Lance Williams

Lance Williams is a reporter on the investigative team at the San Francisco Chronicle, where he helped break many of the newspaper’s exclusive stories on the BALCO steroid scandal. He is co-author, with Mark Fainaru-Wada, of Game of Shadows: Barry Bonds, BALCO and the Steroids Scandal that Rocked Professional Sports.

In 2006, Williams and Fainaru-Wada were held in contempt of court and threatened with 18 months in federal prison for refusing to testify about their confidential sources on BALCO. After litigation and Congressional intervention, the subpoenas were withdrawn.

Williams has reported on subjects including the California cocaine trade, Oakland’s Black Panther Party and the career of San Francisco mayor and political power-broker Willie Brown. He is the recipient of the George Polk Award; the Edgar A. Poe Award of the White House Correspondents’ Association; the PEN-USA First Amendment Award; the Gerald Loeb Award for financial writing; the California Associated Press’ Fairbanks Award for public service; and, on three occasions, the Center for California Studies' California Journalism Award for political reporting. He was the Society of Professional Journalists’ Northern California Journalist of the Year in 1999 and in 2006.