Grant brings Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist to UA

Charles C. Labenz Arizona Daily Wildcat George Ramos, Pulitzer Prize-winning Los Angeles Times journalist, has signed on as the University of Arizona's Freedom Forum professional journalist-in-residence. Ramos is teaching two advanced reporting classes this semester.

George Ramos, University of Arizona's Freedom Forum professional journalist-in-residence, is teaching two advanced reporting classes this semester.

"I want to make these students the best reporters that they can be so they could walk into any newsroom in the country and get a job," Ramos said. "I also want to teach them to be good people, to make connections with people, because reporters enter lives at the worst times."

Journalism Department Head Jim Patten said the department was given a $90,000 grant from Freedom Forum, a nonprofit foundation that promotes free press and speech, to hire a full-time professional instructor.

After a national search, Ramos was chosen from a pool of five candidates, Patten said.

"It is because of their (the committee members') hard work that I am here," Ramos said.

Ramos is a founding member of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists and the California Chicano News Media Association, and said he will be active in local minority groups.

"I have a great willingness to do what I feel needs to be done," he said.

Ramos said his reporting experiences, covering everything from the 1992 Los Angeles riots to the lives of movie stars, will help him train future reporters.

He has worked on three Pulitzer Prize-winning stories at the Times, including a collection of stories about the California riots following the Rodney King verdict.

Although four Los Angeles police officers accused of brutality were acquitted in the state trial, two later went to prison for federal civil rights violations.

Ramos also won a Pulitzer Prize for meritorious public service for leading a team of 17 Chicano reporters and photographers in 1983. The team's articles focused on the roots, lives and aspirations of about 3 million Chicanos in Southern California.

This award was the first of its kind won by a Chicano journalist.

"He has a hard core attitude, and takes the journalism profession very seriously," said Dave Paiz, a journalism and anthropology junior who is taking one of Ramos' advanced reporting classes this semester.

Winning the Pulitzer Prize, Ramos said, has not changed his classroom attitude.

"I tell my class, 'If I can win a Pulitzer, I know you can because you are brighter than me and you had better instruction than me,'" Ramos said.