Howard Weaver

Activist, Business leader, Global soul, Idea generator, Journalist, World traveler, Writer/Editor

Howard Weaver was born in Anchorage, Alaska in 1950 and was educated at Anchorage public schools. He received a BA degree from Johns Hopkins University in 1972 and a Master of Philosophy degree from Cambridge University in 1993. Weaver twice lead the Anchorage Daily News to Pulitzer Prizes; he wrote the stories for which the paper won the 1976 Pulitzer Prize Gold Medal for Public Service, and was editor and a lead writer on the project for which the paper again won the prize in 1989. He was one of three reporters whose coverage of the Alaska Teamsters Union during construction of the trans-Alaska pipeline won the award in 1976. In 1989, the paper won for its coverage of alcoholism and suicide among Alaska Natives. Weaver first worked at the Anchorage Daily News while still in high school, covering prep wrestling matches. He later covered summer baseball and went to work full-time at the newspaper after college graduation. He worked as a police reporter, court reporter, legislative correspondent and special projects reporter between 1972-1976. He has also worked as a construction worker, cannery hand and commercial fisherman. In October, 1976 Weaver was one of five people who started the Alaska Advocate, a statewide weekly newspaper. When it folded in 1979, he returned to the Daily News as an editorial writer. He later served as a daily columnist and was named managing editor in January 1981. He assumed full editorial responsibility in May, 1983. In 1995, he moved to Sacramento, CA to assume a new position as assistant to the president for new media strategies at McClatchy Newspapers, advising senior management at the company on digital publishing, the internet and other new media issues. He was named editor of the editorial pages for McClatchy Newspapers in January, 1997, and in 2001 became Vice President, News at McClatchy, the chief content officer at the country’s third-largest newspaper publisher. He left McClatchy after 30 years at the end of 2008. Weaver is married to Barbara L. Hodgin; they have no children. Interests outside the newspaper industry include hockey, personal computers, opera and foreign travel. In 1991, he was Distinguished Lecturer in Journalism at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks. He has six times served as a Pulitzer Prize juror by invitation, and is a member of the American Society of Newspaper Editors, and other professional organizations. From 1990-1994 he was co-chair of the international association of northern editors, the Northern News Service. In 1998 he was named by an Alaska Public Radio Network survey as one of the 40 most influential Alaskans in the state's first 40 years of history.

Opportunity, equality, free speech, progress, post-nationalism, peace of mind

If patterns of ones and zeros were “like” patterns of human lives and death, if everything about an individual could be represented in a computer record by a long string of ones and zeros, then what kind of creature would be represented by a long string of lives and deaths? —Thomas Pynchon

strategic thinker, team builder, Writer/Editor

My first TED was in 1996, and I attended nearly every year for 10 years. I have since been at TED Active and TED Live events and enjoy my continued association with the people and ideals of TED.

Singing harmony, finding andromeda, adapting quickly.