a journalist in New Jersey for three decades, primarily at The Star-Ledger. He currently is a free-lance writer on housing and finance, politics and the environment, animal welfare and entertainment. He is a long-time activist for transparency and accountability in government and society. Mr. Tyrrell is a graduate of Temple University who has done additional work at Rutgers University and l’Université François-Rabelais.

Guy T. Baehr – Guy Baehr worked as a reporter at the Star-Ledger for more than 25 years before the passage of the Open Public Records Act (OPRA) in 2002. For many years he covered the paper’s transportation beat, including New Jersey Transit, New Jersey Department of Transportation and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. He had previously covered municipal and county government forthe Herald-News in Passaic and Bergen counties.

After leaving the Star-Ledger, Guy taught a hands-on investigative journalism course at Rutgers for several years. Students in the course learned about the state’s new open records law (OPRA) and used it to do investigative stories about campus topics, many of which were published in the campus newspaper, The Targum.

Guy was a long-time member of the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ), serving as president and awards chairman for the New Jersey Chapter and also as a board member and national awards chair for the national organization. He helped establish the annual Tim O’Brien Award, which honors the best reporting in any media using the New Jersey Open Public Records Act (OPRA) to expose issues of public significance. The award is made jointly