Missouri School of Journalism alum John Schreiber honored for LA wildfire coverage
John Schreiber covers the fast-moving, wind-driven “Mountain Fire” in Camarillo, California in November 2024, which burned nearly 20,000 acres and destroyed 243 structures.
COLUMBIA, Mo. (May 19, 2025) — At the age of 39, John Schreiber, MA ’11, doesn’t consider his career in photojournalism to contain a lifetime’s worth of accomplishments — and yet he found himself honored this spring as part of the Society of Camera Operators’ (SOC) Lifetime Achievement Awards.
Despite the name, his was not actually a lifetime achievement award, but it did honor his coverage of what he hopes will be a once-in-a-lifetime event: this year’s devastating Los Angeles wildfires, which killed at least 30 people, leveled parts of the city and contaminated soil with toxic metals in some areas.
Honoring Schreiber with its President’s Award was part of the SOC’s effort — in light of the disaster — to reach beyond its usual orbit of people in the television entertainment and film industries and recognize those who have made an impact on film and television’s cultural epicenter through visual journalism.
“This year’s awards not only celebrate excellence in our field, but also recognize the courage of our first responders and the dedication of visual storytellers who document history as it unfolds,” said SOC President Matthew Moriarty in a press release.
Grounded
Schreiber, currently a photojournalist with CBS Los Angeles, is no stranger to wildfires. Having worked as a photojournalist and reporter at Los Angeles news organizations for 14 years, he is intimately familiar with California’s annual fire season. But this year was different.
“It was definitely unlike anything I’ve ever seen in my career,” Schreiber said. “Usually, you go to a fire and there are a couple neighborhoods that are affected. But when I pulled up in Altadena with my reporter, it was like the whole city was on fire. The main street’s on fire, businesses are on fire, the park’s on fire, the school’s on fire. It was like, where the hell do you start?”
In a more typical scenario, Schreiber would have been in the air, filming from a helicopter. But the same powerful winds that allowed the fires to leap over highways and other obstacles made flying impossible initially, not only making the fires harder to fight but forcing Schreiber to cover the situation from the ground.
During and in the immediate aftermath of the fire, staying on the ground created opportunities for a range of unforgettable moments. Live on television, Schreiber and his reporter helped a woman save her chickens — a dozen by Schreiber’s count, along with three or four ducks, all tossed into a trash can and wheeled to safety — as the fire crept closer, consuming the house next door.
“Everybody calls me Colonel Sanders at work now,” he quipped.
Then there were the intensely human moments. Once again on live TV, he captured a man sifting through the remains of his home.
“I can count on one hand how many times I’ve broken down and cried at a story that I’ve covered, and this was one of them,” he said. “This father was combing through the ashes of his daughter’s bedroom, trying to find her shiny little jewelry box. I have kids myself, so that was really hard to watch. I was basically bawling behind the camera.”
Six degrees of Mizzou
Schreiber has stayed in Los Angeles for the majority of his professional career at a time when it isn’t unusual for journalists to hop from market to market. He credits his staying power to his ability to adapt on the job to a wide variety of situations, a skill that was on display during the fires and one that he credits in part to his time at the Missouri School of Journalism.
“Even though I wanted to be a still photographer, they were teaching us multimedia and video,” he said. “They were teaching us how to write and how to build a website. My teachers recognized that going forward, you’re going to need more than one skill. You can’t just be a writer or photographer — you need to have multiple skills in your pocket. So I always think I’m really lucky to have learned video, because otherwise I don’t think I would have had the skill set necessary to get the job that I have now.”
Nor have his skills been the only lasting connection to his time at the School of Journalism. He met his wife, also a photojournalism student, at Mizzou, closely mirroring his parents — his father, a Mizzou alum, and his mother, a Stephens College alum, also met in Columbia. The news director who hired Schreiber at CBS was a fellow alum. And don’t forget his car mechanic, whose daughter is currently studying photojournalism at the School.
If that isn’t enough, there is also the fact that Schreiber’s grandfather, 102-year-old World War II veteran Robert M. Sweeney, is one of Mizzou’s oldest living alums.
Schreiber has some years to go before he breaks that century mark and gains, perhaps, a stronger case for a lifetime achievement award. But until then, a President’s Award from the SOC won’t hurt his chances.
Updated: May 19, 2025