Word is going around that reporter Rick Daysog has given notice that he’s leaving his position with Hawaii News Now and, perhaps more significantly, leaving journalism after more than 30 years reporting for print and broadcast media.

Daysog joined HNN in mid-2012 after 20 years in the newspaper business, including stints at the Honolulu Star-Bulletin, Honolulu Advertiser, and the Sacramento Bee.

He continued to win his share of awards in broadcast journalism during his 11 years at HNN.

Daysog is telling friends that he’s looking forward to beginning a new job without the pressures of daily reporting. It is perhaps his gain, but it’s our loss of another seasoned and skilled reporter.

Here’s the brief bio posted on the HNN website, which focuses on his work as a newspaper reporter, and appears to have been written when he was first hired at HNN.

Just do an online search and you’ll quickly find links to a lot of his hard hitting reports.

Rick Daysog has worked at the Honolulu Advertiser, the Honolulu Star-Bulletin and most recently, the Sacramento Bee. He broke stories about the Kamehameha Schools trust controversy, illegal campaign contributions to then-Mayor Jeremy Harris and the shutdown of Aloha Airlines.

He exposed wrongdoing by the state’s leading tourism official, Rex Johnson, for sending racist and sexist e-mails, leading Johnson to resign. He wrote about the controversies surrounding Gov. Lingle’s chief of staff, Bob Awana, who also quit. He was the first reporter to write about U.S. Army Lt. Ehren Watada who refused to deploy for his unit’s assigned rotation to Operation Iraqi Freedom, saying he believed the war to be illegal. The story made national headlines when Watada was brought before a court-martial in 2007 which ended in a mistrial.

“When I had the chance to hire Rick at the Advertiser, I didn’t hesitate to bring him aboard,” said Mark Platte, news director of Hawaii News Now and former Advertiser editor. “He always impressed me with his hard work, his ability to dig deep for the story and to do whatever it would take to get the truth.”

Daysog has a strong business reporting background, particularly in banking, energy, real estate and the airline industry, and is an expert on campaign finance laws.

He is a 1987 graduate of UC-Berkeley with B.A. degrees in rhetoric and religious studies.

He has won nearly 30 journalism awards from the Society of Professional Journalists, the Hawaii Publishers Association and Best of the West Journalism contest.