Planet Cardinal

David Mitchell, ’65, MA ’67, who won a 1979 Pulitzer Prize for reporting on the Synanon cult and who published and edited the Point Reyes Light for 30 years, was awarded the Norwin S. Yoffie Career Achievement Award by the Society of Professional Journalists’ Northern California chapter. Vanessa Hua, ’97, MA ’97, received an award from the same organization for her San Francisco Chronicle story about the crossover between political fund-raising and government grants to nonprofits. California Secretary of State Kevin Shelley’s resigna­tion in March 2005 was due in part to the trail of documents Hua uncovered.   .  .  . Dennis Bartels, PhD ’94, is the new director of San Francisco’s Exploratorium.   .  .  . Lawrence Lessig, law professor and founder of Stanford’s Center for Internet and Society, has joined the Digital Universe Foundation’s board of advisers. The organization aims to create the framework for the most reliable, compre­hensive and free online information resource on the Internet.   .  .  . The Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center announced that David Altman, PhD ’06, and Takaki Komiyama, PhD ’07, are among 16 students from North America and Asia to receive the 2006 Harold M. Weintraub Graduate Student Award for their work in physics and neuroscience, respectively.   .  .  . Sonya Crawford, ’93, was named an ABC News network correspondent. She will anchor overnight and early morning news in Washington, D.C.