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Journalist
of the Times
In an era of change, veteran newsman Ray Suarez
has kept the nation informed. Now, he turns his keen attention to
the America of tomorrow.
By Tony Cantú
First thing that might first strike you about
the style of Ray Suarez is that relaxed demeanor, as if he’s
having a personal conversation with you about the day’s events.
Then—when he really gets into the meat of things with interview
subjects—the next thing you might note is the thoughtfulness
of his questions and his breadth of knowledge on myriad subjects.
Reviewers of his last book, The Holy Vote, neatly encapsulated Suarez
the journalist as they praised his skills as an author. “Ray
Suarez has exemplified excellence, balance, and intelligence in
his reporting,” gushed Barbara J. Nelson, dean of the UCLA
School of Public Affairs. Calling him “formidably well read,”
another reviewer labeled Suarez the “anti-Limbaugh”
for his thoughtful reporting. A third assessment—from no less
than The New York Times—categorized Suarez
as nothing short of “... a national resource.”
This year, Suarez marks a decade as senior correspondent with PBS’
The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, widely considered the best news broadcast
on television.
Suarez began his career in broadcasting at a local television station
that served as launching pad for a seven-year stint at an NBC affiliate
in Chicago. Later, he landed a plum job at National Public Radio
as host of the nationally syndicated Talk of the Nation public affairs
program. But early on, there was another calling. “I had been
considering the priesthood seriously, and journalism won,”
he says. “We’ll never know if the world lost a good
priest.”
His decision was solidified as a young, 24-year-old reporter. “The
first big story I had was when I was on my way to St. Peter’s
Square when the Pope got shot in 1981,” he says. “It
took me a minute to realize what had happened, but I sprang into
action and was young enough to stay up for two days without sleep.”
Reacting with a near-instinctive response, the die was cast: “The
Italian government had a plan for state emergencies like this, so
Rome was pretty much shut down. I couldn’t take a cab and
there wasn’t a bus or train anywhere. In a dead run, I went
to Vatican City where I found a phone and started filing my story.
It was scary and exciting, and I thought, boy this is great.”
 Suarez,
who is of Puerto Rican descent, now holds one of the most prestigious
positions in broadcast news with the added distinction of being
one of the most prominent Hispanics on television.
While he agrees his ethnicity affords him added sensibility, it
is his blue-collar upbringing that particularly informs him on many
topics he covers, he says. Born in Brooklyn, his mother was a school
aide while his father worked as a barber .
“My life experience does give me extra information to draw
on,” he says. “Growing up in a working-class neighborhood
as a member of an ethnic minority, living in marginal neighborhoods
at various parts of my life as someone who sometimes had to worry
about how to pay the next set of bills, I have empathy on topics
of wealth and poverty.”
But his nightly presence on PBS almost didn’t happen. Suarez
says he was comfortably ensconced in public radio and debated whether
the join the television newscast. He credits colleague and friend
Marvin Kalb with talking him into taking the gig. “He said
‘If you can help solidify public affairs, that’s a pretty
good job to have.’ His saying that gave me a lot to think
about. He said the NewsHour was an institution that was very well
known inside and outside of TV, and to keep that institution thriving
was a pretty important job.”
Now a PBS staple, Suarez says he particularly enjoys the variety
of assignments he’s sent to cover—from elections in
Mexico to wildfires in California. “There’s a great
luxury of time to tell a story,” Suarez says of NewsHour,
the only hour-long news program on the free airways. “It also
gives me the opportunity to have a varied work life—I’ll
be heading to Africa and Asia later this year for stories related
to threats on public health. It really provides a varied diet.”
Yet the inherent dangers of being a globetrotting reporter belie
the occupation’s glamorous patina. Suarez says he’s
had some close calls over the years while gallivanting around the
world. “I got mugged in Johannesburg once, which was pretty
scary,” he recalls. Another time, while covering the California
wildfires, he and his camera operator tried to maneuver around a
mountain to secure a better view. “Suddenly someone starts
screaming at us ‘Get out of there! Get out of there!’
Just where we had been standing, a fireball burst into flames. We
could’ve been barbecued.”
In the safer environs surrounding his keyboard, Suarez exhibits
the same passion in exploring a singular issue. In The Holy Vote,
published in 2006, Suarez examined the intersecting streams of politics
and religion. “I became interested in how religion had informed
and complicated a lot of debate on issues that we thought had been
settled a generation ago—prayers in schools, for example,”
says Suarez, who began working in Washington at the beginning of
the Clinton presidency.
Now, with the election of Barack Obama as president and accompanying
Democratic control of Congress, the political landscape is undergoing
another transformation. Like an archaeologist studying tectonic
shifts, Suarez has focused his new area of study on the impact immigration
will have on the face of America. He is busy at work on his fourth
book, tentatively titled The New America.
“We’re researching together America in the year 2050,”
he says, crediting his editor, Rene Alegria, with some of the heavy
lifting in producing this latest work. “We will talk about
how sustained, high levels of immigration are likely to change American
society.”
As important as the immigration is to Hispanics, another issue supplants
it: the economy. “Latinos say that’s the No. 1 issue
for them, and we’re on the front edge,” he says. “When
the economy starts to sag they’re on the front end of unemployment
and layoffs because they’re heavily involved in industry and
service jobs.”
Suarez says he would keep an eye on how Obama handles economic issues.
“I think the real question for me in Washington is how they
plan to tackle the economy,” he says. “He can hire all
the big Latino names he can, but if the economy is still tanking
...”
His wide personal interests on issues reflect the demands of being
a newsman. Covering the news for a national broadcast renders his
role as something of a muralist rather than miniaturist. NewsHour
is the big leagues, after all, and the entire world is Suarez’s
beat.
“You’re always tracking 10 or 20 stories, and you don’t
know which ones are going to get aired,” he says of varied
subjects he tackles daily. “So you stay current on many things
... You have to be ready.”
Adding to the challenge is the growing competition for viewers as
the Internet continues inroads as a quick source for news, particularly
among young people. As the father of a 17- and 20-year-old, Suarez
says he possesses special insight on the challenges of keeping younger
viewers engaged by presenting the news in a compelling way.
“You can’t betray any boredom,” he says. “If
you have a hard time being an advocate for viewers, it will be hard
to come back the next day and the next week.”
Even after more than 30 years in the news business, Suarez conveys
infectious enthusiasm in describing his occupation, while marveling
at his own longevity.
“I never would’ve imagined being 31 years in this business,
being 51 years old, any of it,” he says. “But the only
way to have a career is to make it fresh and new to yourself.”
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