BELLEVUE, WA – The Second Amendment Foundation today announced the recipient of the Global Leadership Award for 2020 is Jim Shepherd, founder and owner of The Outdoor Wire digital network, which includes the popular Shooting Wire, based in Birmingham, Alabama.
Shepherd, the original executive producer for business news at the then-fledgling CNN and later a business reporter at PBS, has been at the helm of The Outdoor Wire for 21 years. A veteran broadcast journalist and producer, he also spent two years as an instructor at the University of Miami prior to moving to New York City, where he was news director for a financial news network. He began his career working at small newspapers and at one time he was the youngest daily newspaper editor in the country, at the Daily Statesman in Columbia, Kentucky.
“Jim Shepherd is someone who has spent a lifetime in communications in support of hunting, shooting and Second Amendment rights, emerging as a leader in the field where facts matter and getting it right the first time is the gold standard,” said SAF founder and Executive Vice President Alan M. Gottlieb.
SAF awards are traditionally presented during the annual Gun Rights Policy Conference, but because this year’s event was done entirely online due to the COVID-19 viral outbreak, there was no live event for making the presentations.
Shepherd said he is “gratified and tickled to death” to receive this honor. He called The Outdoor Wire “a service people need; unbiased, unfiltered news is pretty scarce anymore.”
“I communicate with hundreds of thousands of people,” he said. “What I do is cover things that I really care about with people I really like.”
“Jim’s commentaries over the years have been insightful, inspiring and often educational with an approach that often leaves readers admitting they hadn’t thought about something from a different perspective,” Gottlieb said. “I look forward to his column every day, as I know others do likewise.”