Zac Farber is an award-winning journalist with 15 years experience in local news who serves as editor-in-chief of Berkeleyside, a groundbreaking nonprofit news site in the Bay Area.
He specializes in shepherding move-the-needle accountability reporting and thoughtful, well-crafted features. At Berkeleyside, he is most proud of coaching early-stage reporters in pursuing hard-hitting stories exposing long-ignored abuse by a high school teacher and mismanagement of toxic gas below a city park.
He previously served as editor of the Southwest Journal, a 30,000-circulation neighborhood newspaper in Minneapolis, where he led coverage of the killing of George Floyd and launched a special reporting project tracking the pandemic’s toll on the community.
He has won seven awards from the MNSPJ and the Minnesota Newspaper Association for his enterprise reporting, hard news writing, social issues coverage and arts journalism.
He has also worked as the web editor of Finance & Commerce and Minnesota Lawyer, where he wrote a political and legal history column; as a web producer at WCCO-TV; and as an editor at Patch.com in the Twin Cities. At Macalester College in St. Paul, he served as editor of his student newspaper, The Mac Weekly.
Zac Farber 