Investigative Reporter, WWL-TV Channel 4
David Hammer is an award-winning investigative reporter at New Orleans’ CBS affiliate, WWL-TV Channel 4. His work on the joint WWL-TV/New Orleans Advocate series on slow police response times, “NOPD: Call Waiting,” won several awards in 2016, including the national Sigma Delta Chi Award for best non-deadline reporting and a Suncoast regional Emmy Award for best investigative series. His stories also won best investigative and best environmental awards from the New Orleans Press Club in 2016, and his exclusive investigations last year of jazz trumpeter Irvin Mayfield and local parish president Mike Yenni inspired public outrage, official rebukes and several satirical Mardi Gras floats.
Hammer worked for The Times-Picayune in New Orleans for six years, covering disasters like Hurricane Katrina and the BP oil spill until the newspaper cut back to three days a week. Before Katrina brought him back to his hometown, he reported for newspapers in Massachusetts and Connecticut and for The Associated Press in Arkansas and Washington, D.C. He is a graduate of Harvard University and a seventh-generation New Orleanian.