Former Cat editor recalls paperâs move toward independence

Former Arizona Daily Wildcat editor Frank O. Sotomayor's journalism philosophy can best be seen through the way he edited a story that was part of a Pulitzer Prize-winning series on Latinos living in Los Angeles.

Reporter George Ramos, Sotomayor's colleague at the Los Angeles Times, was writing a story about the neighborhood in East Los Angeles where he had grown up. The story compared life then with life 25 years later.

"Talking to my grandmother was an integral part of the piece, but I had to tiptoe around sensitive issues," Ramos says.

He thought he had provided enough information about his grandmother, but Sotomayor disagreed.

"Frank read the 65-inch story in 10 minutes and then screamed at me, 'More grandma! We need more grandma in this story!'"

"I tried not to publicly criticize grandma or get into trouble with my cousins or aunt. I got 15 more inches out of grandma and they said my piece sang," says Ramos, who taught journalism classes at the University of Arizona in 1998.

"Frank got me to tell a story I didn't think I had the guts to tell," he says.

Sotomayor has spent his career helping journalists tell stories that have not been heard.

Sotomayor, 56, a Tucson native, got his start in journalism by working for The Arizona Daily Star during his final two years in high school.

"I just liked being involved in the news, partly because of its power to affect people's lives," he says.

As a UA senior in 1966, Sotomayor was the Wildcat editor when the newspaper made the transition from being affiliated with the Journalism Department to becoming an independent publication.

The staff also began publishing the paper every weekday instead of three times a week.

At the time, the Wildcat had comprised eight seniors.

"But we were really talented," Sotomayor says, "and we covered campus well."

Sotomayor experienced some of the consequences of telling stories people didn't want to hear when the Wildcat ran an editorial calling for the firing of UA football coach Jim LaRue in December 1965.

"The team had scored just three touchdowns in eight games" and our staff believed LaRue should be fired, Sotomayor says.

The editorial triggered phone calls from students and faculty, who said the newspaper staff shouldn't be making decisions for the university, Sotomayor recalls.

Despite the controversy, Sotomayor, a journalism major, was deemed the outstanding male graduate of 1966.

Sotomayor earned his master's degree from Stanford in 1967. The following year he married Meri, a student he met at the UA. They have two children, Teresa, who attends a fashion design school in Los Angeles, and Stephen, a history major at the UA.

Sotomayor was hired at the Los Angeles Times in 1968, and in 1983, he was chosen to head a team of reporters and photographers who explored Latino life. The series won the Pulitzer Prize in 1984.

Ramos remembers Sotomayor's determination to bring the untold stories of these Los Angeles residents to readers.

"The guy is so conscientious, demanding and determined. You could say he is a workaholic," Ramos says, recalling that Sotomayor "would work seven days a week, non-stop," on the series.

Sotomayor later helped hundreds of minority journalists obtain a greater voice in their profession when he became a co-founder of the Robert C. Maynard Institute for Journalism Education.

The institute sponsored reporting and editing training programs, Sotomayor says.

"He helped give a boot camp to people of color to guarantee them jobs at mainstream newspapers across the country," says former UA Journalism Department head Don Carson.

"Frank did a great job as the program director before he quit to spend more time with his family. When he was involved, there was no one else who did more."

Sotomayor also made a major contribution to the campaign to save the UA Journalism Department when administrators threatened to eliminate it in 1994.

Frank and Meri lobbied UA officials, alumni and other journalists around the country, Carson says.

When UA president Manuel Pacheco received 1,200 letters and faxes in support of the Journalism Department, he told Sotomayor he had never seen anything like it, Sotomayor says.

Pacheco announced in 1996 that the journalism program would not be closed.

"It was a program too good to die," Sotomayor says.