Leroy F. Aarons
Encyclopedia
Leroy "Roy" F. Aarons was an American
journalist
, editor
, author, playwright
, founder of the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association
(NLGJA), and founding member of the Robert C. Maynard Institute for Journalism Education
. In 2005 he was inducted into the NLGJA Hall of Fame.
and earned an MS from the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism. He served in the Navy and Naval Reserve, attaining the rank of lieutenant, then took a copyediting job with the New Haven Journal-Courier. The Washington Post hired him away.
, urban riots, and government scandals.
Aarons had a front row seat when the Pentagon Papers
story surfaced. As Los Angeles bureau chief, he covered California-related events in the case, including what work Daniel Ellsberg had been doing for the Rand Corporation and how he managed to remove the Pentagon Papers from Rand headquarters.
The scandal that forced a president to resign was Watergate, and the Post was the paper that broke the story. Because of his role at the paper during the Watergate reporting, Aarons was hired as an accuracy consultant for the Post-centered film about the scandal, All the President's Men (film)
. He also had a bit part in the movie.
in 1982, where he covered the Israel-Lebanon war, Aarons joined the Oakland Tribune at the behest of his former Post colleague Robert C. Maynard
. Maynard had purchased the declining Tribune—thus becoming the first black owner of a major metro paper—and recruited Roy to be its features editor.
In the 1970s Aarons had joined Maynard in founding what would become the Robert C. Maynard Institute for Journalism Education
(MIJE). Maynard had been working with a summer program for minority journalists at Columbia University
, and he urged Aarons to join its faculty. In 1976, the program moved to the University of California, Berkeley
as the Summer Program for Minority Journalists. It later became MIJE, a model program in training and supporting minority journalists.
At the Tribune, Aarons quickly rose to executive editor and then to senior vice president for news, where he worked for greater staff diversity. He led his team to a 1990 Pulitzer Prize
for spot news photography of the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake. The following year he retired from journalism.
(ASNE) asked Aarons to coordinate a first-ever survey of gay and lesbian journalists. Responses from 250 print journalists revealed that most gays and lesbians were closeted in their newsrooms. An overwhelming majority said coverage of gay issues was "at best mediocre." Fewer than 60 percent had told colleagues about their sexual orientation; fewer than 7 percent said their work environments were good for gays.
At ASNE’s national convention in 1990, Aarons presented the results. Aarons closed his speech by coming out to his peers.
Four months after his speech Aarons convened six journalists in his California dining room to launch the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association
(NLGJA). Modeling its mission after the Maynard Institute’s, he was elected its first president, a post he held until 1997. Aarons remained on NLGJA’s board until his death in 2004. By then the organization counted 1,200 members in 24 chapters nationwide.
On its 15th anniversary in 2006, NLGJA established the annual Leroy F. Aarons Scholarship Award for a lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender student pursuing a journalism career. CNN
provided $100,000 to fund the scholarship.
issues in journalism.
Aarons believed that coverage of the gay community, as with other minorities, required sophisticated training of journalists. He began to lobby journalism schools to include gay issues in their diversity training
and achieved some success. In 1999, as a visiting professor of journalism at the USC Annenberg School for Communication
, he founded and directed its Sexual Orientation Issues in the News program. Adapted by universities around the country, the program analyzes how the media have shaped public perception of people and issues since the early 20th century.
Until his death, Aarons also served as NLGJA’s representative to the Accrediting Council on Education in Journalism and Mass Communication.
's "Famous Blue Raincoat".
In the last decade of his career, Aarons turned to opera, writing the libretto for Monticello. Composed by Glenn Paxton, Monticello portrays the love affair between Thomas Jefferson
and Sally Hemings
. L. A. Theatre Works produced the original work in 2000.
After the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Aarons wrote the libretto for Sara's Diary, 9/11, an opera composed by his collaborator on Monticello, Glenn Paxton. Actually a song cycle, this work is a fictional account of a pregnant woman, who, after her husband dies in the tragedy, experiences deeply mixed emotions. The opera premiered at the Spreckels Performing Arts Center on Sept. 8, 2003 in commemoration of the unprecedented attacks.
of a young gay man, Bobby Griffith, and its effects on his mother. Mary Griffith had tried throughout her son’s adolescence to pray away his gayness. Bobby suffered enormously from his family’s lack of support and acceptance and his church's condemnation of homosexuality; at age 20, he jumped to his death from a freeway bridge. Her son's death eventually led Mary to moderate her religious beliefs and become one of the most visible activists for PFLAG, the nationwide association of Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays. She used this platform to urge parents to understand and accept their children’s homosexuality.
After he left daily journalism in 1991, Aarons researched the story in depth. The result was his first book, published by HarperCollins
in 1995, Prayers for Bobby: A Mother’s Coming to Terms with the Suicide of Her Gay Son. He worked to present the story to a large viewership but did not see this happen before he died. Prayers for Bobby
premiered on January 24, 2009, as a Lifetime
TV movie starring Sigourney Weaver
in her first made-for-television film.
, Top Secret: The Battle for the Pentagon Papers. That year it aired on National Public Radio, performed by Ed Asner
and Marsha Mason
. The play won the coveted Corporation for Public Broadcasting
's Gold Award for best live entertainment program on public radio. Top Secret still tours colleges nationwide as a production of LA Theatre Works.
Another of his plays, Zeke the Profane, deals with the ambivalent attitudes many Reform Jews
have towards circumcision
. Friends of Aarons have performed it.
Aarons wrote a full-length drama, Home Movies, a memory play in multimedia that focuses on his teenage years and his service in the U.S. Navy. Although he was able to finish the play on the day before he died, it has not yet been produced.
. He was 70 years old.
At the time of his death, Aarons was working on another play, Night Nurse, about South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission
, for which he and his life partner of 24 years, Joshua Boneh, had spent a month in South Africa doing research earlier that year. An actor and producer in Berkeley, California
performed it as a work-in-progress in Mill Valley
. The play has not yet been completed.
Joshua Boneh carries on Aarons’s work.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
journalist
Journalist
A journalist collects and distributes news and other information. A journalist's work is referred to as journalism.A reporter is a type of journalist who researchs, writes, and reports on information to be presented in mass media, including print media , electronic media , and digital media A...
, editor
Editing
Editing is the process of selecting and preparing written, visual, audible, and film media used to convey information through the processes of correction, condensation, organization, and other modifications performed with an intention of producing a correct, consistent, accurate, and complete...
, author, playwright
Playwright
A playwright, also called a dramatist, is a person who writes plays.The term is not a variant spelling of "playwrite", but something quite distinct: the word wright is an archaic English term for a craftsman or builder...
, founder of the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association
National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association
The National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association is an American professional association dedicated to unbiased coverage of gay/lesbian issues in the media...
(NLGJA), and founding member of the Robert C. Maynard Institute for Journalism Education
Robert C. Maynard Institute for Journalism Education
The Robert C. Maynard Institute for Journalism Education , is a nonprofit organization based in Oakland, California emphasizing diversity in journalism...
. In 2005 he was inducted into the NLGJA Hall of Fame.
Early life
Born in Bronx, NY on Dec. 8, 1933, Roy Aarons graduated cum laude from Brown UniversityBrown University
Brown University is a private, Ivy League university located in Providence, Rhode Island, United States. Founded in 1764 prior to American independence from the British Empire as the College in the English Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations early in the reign of King George III ,...
and earned an MS from the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism. He served in the Navy and Naval Reserve, attaining the rank of lieutenant, then took a copyediting job with the New Haven Journal-Courier. The Washington Post hired him away.
Washington Post
Aarons remained at the Post for many years. As an editor and a national correspondent, he served as New York bureau chief and later established the paper’s first Los Angeles bureau. He covered major events of the 1960s and 1970s such as the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. KennedyRobert F. Kennedy
Robert Francis "Bobby" Kennedy , also referred to by his initials RFK, was an American politician, a Democratic senator from New York, and a noted civil rights activist. An icon of modern American liberalism and member of the Kennedy family, he was a younger brother of President John F...
, urban riots, and government scandals.
Aarons had a front row seat when the Pentagon Papers
Pentagon Papers
The Pentagon Papers, officially titled United States – Vietnam Relations, 1945–1967: A Study Prepared by the Department of Defense, is a United States Department of Defense history of the United States' political-military involvement in Vietnam from 1945 to 1967...
story surfaced. As Los Angeles bureau chief, he covered California-related events in the case, including what work Daniel Ellsberg had been doing for the Rand Corporation and how he managed to remove the Pentagon Papers from Rand headquarters.
The scandal that forced a president to resign was Watergate, and the Post was the paper that broke the story. Because of his role at the paper during the Watergate reporting, Aarons was hired as an accuracy consultant for the Post-centered film about the scandal, All the President's Men (film)
All the President's Men (film)
All the President's Men is a 1976 Academy Award-winning political thriller film based on the 1974 non-fiction book of the same name by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, the two journalists investigating the Watergate scandal for The Washington Post...
. He also had a bit part in the movie.
Work with Robert C. Maynard
After a year spent freelancing in Israel for publications such as TimeTime (magazine)
Time is an American news magazine. A European edition is published from London. Time Europe covers the Middle East, Africa and, since 2003, Latin America. An Asian edition is based in Hong Kong...
in 1982, where he covered the Israel-Lebanon war, Aarons joined the Oakland Tribune at the behest of his former Post colleague Robert C. Maynard
Robert C. Maynard
Robert Clyve Maynard was an American journalist, and newspaper publisher and editor, former owner of The Oakland Tribune and co-founder of the Robert C. Maynard Institute for Journalism Education in Oakland, California....
. Maynard had purchased the declining Tribune—thus becoming the first black owner of a major metro paper—and recruited Roy to be its features editor.
In the 1970s Aarons had joined Maynard in founding what would become the Robert C. Maynard Institute for Journalism Education
Robert C. Maynard Institute for Journalism Education
The Robert C. Maynard Institute for Journalism Education , is a nonprofit organization based in Oakland, California emphasizing diversity in journalism...
(MIJE). Maynard had been working with a summer program for minority journalists at Columbia University
Columbia University
Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...
, and he urged Aarons to join its faculty. In 1976, the program moved to the University of California, Berkeley
University of California, Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley , is a teaching and research university established in 1868 and located in Berkeley, California, USA...
as the Summer Program for Minority Journalists. It later became MIJE, a model program in training and supporting minority journalists.
At the Tribune, Aarons quickly rose to executive editor and then to senior vice president for news, where he worked for greater staff diversity. He led his team to a 1990 Pulitzer Prize
Pulitzer Prize
The Pulitzer Prize is a U.S. award for achievements in newspaper and online journalism, literature and musical composition. It was established by American publisher Joseph Pulitzer and is administered by Columbia University in New York City...
for spot news photography of the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake. The following year he retired from journalism.
Gay activism
In 1989 the American Society of Newspaper EditorsAmerican Society of Newspaper Editors
The American Society of News Editors is a membership organization for editors, producers or directors in charge of journalistic organizations or departments, deans or faculty at university journalism schools, and leaders and faculty of media-related foundations and training organizations...
(ASNE) asked Aarons to coordinate a first-ever survey of gay and lesbian journalists. Responses from 250 print journalists revealed that most gays and lesbians were closeted in their newsrooms. An overwhelming majority said coverage of gay issues was "at best mediocre." Fewer than 60 percent had told colleagues about their sexual orientation; fewer than 7 percent said their work environments were good for gays.
At ASNE’s national convention in 1990, Aarons presented the results. Aarons closed his speech by coming out to his peers.
Four months after his speech Aarons convened six journalists in his California dining room to launch the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association
National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association
The National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association is an American professional association dedicated to unbiased coverage of gay/lesbian issues in the media...
(NLGJA). Modeling its mission after the Maynard Institute’s, he was elected its first president, a post he held until 1997. Aarons remained on NLGJA’s board until his death in 2004. By then the organization counted 1,200 members in 24 chapters nationwide.
On its 15th anniversary in 2006, NLGJA established the annual Leroy F. Aarons Scholarship Award for a lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender student pursuing a journalism career. CNN
CNN
Cable News Network is a U.S. cable news channel founded in 1980 by Ted Turner. Upon its launch, CNN was the first channel to provide 24-hour television news coverage, and the first all-news television channel in the United States...
provided $100,000 to fund the scholarship.
Role in journalism education
Aarons had, in the 1970s, collaborated with Robert Maynard in establishing programs to educate people of color for journalism careers. Now Aarons turned to LGBTLGBT
LGBT is an initialism that collectively refers to "lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender" people. In use since the 1990s, the term "LGBT" is an adaptation of the initialism "LGB", which itself started replacing the phrase "gay community" beginning in the mid-to-late 1980s, which many within the...
issues in journalism.
Aarons believed that coverage of the gay community, as with other minorities, required sophisticated training of journalists. He began to lobby journalism schools to include gay issues in their diversity training
Diversity training
Diversity training is training for the purpose of increasing participants' cultural awareness, knowledge, and skills, which is based on the assumption that the training will benefit an organization by protecting against civil rights violations, increasing the inclusion of different identity groups,...
and achieved some success. In 1999, as a visiting professor of journalism at the USC Annenberg School for Communication
USC Annenberg School for Communication
The USC Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism comprises a School ofCommunication and a School of Journalism at the University of Southern California . It is led by Dean Ernest J. Wilson III, Ph.D....
, he founded and directed its Sexual Orientation Issues in the News program. Adapted by universities around the country, the program analyzes how the media have shaped public perception of people and issues since the early 20th century.
Until his death, Aarons also served as NLGJA’s representative to the Accrediting Council on Education in Journalism and Mass Communication.
Music and opera
Aarons had a lifelong love of music, and often invited colleagues and friends to his home in California for sing-along parties. Everyone joined in on Broadway show tunes, but Aarons would solo occasionally with a ballad like Leonard CohenLeonard Cohen
Leonard Norman Cohen, is a Canadian singer-songwriter, musician, poet and novelist. Cohen published his first book of poetry in Montreal in 1956 and his first novel in 1963. His work often explores religion, isolation, sexuality and interpersonal relationships...
's "Famous Blue Raincoat".
In the last decade of his career, Aarons turned to opera, writing the libretto for Monticello. Composed by Glenn Paxton, Monticello portrays the love affair between Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson was the principal author of the United States Declaration of Independence and the Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom , the third President of the United States and founder of the University of Virginia...
and Sally Hemings
Sally Hemings
Sarah "Sally" Hemings was a mixed-race slave owned by President Thomas Jefferson through inheritance from his wife. She was the half-sister of Jefferson's wife, Martha Wayles Skelton Jefferson by their father John Wayles...
. L. A. Theatre Works produced the original work in 2000.
After the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Aarons wrote the libretto for Sara's Diary, 9/11, an opera composed by his collaborator on Monticello, Glenn Paxton. Actually a song cycle, this work is a fictional account of a pregnant woman, who, after her husband dies in the tragedy, experiences deeply mixed emotions. The opera premiered at the Spreckels Performing Arts Center on Sept. 8, 2003 in commemoration of the unprecedented attacks.
Prayers for Bobby
In 1989 Aarons read a newspaper article about the suicideSuicide
Suicide is the act of intentionally causing one's own death. Suicide is often committed out of despair or attributed to some underlying mental disorder, such as depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, alcoholism, or drug abuse...
of a young gay man, Bobby Griffith, and its effects on his mother. Mary Griffith had tried throughout her son’s adolescence to pray away his gayness. Bobby suffered enormously from his family’s lack of support and acceptance and his church's condemnation of homosexuality; at age 20, he jumped to his death from a freeway bridge. Her son's death eventually led Mary to moderate her religious beliefs and become one of the most visible activists for PFLAG, the nationwide association of Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays. She used this platform to urge parents to understand and accept their children’s homosexuality.
After he left daily journalism in 1991, Aarons researched the story in depth. The result was his first book, published by HarperCollins
HarperCollins
HarperCollins is a publishing company owned by News Corporation. It is the combination of the publishers William Collins, Sons and Co Ltd, a British company, and Harper & Row, an American company, itself the result of an earlier merger of Harper & Brothers and Row, Peterson & Company. The worldwide...
in 1995, Prayers for Bobby: A Mother’s Coming to Terms with the Suicide of Her Gay Son. He worked to present the story to a large viewership but did not see this happen before he died. Prayers for Bobby
Prayers for Bobby
Prayers for Bobby is a 2009 television film that premiered on the Lifetime network on January 24, 2009. It is based on the book, Prayers for Bobby: A Mother's Coming to Terms with the Suicide of Her Gay Son, by Leroy F...
premiered on January 24, 2009, as a Lifetime
Lifetime Television
Lifetime Television, often referred to as Lifetime TV, or most commonly, Lifetime, is an American cable television specialty channel devoted to movies, sitcoms and dramas, all of which are either geared toward women or feature women in lead roles. The cable network is owned by A&E Television Networks...
TV movie starring Sigourney Weaver
Sigourney Weaver
Sigourney Weaver is an American actress. She is best known for her critically acclaimed role of Ellen Ripley in the four Alien films: Alien, Aliens, Alien 3 and Alien Resurrection, for which she has received worldwide recognition .Other notable roles include Dana...
in her first made-for-television film.
Other works
In 1991 Aarons revisited the Pentagon Papers case, co-authoring a docudrama with Geoffrey CowanGeoffrey Cowan
Geoffrey Cowan is an American lawyer, professor, author, and playwright. He is currently the president of and a University Professor at the University of Southern California where he holds the Annenberg Family Chair in Communication Leadership and directs the Annenberg School's Center on...
, Top Secret: The Battle for the Pentagon Papers. That year it aired on National Public Radio, performed by Ed Asner
Ed Asner
Edward Asner , commonly known as Ed Asner, is an American film, television, stage, and voice actor and former president of the Screen Actors Guild, primarily known for his Emmy Award-winning role as Lou Grant on both The Mary Tyler Moore Show and its spin-off series, Lou Grant...
and Marsha Mason
Marsha Mason
Marsha Mason is an American actress and television director.She received four Academy Award nominations as Best Actress for her performances in Cinderella Liberty, The Goodbye Girl, Chapter Two, and Only When I Laugh. She is also known for starring in the 1986 film Heartbreak Ridge.-Life:Mason was...
. The play won the coveted Corporation for Public Broadcasting
Corporation for Public Broadcasting
The Corporation for Public Broadcasting is a non-profit corporation created by an act of the United States Congress, funded by the United States’ federal government to promote public broadcasting...
's Gold Award for best live entertainment program on public radio. Top Secret still tours colleges nationwide as a production of LA Theatre Works.
Another of his plays, Zeke the Profane, deals with the ambivalent attitudes many Reform Jews
Reform Judaism
Reform Judaism refers to various beliefs, practices and organizations associated with the Reform Jewish movement in North America, the United Kingdom and elsewhere. In general, it maintains that Judaism and Jewish traditions should be modernized and should be compatible with participation in the...
have towards circumcision
Circumcision
Male circumcision is the surgical removal of some or all of the foreskin from the penis. The word "circumcision" comes from Latin and ....
. Friends of Aarons have performed it.
Aarons wrote a full-length drama, Home Movies, a memory play in multimedia that focuses on his teenage years and his service in the U.S. Navy. Although he was able to finish the play on the day before he died, it has not yet been produced.
Death
On November 28, 2004, Leroy Aarons died of cancerCancer
Cancer , known medically as a malignant neoplasm, is a large group of different diseases, all involving unregulated cell growth. In cancer, cells divide and grow uncontrollably, forming malignant tumors, and invade nearby parts of the body. The cancer may also spread to more distant parts of the...
. He was 70 years old.
At the time of his death, Aarons was working on another play, Night Nurse, about South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission
Truth and Reconciliation Commission
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission was a court-like restorative justice body assembled in South Africa after the abolition of apartheid. Witnesses who were identified as victims of gross human rights violations were invited to give statements about their experiences, and some were selected...
, for which he and his life partner of 24 years, Joshua Boneh, had spent a month in South Africa doing research earlier that year. An actor and producer in Berkeley, California
Berkeley, California
Berkeley is a city on the east shore of the San Francisco Bay in Northern California, United States. Its neighbors to the south are the cities of Oakland and Emeryville. To the north is the city of Albany and the unincorporated community of Kensington...
performed it as a work-in-progress in Mill Valley
Mill Valley, California
Mill Valley is a city in Marin County, California, United States located about north of San Francisco via the Golden Gate Bridge. The population was 13,903 at the 2010 census.Mill Valley is located on the western and northern shores of Richardson Bay...
. The play has not yet been completed.
Joshua Boneh carries on Aarons’s work.
External links
- Roy Aarons Official Website
- Prayers for Bobby
- Top Secret: Battle for the Pentagon Papers
- Monticello
- ASNE
- NLGJA
- Maynard Institute
- PFLAG
- Annenberg School for Communication
- Annenberg Sexual Orientation Issues in the News Program
- NLGJA press release announcing Aarons' death
- Maynard Institute announcement of Aarons' death
- NPR tribute to Aarons
- NLGJA Hall of Fame Bio