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During a 43-year career in journalism, Don Ham led the Nevada Appeal in Carson City as editor for more than a decade before shaping coverage on the Las Vegas Review-Journal’s city desk for the next 20 years.
A native of Southern California, he was formerly editor of the Lompoc Record, Bonita Publication weeklies in Los Angeles and San Bernardino counties, a copy and wire editor at the Inland Vally Daily Bulletin and a reporter in Fairfield, Calif.
“Although Don is as calm and steady an editor as you’ll ever meet, he’s a newsroom warrior,” wrote Glenn Cook. “He’s aggressive and competitive in gathering the news. But Don treats staff with courtesy and respect, while demanding accuracy, thoroughness and easy-to-understand writing.”
Retired now for two years, Ham had a hand in planning, assigning and shaping nearly every major story in the Review-Journal over two decades, even though most readers wouldn’t recognize his name.
“Little do they know that Don’s fingerprints are all over every crime, school, courts, government, transportation and politics story they read,” according to Cook.
His attention to detail also made him the newspaper’s style guru, helping compile and produce its local style guide and enabling the Review-Journal to be the first in the U.S. to publish its guide online.
A 1973 graduate of California State Polytechnic University in Pomona, Ham was appointed editor of the Appeal in 1984. He wrote and edited stories, laid out pages, planned promotions and special sections, oversaw the paper’s conversion to color and wrote most of its editorials.
He won several Nevada Press Association awards and was active in the Society of Professional Journalists. Ham joins a distinguished list of Nevada editors who toiled day and night behind the scenes to bring breaking news and in-depth coverage of the Legislature, courts, education and other institutions to readers with context and knowledge that few could match.
— From the Nomination
