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.