their own table, across the room from their award winners. The two sides did mingle somewhat stiffly at the cocktail hour; two editors said they were astonished and hurt that their striking reporters were angry with them over the strike.
The Chronicle management table was empty.
Selling briskly were T-shirts advertising the San Francisco Free Press, the new newspaper being produced by striking workers.
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