Feb 3 Gary Richards, "Mr. Roadshow"

Posted by Andrew Ratermann

Gary Richards from the Mercury News will discuss how Roadshow began and the various topics it covers.

Gary Richards has been the transportation reporter for the San Jose Mercury News since 1991, and before that was an assistant sports editor and assistant city editor.

In 1979 he was named top sports writer/columnist in Iowa, and in 1981 his column on the assassination attempt on President Reagan and the NCAA's decision to play the college basketbal title game -- they should not have played, he said -- was cited as a chief reason his newspaper was named the top sports section in the state.

In 1989, he was an editor on the team that helped the Mercury News win a Pulitzer Prize for its coverage of the Loma Prieta earthquake And in 1994 he was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize for his coverage of the opening of Highway 85 and he was again nominated for a Pulitzer in 2005 for community reporting.

Gary is a native of Iowa, graduating from Iowa State University with a degree in political science. He also attended graduate school in journalism.

He's worked at the Ames, Iowa Tribune; the Des Moines Register and the Quad-City Times. He joined the Mercury News in 1984. Gary and his wife Jan live in San Jose.

He has a daughter who is a recent graduate of UC-Berkeley and an 19-year-old son who is a freshman at UC-Davis.

I've been the transportation reporter at the Mercury News since 1992. The Roadshow column now generates several hundred questions a week and is a six-day a week column.