Two journalists who have long worked in the San Francisco Bay Area were recently inducted into the National Association of Hispanic Journalists Hall of Fame.
Carlos Avila Gonzalez and Ricard Sandoval-Palos were honored on July 25 during the association’s national convention in New Orleans.
Gonzalez is currently a photo and video journalist for the San Francisco Chronicle.
He joined the Chronicle in 1997, and has emerged as a leader in its photography department’s transition to multimedia reporting.
With over 25 years of working in newspaper journalism, Gonzalez documents life in the San Francisco Bay Area and beyond. His news, sports and culture coverage has earned him countless awards.
He has also served as a mentor for emerging journalists, and graciously shared his expertise with community-based newspapers like El Tecolote.
A native of the San Francisco Bay Area and a 1995 graduate of San Francisco State University, Gonzalez began his career near California’s Central Valley, working at newspapers covering diverse communities.
He has traveled to Afghanistan, Cuba, Iraq, Central America and Mexico numerous times on assignment for the Chronicle, and is a volunteer teacher at the National Geographic Photo Camp for students.
In a statement to James Gordon of The Latino Reporter , NAHJ’s student-run publication, Gonzalez said, “It means a lot more when it’s something that matters to the people around you. I’ve been around newsrooms since I was 10 years old, and I really grew to understand the connection between small community papers and readership.”
He added, “This is an award that encapsulates a lot of people who have, you know, helped be the village that kept this thing together. And they don’t last as long as I have in some cases.”
Ricardo Sandoval-Palos is the public editor of the Public Broadcasting Service, serving as liaison between PBS and its audience, and working to hold the media organization accountable to its viewers.
He is a veteran investigative reporter and multimedia editor who, similar to Gonzalez, also advises nonprofit news organizations like El Tecolote .
In 2019, he co-founded palabra , NAHJ’s digital magazine.
Sandoval-Palos is a former supervising editor of NPR’s Morning Edition broadcast. Formerly, he was an editor with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and assistant city editor at the Sacramento Bee newspaper.
He also spent a decade as a Latin America correspondent for T he Dallas Morning News and The San Jose Mercury News . Prior to that, he was an investigative business reporter for the San Francisco Examiner and the Orange County Register .
Sandoval-Palos is co-author of The Fight In the Fields: Cesar Chavez and the Farmworkers Movement , an award-winning history of the United Farm Workers union and its founder.
“Keep learning, keep seeing how you can improve your own work, seeing how you can improve your ability to tell a story and the ability to engage with the audiences,” he told The Latino Reporter . “That’s our primary task; it’s our primary challenge. How can we get audiences to trust us and then read us on a continual basis? That’s how we survive.”
