David Weir is a journalist, author, and co-founder and former Executive Director of the Center for Investigative Reporting.[1]
He has written for publications including 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, and the San Francisco Examiner..[2] 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.[3] Other investigative pieces included FBI surveillance scandals involving the Black Panther Party, the American Indian Movement,[4] and, in 1977, the first article leading to his best-selling book, Circle of Poison.
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). While in college, he was the sports editor of the Michigan Daily at the University of Michigan, and a stringer for UPI.
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 is 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.