“I produced a steady stream of stories that appeared on the cover,” he wrote in his 2012 memoir, “Write Hard, Die Free,” whose title he borrowed from the Hells Angels motto “Ride Hard, Die Free.” “Every day was Christmas.”
After winning the 1976 Pulitzer with reporters Bob Porterfield and Jim Babb, Weaver left the Daily News newspaper to launch a statewide investigative weekly, The Alaska Advocate, which targeted oil and gas exploration companies and the conservative Anchorage Times, the state's largest newspaper. .
The Advocate closed within a few years, but The Daily News survived thanks to a financial injection from the McClatchy newspaper chain, which bought the paper in 1979, and the oil boom that boosted the city's economy. Weaver, 29, returned as its editor, embarking on fierce competition with The Times, which had about 46,000 readers to The Daily News' 11,000.
Her editorial strategy was simple: “Reader-centered, philosophically transparent, and intellectually aggressive.” By 1987, The Daily News had surpassed its rival in circulation, although both newspapers were losing money.
After The Times closed in 1992, Weaver took a year off to earn a Master of Philosophy in Polar Studies from the University of Cambridge. He then moved to McClatchy's California headquarters, where he managed the company's transition to digital media, wrote editorials for The Sacramento Bee, and became vice president of news, overseeing editorial operations for the company's 31 newspapers from 2001. to 2008, when he retired. to a ranch near Sacramento.
