Final Words From Raul Ramirez: ‘Journalism Has Always Been About the Power of Voices’

Tonight, Raul Ramirez, the executive director of news and public affairs at KQED Public Radio, is being posthumously awarded the 2013 Distinguished Service to Journalism Award by the Society of Professional Journalists, Northern California Chapter, in San Francisco. Last week, Ramirez wrote the following remarks in preparation for tonight’s ceremony. His speech will be read tonight by San Francisco State University Professor Jon Funabiki.

Raul Ramirez passed away last Friday at his home in Berkeley, at the age of 67.

Dear Colleagues:

In my four decades as a journalist, the power of people’s voices has shaped my work. To me, journalism has always been about the power of voices.

My earliest adolescent writings were inspired in part by a graphic sticker I plastered on buses and doorways as a young teenager in another country and in another time. Above a drawing of a firing squad executing a man, it proclaimed: “Ideas are to be debated, not assassinated.” Source: Final Words From Raul Ramirez: ‘Journalism Has Always Been About the Power of Voices’ | KQED News Fix