Honolulu Civil Beat hires Yerton as senior business reporter

Stewart Yerton, a longtime business reporter who had left journalism for law school, has been hired by Honolulu Civil Beat as its senior business reporter.

Yerton has written about the U.S. treasury bond market, the business of big law firms, controversies surrounding the world’s largest gold mine on the island of New Guinea and corruption in the Louisiana casino industry.

His reporting on the human cadaver trade, published in The Times-Picayune newspaper, won the Society of American Business Editors & Writers 2005 Best in Business Award for Enterprise Reporting in the large newspaper category.

Yerton talks about that cadaver story in this Civil Beat podcast introducing him to the community.

Stewart most recently worked as an analyst with the Hawaii State Auditor’s office from January 2012 to April 2017.

He worked for the Times-Picayune from 1995 to 2005 on the business desk and then as a business reporter for the Honolulu Star-Bulletin for a year. He also worked for the Birmingham News.

Stewart graduated cum laude from University of Hawaii’s William S. Richardson School of Law, where he earned the environmental law certificate. In law school, Stewart externed for U.S. District Court Judge David Alan Ezra and served as the law school’s first Jarman Environmental Law Fellow.