Reporters may be the ones who write the first drafts of history, but they are also the ones who have a unique seat in watching how history unfolds; as they were the ones there during the key moments.

They carry the scars of holding a mother’s hand in reporting about the shooting death of her only son by the cops who swore to protect the community. They took the photograph of the firefighter carrying the baby from the rubble on the day of the Oklahoma City Bombing. And they remember the weight of the US Government coming after them and their reporting because they had uncovered an inconvenient truth.

I recently had the good pleasure and immense good fortune to be at a dinner sitting next to the one and only Bob Rawitch. A 1967 graduate of California State University, Northridge, Bob has had an incredible writing career which has included advocacy for diversifying the newsroom, reporting local impact stories, and giving back to the journalism profession.

After his CSUN graduation, he lead the growth of the hyper-local paper editions in Los Angeles and Ventura Counties in greater Los Angeles.

As we conversed, I had a question I wanted to ask him. He interrupted and said, “I bet you want to know what I think of the media landscape today?”

I smiled. He was wrong.

I wanted to know about the story he was most proud of. The story he was thankful he got to tell during his storied career.

Keep in mind, I knew nothing of Bob when I sat down. But I learned from my high school English teacher’s experiences in protesting the Vietnam War to ask questions and be curious.

He smiled as he thought back on his career. In hindsight, he could have shared the stories of the campus protests in the late 60s, or the Bank of America building burning down in Santa Barbara in 1970.

Instead, he spoke of the First Amendment scuffle he got himself into with the U.S. Government. Keep in mind, this was the time of the Pentagon Papers and Watergate. Rawitch is a member of the generation of journalists who leaned into the truth and held it up as gospel and an oath to keep.

Even back then, Rawitch knew his role in history: Not just writing it, but shaping it. (You can read more about his history in A Reporter’s Journey: One Enjoyable Life, by Bob Rawitch.)

In a recent interview Rawitch said, “As society accepts diversification, we will become a better society because we will be reflective of the broader society.”

He pushed his bosses at the LA Times to become more diverse. They held him to it, sending him on a 12 week hunt for diverse journalists to hire at the Times.

Now almost 80, Rawitch is still going strong, speaking up for journalism, for history, and of course, the love of his grandkids, which is where our conversation ended.

They are writing their chapters now.

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