Now an at-large editor for Honolulu Civil Beat, Richard Wiens has been helping to run newsrooms big and small for more than 40 years.

He served as news editor at Civil Beat for five years, and has continued to help coordinate its election coverage while editing the Candidate Q&As. Now he is one of the editor/opinion writers involved in the news organization’s Let The Sunshine In project tracking efforts to improve government accountability and transparency in Hawaii.

Before coming to Civil Beat, he was editor and publisher of the Del Norte Triplicate, a newspaper in the far-northern California town of Crescent City, also known as the tsunami magnet of the West Coast.

There, he coordinated coverage that won numerous statewide awards from the California Newspaper Publishers Association, including first place for spot news coverage of a tsunami — spawned by the Japanese earthquake of March 2011 — that destroyed Crescent City Harbor.

Prior to that, he helped run the city desks of the Colorado Springs Gazette, the Spokane (Washington) Spokesman-Review and the Los Angeles Daily News. After graduating from the University of Oregon School of Journalism in 1979, he got his start in newspapering at the Hillsboro (Oregon) Argus, where he advanced from reporter to managing editor during his seven-year tenure.

He has won statewide first-place awards for feature writing and military coverage, and helped direct coverage of the standoff between white supremacist Randy Weaver and federal agents at Ruby Ridge in North Idaho that was the Pulitzer runner-up for spot news in 1992.

Throughout his career, he has pushed for coverage that helps citizens better understand — and hopefully improve — the community they live in.

Contact Richard at rwiens@civilbeat.org.