Ramirez, Raul

 

1946 - Nov 15, 2013

Raul Ramirez pioneering journalist, dies at 67, whose tough-nosed reporting and inspiring mentorship made him a defining force in Bay Area journalism, died Friday at his Berkeley home. He was 67.

Mr. Ramirez's death was announced by KQED Public Radio, where he had worked for 22 years. As its executive director of news and public affairs, he was credited with shaping its award-winning state and regional news coverage.

Previously, Mr. Ramirez had served as a reporter and an editor at the San Francisco Examiner and the Oakland Tribune, and president of the Center for Investigative Reporting's board of directors. He also taught journalism at San Francisco State University and UC Berkeley.

"Raul's commitment to journalism ethics was a major influence on all of the work we've done at KQED," Jo Anne Wallace, the station's vice president and general manager, said in a statement. "He insisted on fact-based, accurate reporting that avoided the sensational and, instead, told meaningful stories about the impact of news and issues on the lives of ordinary people."

Mr. Ramirez, who was diagnosed with esophageal cancer in July, died days before the ceremony where he was to receive a Distinguished Service to Journalism Award from the Society of Professional Journalists' Northern California chapter.

Born in Havana, Mr. Ramirez and his sister were sent to live with relatives in Florida after the Cuban revolution. After studying journalism at the University of Florida, he launched his career at some of the nation's most prominent newspapers. What distinguished him, colleagues say, was his tendency to immerse himself in unfamiliar worlds.

In San Francisco, he investigated jail conditions by working as a deputy sheriff. In Michigan, for the Wall Street Journal, he toiled alongside farmworkers in the fields. On behalf of the Miami Herald, he followed undercover agents into raids of suspected heroin dealers.

But arguably the biggest risk Mr. Ramirez took was at the Examiner in the 1970s. In a story about a Chinatown gang murder case, he and Lowell Bergman revealed that law enforcement officers had pressured witnesses into lying. In turn, the authorities sued for libel.

The Examiner refused to provide legal counsel for Bergman, a freelancer. So Mr. Ramirez decided to abandon the company's attorney and join his colleague.

"You're not going to find a lot of reporters who do that," said Bergman, now a professor at UC Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism. "He put his job at risk, his professional future at risk, and he never wavered. ... He never asked for anything in return."

The pair raised enough money to hire a lawyer. They initially lost, but prevailed in 1986, when the California Supreme Court overturned the libel ruling.

Mr. Ramirez also championed diversity in the newsroom. In the mid-1990s, he was part of a team that conducted a study into the flaws and biases in coverage of ethnic communities. "He really believed the purpose of a journalist was to get to the stories that don't get told," said Jon Funabiki, a journalism professor at San Francisco State University who also worked on the study.

Mr. Ramirez is survived by his husband, Tony Wu, and his sister, two brothers, three nephews and three nieces. Plans for a memorial service are under way.