David Weir (journalist)

David Weir is a journalist and co-founder, in 1977, of the Center for Investigative Reporting.^[1]

He's written for The Economist, HotWired, L.A. Weekly, Mother Jones, The Nation, New West, New York Magazine, The New York Times, Rolling Stone, Salon.com, San Francisco Chronicle, San Francisco Examiner, and others.^[2]

Weir has written or co-authored at least three books, listed below.

Weir taught at the University of California Graduate School of Journalism from 1985 to 1999, and was the Lorry I. Lokey visiting professor in professional journalism at Stanford University from 2002-2005.

He wrote a retrospective of Hunter Thompson.^[3]

He was an editor at SunDance Magazine, Rolling Stone, California Magazine, Mother Jones, the Stanford Social Innovation Review, and (in 2001) was the founding editor of 7x7 Magazine in San Francisco. He was a content executive at Wired Digital, Salon.com, and Excite@Home. He was Editor in Chief at Keep Media, (which became MyWire) from 2005–07, and held the same title at Predicify (2008–09).

In college, David Weir was the sports editor of the Michigan Daily at the University of Michigan, and a stringer for UPI.

While at Rolling Stone, Weir and Howard Kohn revealed the "Inside Story" of Patty Hearst's odyssey while she was underground following her kidnapping by the Symbionese Liberation Army. He also exposed FBI surveillance scandals involving the Black Panther Party and the American Indian Movement.

In 1977, he published the first article leading to the best-selling book, Circle of Poison in Rolling Stone.

He currently is Vice-President of the Center for Investigative Reporting and a member of the editorial board of The Nation Institute. He is also a judge, in 2008, for Alternet, the Society of Professional Journalists, and PEN USA.

Weir is working on a memoir of his years at Rolling Stone.

Published works

Books

• Weir, David and Mark Schapiro. Circle of Poison: Pesticides and People in a Hungry World (Food First Books) February 1981) ISBN 978-0-935028-09-6 Describes the international marketing of pesticides banned in the United States and incidences of pesticide poisoning in farm workers and through the exportation of contaminated foods.
• Weir, David and Dan Noyes. Raising Hell: How the Center for Investigative Reporting Gets the Story(Addison-Wesley Pub Co, 1983: 1983) ISBN 0-201-10859-3.
• Weir, David. The Bhopal Syndrome: Pesticides, Environment and Health ISBN 978-0-87156-718-5 (Sierra Club Books, 1987) Discusses the disaster at Bhopal, India in the context of a global syndrome that puts countless lives at risk; proposes measures to reduce unnecessary risk.

References

1. Weir is listed as co-founder of the Center for Investigative Reporting
2. Biographical summary of David Weir
3. Hunter S. Thompson: Death Of An American Original"

David Weir Sunday, February 27, 2005]