Tribute to a news pioneer: during his life, Roy Aarons made newspapers and television respect GLBT America.

Leroy "Roy" Aarons lived a distinguished journalism career--a journey that took trim from coveting the South during the turbulent 1960s to writing about the death of Robert F. Kennedy to guiding The Oakland [Calif.] Tribune, as executive editor, to a Pulitzer Prize in photography for its coverage of the Bay Area's 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake.

But what is perhaps Aarons's most lasting contribution to journalism arrived in 1990, when he stood before the American Society of Newspaper Editors' annual meeting and canoe out as a gay man. His emotional announcement followed the presentation of his landmark survey showing that gay and lesbian journalists were not happy with how they were being treated in newsrooms or with the media's coverage of gay America.

That moment drove Aarons--who died November 28 at age 70 after a 10-month battle with cancer--to form the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association.

Aarons was a major reason that U.S. newspapers and television dramatically increased coverage of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender America, especially during the 1990s. Newsrooms became more accommodating to gay reporters. Media outlets made a greater--and more balanced--effort to cover the lives of GLBT people. They began taking extraordinary steps toward giving same-sex partnership and wedding ceremonies space equivalent to that received by straight couples' unions.

"He was in newspapers a long time, so he knew that gay and lesbian lives were not covered in the news media and when they were, they weren't accurate," says Pamela Strother, NLGJA executive director. "The quantity and the quality of the coverage has skyrocketed in the last 10 years."

Strother visited Aarons at his home the month before he died. "He still believed there are so many untold stories about our lives and that the context of the coverage is still partially incomplete," she recalls.

Recently retired NBC anchor Tom Brokaw knew Aarons for more than three decades and counted him as a close friend. The two met when Aarons was West Coast bureau chief for The Washington Post and Brokaw was based in Los Angeles as a correspondent for the network and an anchor at KNBC, its local affiliate. "He was covering the political scene in those days and cultural events, and he was first-rate," Brokaw tells The Advocate. "He was a complete reporter who was highly regarded."

Aarons's Los Angeles home was often a gathering spot for journalists during events such as primary elections. "We had all been through some interesting times out there," Brokaw says. "We had a small circle of common friends, and we stayed in very close touch over the years. He was about as agreeable company as you could possibly find."

Aarons, whose grandparents were Jewish Latvian immigrants, grew up in the Bronx, N.Y., where he formed a strong identification with the underdog, says Joshua Boneh, Aarons's partner of 24 years. "Growing up Jewish in New York with some discrimination, he definitely felt an affinity to the blacks, and so I think these were the roots of his later work."

A graduate of Brown and Columbia universities, Aarons began his career at the Journal-Courier in New Haven, Conn., and was named city editor at the age of 27. He was hired by The Washington Post in June 1962 and found himself covering many of the most significant stories of the decade. In the late 1970s he cofounded the Maynard Institute for Journalism Education, a center dedicated to encouraging more people of color to enter journalism. He viewed the NLGJA as an extension of that work. "The NLGJA did for gays and lesbians what [Maynard was] doing for people of color," Aarons said in an interview last October.

Aarons also authored Prayers for Bobby, a 1995 nonfiction book about a mother's grief over her gay son's suicide, and coauthored a docudrama about the Pentagon Papers that was honored by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting with a Gold Award. In his later years, he was a visiting professor of journalism at the University of Southern California's Annenberg School for Communication in Los Angeles.

Journalist Bill Mann worked for Aarons at The Oakland Tribune during the years when Aarons was features editor, then executive editor. "He was a total pro as an editor. It was all about fairness and accuracy but also a lot of heart. He was very empathetic," says Mann, now a columnist for The Press Democrat in Santa Rosa, Calif.

Almost until the day he died, Aarons was busy working on a play about South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

"Always what I loved about him was that he was a very giving person, both for the people close to him in his life and for people who are the underdogs," says Boneh. "It was always important to him to do the right thing for people."

Hernandez is a Los Angeles-based journalist.