David Shaw

David Shaw (January 4, 1943 – August 1, 2005) was an American journalist. He was best known for his reporting for the Los Angeles Times, where he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism in 1991. He wrote criticism of food, wine, and film, but is perhaps best known for taking a critical eye on the media itself.

Life His first job in the journalism field arose after taking a job when he was 16 years old as a janitor for a company that published a motorcycle newspaper, and earning a job as a reporter after covering a race when one of the staff didn't show up. Within five months he was the publication's editor.

He attended the University of California, Los Angeles, earning a degree in English when he graduated in 1965. Shaw's investigations started after the verdicts were first released, and led him to conclude that the media did not perform investigative coverage of the prosecution's case, a failure that might have led to the earlier realization that the evidence offered in the case was "incredibly weak", as described by Ira Reiner, who had served as Los Angeles County District Attorney during the time of the trial.

Books written by Shaw included his 1973 celebrity biography of Wilt Chamberlain, titled Wilt: Just Like Any Other 7-Foot Black Millionaire Who Lives Next Door. He also wrote the 1974 book The Levy Caper, Journalism Today: A Changing Press for a Changing America was published by Harper & Row in 1977, Press Watch came out in 1986, and he wrote his final published book in 1996, The Pleasure Police: How Bluenose Busybodies and Lily-Livered Alarmists Are Taking All the Fun Out of Life, published by Doubleday.

Cultural references Cellist Melora Creager wrote a song titled "Border Village" on her solo CD Perplexions in which David Shaw is mentioned in the last line as having died alone at 62.

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