Hello! My name is Hannah Holzer and I am The Sacramento Bee’s assistant opinion editor and a 2020 graduate of the University of California, Davis.
In my spare time, I also do freelance reporting for San Francisco Weekly and the Richmond Review/Sunset Beacon, two community publications serving SF’s west side neighborhoods.
Previously, I served as the managing editor for UC Davis’ official, weekly, student-run online and print newspaper, The California Aggie. In this role, I managed a staff of 140; I was responsible for interviewing and hiring new reporters each quarter and I read and edited all the content we published — between 30 to 50 articles per week. Prior to that, I served The Aggie as campus news editor, a position I held for two years. I was also a features reporter for one year and an opinion columnist for one quarter while I studied abroad.
I am a former news intern for The Sacramento Bee. In this position, I was assigned to the health beat and did a number of long-form pieces as well as breaking news coverage. One of my front-page investigations revealed that officials for the City of Sacramento were directly responsible for causing an outbreak of West Nile Virus activity in a residential neighborhood.
I got my start in journalism at my high school’s monthly online and print publication, The Granite Bay Gazette. I wrote for The Gazette for two years, serving as a co-editor-in-chief during my final year of high school. I attended the annual week-long Columbia Scholastic Press Association conference in New York with my advanced journalism class in 2016 where we received the prestigious Gold Crown Award.
Where my byline has appeared: SF Weekly; Sunset Beacon; Richmond Review; The Granite Bay Gazette; Fresh U; The United State of Women; The California Aggie; St. Louis Post-Dispatch; The Mercury News; The Sacramento Bee; Fresno Bee; Billings Gazette; Government Technology; Arizona Daily Star; The Modesto Bee; Missoulian; San Luis Obispo Tribune; Gulf Times; East Bay Times; Sioux City Journal; Napa Valley Register; La Crosse Tribune; Helena Independent Record; The Daily News (Longview, WA); Merced Sun-Star; Winona Daily News; Albany Democrat-Herald; Bristol Herald Courier and Lompoc Record.
Honors and awards I have received for my writing:
- California Press Foundation’s 2020 Internship Grant Program recipient
- University of California, Davis’ Prized Writing published author (as of October, 2020)
- Recipient of the 2019 Sacramento Press Club Jerry Gillam Scholarship
- Recipient of the 2018 Sacramento Press Club Julie Soderlund Scholarship
- First place award from the California Press Women in the News category for the 2016 High School Communications Contest (2016)
- Honorable Mention in the newswriting category for the national competition from the Federation of Press Women
- Second Place award from the Journalism Education Association of Northern California for NEWSPUB news story
- Honorable mention from the Journalism Education Association of Northern California for NEWSPUB newspaper front page design (2016)
- Honorable mention from the Journalism Education Association of Northern California for NEWSPUB general feature story (2016)
- Granite Bay High School Publications Department Award (2016)
- First place for the California Newspaper Publishers Association’s Better Newspapers Contest for news enterprise story for the article “Technology’s Effect on Communication” (2016)
- Collective effort, first place winner in General Excellence category for the 2015 Gazettes published, as acknowledged by the California Newspaper Publishers Association
- Tied for third in the annual Journalism Education Association of Northern California’s (JEANC) Journalist of the Year competition (2016)
- “Rookie of the Year” award from The Granite Bay Gazette staff (2015)
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