George Ramos: A pioneer, a friend and mentor

George Ramos

Half a lifetime ago, I was a young reporter at the Statesman Journal in Salem and still adjusting to the lack of diversity in my newsroom and my adopted state. I had moved to Oregon after college, confident the change of place from my native California would be good for both my career and personal growth.

At the time, racial minorities (we weren't yet referred to as people of color) accounted for just under 6 percent of all full-time staffers in the newsrooms of daily U.S. newspapers, compared to 12.79 percent today.

Back then, Latinos were largely invisible, both in Oregon and nationally, despite the great immigration surge that began in the '80s. So it was a real milestone when the 1984 Pulitzer Prizes were announced. The Los Angeles Times was honored with the Gold Medal for Public Service -- the most prestigious of the Pulitzers -- for a series of articles examining Southern California's growing Latino community.

It was remarkable enough that national attention -- finally -- was focused on the diversity within the Latino community: Mexican-Americans, Mexicans, Peruvians, Colombians, Guatemalans, Nicaraguans, Hondurans, Salvadorans, etc. What was even more amazing was that it was a team of Latino reporters and editors who conceived the project and then went out and reported, photographed and packaged it.

For me and hundreds of other Latino journalists in U.S. newsrooms (I don't think there even a thousand of us yet) it was an inspiring achievement, a validation that the multifaceted Latino experience in the U.S. was an important story and that the work of our fellow Latino and Latina journalists was worthy of journalism's highest honor.

I thought of that groundbreaking series this week -- and of the pioneering men and women who made it happen -- when I learned of the death of one of the key members of that team.

George Ramos, who referred to himself as "just a kid from East L.A.," died July 24. He was 63, just five years older than me. He was a role model of humility and good humor, a guy who smiled often beneath a big mustache and a guy who made time for everyone, no matter if you were a rookie or a veterano. He joked that he was one of three people in California who didn't have a cell phone. Didn't want one.

I could count on seeing George every year at the National Association of Hispanic Journalists annual convention, whether it was in L.A. or New York or some other venue. The year it was held in El Paso, he invited me to join his posse in crossing the border for dinner in Juarez -- back when you didn't have to worry about drug cartel violence. George loved baseball. He loved journalism. And he loved L.A. After he left the paper in 2003, after a quarter-century there as a reporter, editor and columnist, he became the head of the journalism department at Cal Poly-San Luis Obispo, his alma mater, and mentored students with the same tough love he dispensed at NAHJ conventions and in his own newsroom.

It's hard to overstate how much that 1984 Pulitzer meant to all of us Latino journalists. For years I kept a bound copy of the reprinted stories in my desk and would pull them out from time to time to admire the nuanced reporting and the all-important context that the series provided for explaining the mosaic of the Latino community,

Even now, I can recall many of the folks who worked on the series and who, like George, would become friends. In all, 17 reporters and editors worked on the 27-part series. George was co-editor of the project, along with Frank Sotomayor, who recalled him as a "tough-guy reporter with a big heart." A Facebook page created in his honor, Remembering George Ramos, is filled with tributes from those he worked with and those he influenced.


I mourn George's passing. And I salute the everlasting contributions he made to the newspaper industry, the leadership he provided on newsroom diversity, and the inspiration and mentoring he provided to the next generation of Latino journalists.

"The Pride": Investing in the future

For nine days earlier this summer, 22 high school journalists from around the state and some two dozen professionals came together on the campus of Oregon State University to eat, sleep, breathe and do journalism.

It was the annual High School Journalism Institute run by The Oregonian and OSU, begun in the '80s to give hands-on training to talented young people with a goal of boosting newsroom diversity. That goal is more important than ever in today's America. The U.S. population is becoming ever more diverse, with immigrants from Latin America, Africa, Asia and Eastern Europe streaming into our cities and schools. Yet, newsroom staffs are shrinking and becoming less diverse as a result of the beating we've taken during the recession. Unless we reverse the trend, we risk going back to the days when minority voices and viewpoints were too often overlooked or misunderstood.

Enter "The Pride" -- a 40-page tab-sized newspaper produced by the 22 students with the help of their professional mentors. Nearly all are students of color; many are low-income and the first in their family on track to attend college. During their time in Corvallis, camp director Yuxing Zheng writes, the students got "hands-on training in reporting, writing, shooting photos, producing audio slide shows, blogging and other multimedia elements." Along with the print newspaper, they posted lots of content to http://blog.oregonlive.com/teen

Along with profiles of each student, their work encompasses an impressive variety of topics, including Oregon's only all-Muslim cemetery, gay pride, recycling and alternative energy, art and musical theater camps, farm life and Latina identity, just to name a few. The work really is quite good -- the photography especially striking. And it isn't just the students who come away energized from the week. Read Melissa Navas' testimonial: "Editor savors students' oohs, ahs as they see newspaper for first time"

I've been meaning for some time to write about The Pride and this year's camp participants but I wanted to wait until I'd actually gotten through the newspaper. I've been carrying it around for days, squeezing in a story here and a story there while riding the bus to and from work.

A final note: Yuxing (pronounced you-shing) is the shining example of what the journalism institute can do. She attended the camp as a South Albany High School sophomore and did so well she was invited back to be a student assistant. She went on to earn national High School Journalist of the Year honors and admission to Northwestern University's highly regarded journalism school. A handful of internships later, she joined The Oregonian's reporting staff straight out of college and now, in her mid-20s, is directing the whole show. I'm proud to call her my colleague.

Photograph by Melissa Navas

A feisty editor, gone too soon

Yesterday I sent a friend an email thanking him for an electronic birthday card. He wrote back minutes later, saying he'd just learned of the death of one of his mentors.

I share his sadness because I also knew, worked with and admired Deborah Howell, a trailblazing editor and long-distance colleague who championed the cause of diversity in ways both visible and invisible.

Deborah was a top editor at the Minneapolis Star and the St. Paul Pioneer Press during the '70s and '80s, and later became Washington bureau chief of Newhouse News Service (owned and operated by The Oregonian's parent company) and, finally, ombudswoman of The Washington Post before retiring in December 2008.

She died Saturday while on vacation with her husband in New Zealand. She was crossing a road to take a photograph when she was struck by a car. She was 68.

The Post's news obituary covers all the bases in reviewing her rise to the top -- a rarity for women 30 years or more years ago. An accompanying blog post sheds more light on her personality, which, she would have agreed, was feisty and irreverent, fair and honest.

Deborah was a sharp and talented editor who led the Pioneer Press to two Pulitzer Prizes, including the groundbreaking "AIDS in the Heartland" series in 1987 that help raise awareness of the deadly disease a generation ago. She was widely viewed as a role model by other talented women editors and reporters who came after her. Yet, if the public knew of her at all, it was probably in the context of her last job, as the Post's ombudswoman, charged with holding staff members of one of the country's great newspapers accountable for accuracy, bias and other missteps.

As for myself, I feel privileged to have worked behind the scenes with Deborah for the past two decades on one of the most meaningful things a person can do for others -- that is, to help select college scholarship recipients. Every year the Newhouse Foundation would put up $100,000 in scholarship money to be distributed in partnership with the four national minority journalist associations representing African Americans, Asian Americans, Native Americans and Latinos.

Deborah asked me, as a fellow Newhouse editor, to work with her every year to select the National Association of Hispanic Journalists scholarship recipients and, on an intermittent basis, to help choose winners for the other three associations. Imagine the boost of confidence you'd receive it you won up to $5,000 a year from NAHJ or one of the other associations -- a tangible expression of faith in your potential to become a newspaper journalist as well as a much-appreciated infusion of financial assistance, especially for first-generation college students.

To this day, I can recall the names of so many Newhouse scholarship recipients who later also became interns and/or staff members at The Oregonian: Melissa Navas, Ira Porter, Jodi Rave, Melissa Sanchez. Equally important, we helped hundreds of others who caught on elsewhere, thereby helping to diversify America's newsrooms.

I always looked forward to the selection process, hearing both the passion and impatience in Deborah's voice, as we considered each candidate. She was genuinely happy to assist deserving students, yet unapologetically dismissive of those who submitted sloppy applications. It was then she used that famously salty language to comment on someone's unfocused or error-filled essay. Yet I knew she wasn't being condescending. She, too, wanted young people to stretch themselves and be able to make a difference in journalism, but we both knew that effort had to begin with a rigorous self-examination, attention to detail, and demonstrated ability to get things done well and on time.

A final note: When I ran a half-marathon a few years ago to raise money for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, Deborah was among those who contributed to my fundraising goal with a generous check and a handwritten note of encouragement. Though known for her tough exterior, she had a generous side that I can attest to. I join the industry in mourning her death.

Photo: Julia Ewan, The Washington Post