Over his 40 years in journalism and community media, Scott Wilson has been a champion for independent media, open government, tough journalism, early adaption of digital media, and opening doors to young journalists.

Since 1989, he and his wife Jennifer were co-owners then sole owners of the Port Townsend & Jefferson County Leader. Wilson served in the roles of investigative reporter, editor, publisher, marketing rep, delivery boy and sidewalk sweeper. He won three dozen community media awards for journalism, photography, editorials, marketing and community service, and sustained the Leader as one of Washington’s best independent community media companies. The Leader was Washington’s first newspaper company of any size to launch a news website, in mid-1995.

Wilson was a founding board member and early president of the Washington Coalition for Open Government; was president of the Washington Newspaper Publishers Association; was the longtime chair of the WNPA Foundation and its scholarship program for college journalists; and his peers gave him community journalism’s highest honor, the Miles Turnbull Master Editor/Publisher Award.

He graduated from the UW School of Communications with a B.A. in 1978, where he was editor of the UW Daily. He returned to the UW for the master’s program, advised by Professors Richard Kielbowicz and the legendary Bill Ames, and graduating in 1985. He was Olympia Bureau chief of the Tacoma News Tribune, leaving to return to his roots in community media and joining Frank Garred at the Leader in 1989.