Draft:Paul G. Hayes

• Comment: For a Wikipedia article about a person to be published, that person must be notable. A person is notable if there is significant coverage about that person in several independent, reliable sources. A source is independent if it is not a person or organization associated with the article subject. The sources that you have cited are largely not independent. For this article to be published, you need to cite articles where people have written about Paul Hayes, rather than things that Hayes or his colleagues have written.
  Additionally, Wikipedia requires that articles be written in a neutral point of view, that is, without editorial bias. In avoiding such bias, you should review Wikipedia's words to watch. voorts (talk/contributions) 02:35, 19 December 2023 (UTC)

• Comment: Hey @Ndhayes1, based on what I'm seeing here, Paul G. Hayes does not meet Wikipedia's notability guidelines for people (see WP:NBIO). Ideally, we'd need a handful of dedicated articles about him in trustworthy publications (see WP:RSP). This bio might be better suited for a blog or a personal website. Feel free to leave a note on my talk page if you have any questions! Crunchydillpickle🥒 (talk) 17:11, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

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Paul G. (Gordon) Hayes (born August 24, 1934) is an American retired journalist and writer.

Journalism Career

Hayes began his journalism career as a copy editor at the Des Moines Register in 1959 and joined the Milwaukee Journal (now the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel) in 1962 as a transportation reporter.

He was among the first American journalists to be named Environmental Reporter (1969) by a major urban newspaper. He covered public policy, energy, population and science and was a finalist to become the first journalist and second civilian in space.

Hayes retired in 1995 when the Milwaukee Journal and Milwaukee Sentinel merged into one paper.

Pollution, Transportation and Public Policy

Hayes wrote "A Tale of Five Rivers" for the series "Pollution, the Spreading Menace" for which the Journal won its fourth Pulitzer Prize in 1967, and its second for "meritorious" Public Service. The series "found pollution everywhere." Hayes' contribution focused on impaired rivers in Southeastern Wisconsin and the mounting public costs of clean up. U.S. Senator Gaylord Nelson (Wisconsin), the father of Earth Day, called on his colleagues in Congress to read the series as they considered his early draft of clean water legislation, saying it would "shock every citizen and every public official into action". Two months after the series ran the Wisconsin Legislature passed its own clean water legislation.

Hayes covered the Open Housing marches protesting racial discrimination led by Alderwoman Vel Phillips and Father James Groppi from the perspective of public planning. Among other issues, highway construction was displacing underserved populations. In 1969, U.S. Senator William Proxmire (Wisconsin) introduced Hayes' story "Few Lobby for Uprooted Families" into the Congressional Record while asking "What happens to the people whose homes are paved over with concrete?" and calling for support of federal liberalization of funds from 1968 Highways Act for displaced families.

In 1970, U.S. Representative Henry S. Reuss (Wisconsin), chair of the House Subcommittee on Conservation and Natural Resources, introduced Hayes' editorial "Dirty Old World Gets Ready to Scrub" into the Congressional Record, to enlist support to test the (American) Refuse Act of 1899 to successfully fine polluters, an action that ushered passage of the Clean Water Act in 1972."

Environment and Energy

In 1974, Hayes joined the Leonardo Scholars at University of Wisconsin's Seminar of the Institute for Environmental Studies to contribute to the book "Resources and Decisions" (Duxbury, 1974).

In 1976, Hayes travelled to western states to report on shale oil production, a market created by rising oil prices. "Mountains of Oil", published in October 1976, earned Hayes the first of two Westinghouse Science Journalism Awards from the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). According to the book "Interpreting Public Issues", Hayes' reporting and use of data linked personal consumption, demographic changes, energy supply and geo-political conflict in a way that readers would understand and might use.

In March 1979, Hayes was invited by the Johnson Foundation and the American Committee of the International Press Institute to participate in a conference to improve relations between the Jimmy Carter Administration and Mexico's President Jose Lopez Portillo as they negotiated natural gas contracts and immigration policy. On the question of whether Mexico should ramp oil production for U.S. demand, Hayes pointed out that the "U.S. would use all Mexican proved reserves in ten years" and predicted that a search for alternative fuel sources was inevitable.

In 1980, Hayes became media critic when coverage of the uncertain affects of dioxin stirred public outrage in the early 1980s. Hayes called dioxin deadly "for guinea pigs... and as far as is known now, not for humans." The American Medical Association agreed.

Science Writing and the End of Nuclear Energy

Hayes became the Milwaukee Journal's Science Writer in 1979 and was among the first wave of journalists to arrive in Pennsylvania to report on the ongoing meltdown of the Three Mile Island nuclear reactor, filing three stories as day as the situation developed. On the situation, he reflected, "The accident sobered up utility managements regarding the financial risks of even 'safe' accidents".

In December 1979, Hayes reported that the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission had threatened shutdown of three Wisconsin plants over concerns about regulator access to control rooms and lack of transparency. A few weeks later, Hayes wrote "New Leak Forces Closing of Point Beach A-unit" about cracks in pipework at the Point Beach Nuclear Plant that would require costly repairs, erasing savings promised over power generation using conventional fuels.

Hayes' series "Nuclear Waste - The Neglected Threat" (1979) tracked spent uranium stockpiling from Wisconsin to western states and inadequate plans by industry and government to address it. Journal editor Sig Gissler wrote that "Hayes' reporting on deadly waste piling up for 35 years and the lack of industry regulation [should compel] state leaders to slow down nuclear development until geologic assessments could be concluded."

By 1980, Wisconsin Energy had canceled all new projects and in 1982, new nuclear power plant construction was banned in the state for 33 years.

In 1983, Hayes found potential conflict of interest investigations on the Wisconsin Radioactive Waste Board which had been advocating a point of view while also leading scientific review of waste technology. The story led to Seymour Abrahamson’s PhD (University of Wisconsin Geneticist) resignation from the board in protest as it voted not to site a Wisconsin waste dump and instead sent the question to a referendum that was certain to fail. As recently as 2021, waste produced by the Point Beach Nuclear Power Plant (Wisconsin's only operational plant) has been stored on-site, since there is no place for it to go.

Hayes won his second AAAS Westinghouse Science Journalism Award for the 1984 series "The Acid Trail", reporting on the consequences of acid rain on natural and human systems.

In 1986, Hayes was a semifinalist in NASA’s Journalist in Space Project, which was cancelled following the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster. After the Challenger disaster, and before the Journalist in Space program was scrapped, Hayes said he would still go, as space was "the best story of the century."

In 1989, Hayes was in Berlin to report on the fall of the Berlin Wall and was among the first western journalists to visit and interview East Germans in their homes.

Chronicling Wisconsin

In 1987 Hayes joined the Journal's Sunday Magazine staff to write about notable Wisconsin places, events and citizens, including the Poet Lorine Niedecker, the Citizen Scientist Increase Lapham, the Naturalist Frances Hamerstrom, and the Conservationist Martin Hanson.

An essay about a ramshackle building designed by Frank Lloyd Wright caught the attention of Architect John Eifler who assembled a conservancy group to raise funds for a complete rehabilitation. In the book "Frank Lloyd Wright's Seth Peterson Cottage: Rescuing a Lost Masterwork", Eifler wrote that Hayes' "article publicized the decrepit state of the building and the need to preserve it."

Throughout his Milwaukee Journal career, Hayes reported on the work of the Southeastern Wisconsin Regional Planning Commission (SEWRPC).

Other Writing

Hayes contributes to the "Wisconsin Academy Review", the quarterly publication of the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters. In the spring of 1995, the review published Hayes' essay called "Increase A. Lapham: A Useful and Honored Life". This research would lay groundwork for a biography (co-authored with Martha Bergland) of Increase Lapham, who had been Wisconsin's most prolific citizen scientist in the 19th Century.

In 2019, Hayes' essay "Deadline - Requiem for the Milwaukee Journal (1882-1995)", reflecting on "the decline of a print-journalism giant", was published in the Wisconsin Academy's Wisconsin People and Ideas Magazine.

Educator

In the late 1970s, Hayes led workshops for educators on Science and Environment for the Journal's "Newspaper in Education" Program.

Hayes was an Adjunct Professor of Journalism at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee from 1988 to 1995.

Fellowships and Other Honors

In 1968, Hayes was an American Political Science Association Fellow and used sabbatical to serve on the staffs of the late US Representative Morris K. Udall of Arizona and the late US Senator Lee Metcalf of Montana.

Hayes received the Gordon MacQuarrie award for excellence in outdoor writing and journalism from the Wisconsin Natural Resources Foundation in 1972.

Hayes was inducted into the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters in 1987.

Was inducted into the Milwaukee Press Club's Hall of Fame in 1995.

Hayes shared the Wisconsin Historical Society's 2014 Gambrinus Award and the Benjamin Franklin Book Awards "Gold Award" with co-author Martha Bergland for their book "Studying Wisconsin".

Published Works

Select Articles

• Paul G. Hayes (1966). "Tale of Five Rivers". Milwaukee Journal.
• (1976). "Mountains of Oil". Milwaukee Journal.
• (1984). "The acid trail". Milwaukee Journal.
• (1989). "A peek into Wisconsin's treasure chest". Milwaukee Journal.
• (1991). "Pundits, Poets & Wits: An omnibus of American Newspaper Columns by Karl E. Meyer". Wisconsin Academy Review. 37(37) 48.
• (1995). "Building a bright future on the solid foundation of the past: the plan for 2010". SEWRPC Community Assistance Planning Report no. 212. Kenosha Urban Planning District.
• (1995). "Increase Lapham: A Useful and Honored Life". Wisconsin Academy Review. 41(2) 10-11.
• (1997). "Loving a landscape". Wisconsin Academy Review. 43(4) 45 - 48.
• (2000). "Two forests united". Wisconsin Academy Review. 46(4) 45.
• (2001). "The knowledge gap". Wisconsin Academy Review. 47(2) 17 - 18.
• (2002). "Oil Wars". Wisconsin Academy Review. 48(2) 27-28.
• (2003). "The Dams of Cedarburg". Wisconsin Academy Review. 49(2) 16 - 17.
• (2005). "Hallowed ground". Wisconsin Academy Review. 51(5) 29 - 36.
• (2006). "Remembering Zeidler". Wisconsin People and Ideas, Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters. 51(4) 30 - 31.
• (2015) "What Is It They Cannot See?" Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel.
• (2019). "Deadline - Requiem for the Milwaukee Journal (1882-1995)". Wisconsin People and Ideas, Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters.

Books

• Bergland, Martha and Paul G. Hayes (2014). "Studying Wisconsin: The Life of Increase A. Lapham, Early Chronicler of Plants, Rocks, Rivers, Mounds and All Things Wisconsin". Wisconsin Historical Society Press.
• Paul G. Hayes (2011). "Master Planners, Fifty Years of Regional Planning in Southeastern Wisconsin". Marquette University Press.
• Contributed the chapter "Loving a Landscape" to the book "Along Wisconsin's Ice Age Trail" (2008). University of Wisconsin Press.

Miscellany

• Bergland, Martha and Paul G. Hayes (2015). "Increase Lapham & Lorine Niedecker". Friends of Lorine Niedecker Society.

Retirement

In retirement, Hayes volunteers and writes for the Milwaukee Public Museum, the Ice Age Park and Trail Foundation, the Ozaukee County Land Preservation Board, the Cedarburg Cultural Center, the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee School of Continuing Education, the Cedarburg Art Museum and the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters.

Personal Life

Hayes was born in Springfield, Illinois the youngest child of Dale A. Hayes and Pauline E. (Holcomb) Hayes, brother to Jim (deceased) and John G. Hayes. He graduated from Springfield High School and then the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he earned a Bachelor of Journalism degree.

He lives in Cedarburg, Wisconsin with his wife Philia G. Hayes and has two sons, Nicholas Dale Hayes (Angela) and John Edward Hayes (Ermira), and four grandchildren, Katherine, Elizabeth, Paul and Kane.