The National Media Awards Foundation is delighted to announce that David Beers, the founding editor and editor-in-chief of The Tyee, is the recipient of the 2026 Digital Publishing Leadership Award, which is the highest individual honour the Digital Publishing Awards can bestow.
David’s career and achievements
David Beers is a journalist, editor, and digital publishing pioneer with more than four decades of experience across newspapers, magazines, books, and digital media. Born and raised in Silicon Valley, Beers began his career at Pacific News Service in 1983 before holding senior editorial positions at the San Francisco Examiner, Mother Jones, and the Vancouver Sun. His writing, published in Harper’s Magazine, the Los Angeles Times Magazine, Salon, and Vancouver Magazine, among others, has won National Magazine Awards in the U.S. and Canada. He is the author of Blue Sky Dream: A Memoir of America’s Fall from Grace and co-editor of the 2025 anthology Points of Interest: In Search of the Places, People and Stories of BC.
In 2003, Beers founded The Tyee, an independent, non-profit digital newsroom based in Vancouver that has become one of Canada’s most respected sources of public interest journalism. Under his leadership as editor-in-chief, The Tyee established a reader-supported revenue model now studied by journalism organizations worldwide, twice won the Edward R. Murrow Award for Excellence in Journalism (2009 and 2011), and earned Gold for General Excellence in Digital Publishing from the Digital Publishing Awards in both 2021 and 2022. He also co-founded Tyee Solutions Society, which was early to model the practice of solutions journalism in Canada.
Beyond The Tyee, Beers taught for two decades as adjunct professor at UBC’s School of Journalism, and delivered the prestigious Harvey Stevenson Southam Lecture at the University of Victoria in 2023. In classrooms and at The Tyee, he has mentored hundreds of journalists from diverse backgrounds.
The Tyee today reflects aspirations for digital newsroom culture that Beers held from the beginning. Its journalists are empowered to pursue stories of their own choosing. Staff, fairly paid, collaborate with mutual respect to help the organization evolve. As he steps away from his role as editor-in-chief of The Tyee, Beers leaves behind a publication that has only grown stronger — and a legacy of independent, courageous journalism that has helped shape the digital media landscape in Canada.