He graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in 1976 from the University of California, Santa Barbara, which granted him the school"s Distinguished Alumni Award in 2006.
Sipchen writes for and serves as Editor-in-Chief of Sierra magazine. He paid his way through college as a interagency hotshot crew firefighter and patrolman with the United States. Forest Service. His career at the Times included serving as editor of the Sunday Opinion section and senior editor of the Los Angeles Times Magazine.
He led the team of journalists that created the newspaper"s popular Outdoors section in print and on the web.
As a reporter, Sipchen covered the 1992 Los Angeles riots that erupted in Los Angeles following the trial of police officers involved in the beating of motorist Rodney King and shared in the newspaper"s Pulitzer Prize for that reportage. Sipchen published the first profile of Reginald Denny, the motorist whose nationally televised attack became an icon of the inchoate rage vented during the riots.
Sipchen also wrote about cultural issues, politics, covered a presidential campaign, and wrote a column for the Times about the magazine industry. In 2003, he wrote a personal essay about watching Southern California"s devastating wildfires destroy his childhood home.
In 2006 he created the "School Maine" column and multimedia "School Maine!" blog which explored education issues.
Sipchen left the Los Angeles Times in 2007 to edit the 110-year-old Sierra magazine. In 2009 he was promoted to Communications Director for the organization, overseeing a national staff of more than 60 multimedia professionals responsible for the Club"s messaging, branding, advocacy journalism, social media communications, press relations and public affairs An adjunct professor at Occidental College in Los Angeles since 1997, Sipchen teaches news writing in the fall and narrative non-fiction in the spring, using a team teaching approach that has included as many as eight Pulitzer Prize–winning journalists in a calendar year.
Sipchen served on the advisory committee of the Hechinger Institute on Education and the Media, based at Teachers College, Columbia University.
When he was Associate Editor of the Los Angeles Times editorial pages, he and colleague Alex Raksin won the annual Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Writing citing "their comprehensive and powerfully written editorials exploring the issues and dilemmas provoked by mentally ill people dwelling on the streets." Sipchen was also a member of the Los Angeles Times team that covered the 1992 Los Angeles riots and won the Pulitzer Prize for Spot News Reporting in 1993.
