‘OG street reporter,’ long-time NAHJ member remembered for his love of dance, storytelling

A studio portrait of Rubén Rosario. PHOTO CONTRIBUTED BY BEN GARVIN/PIONEER PRESS

Rubén Rosario, a long-time National Association of Hispanic Journalists member and mentor passed away Wednesday morning from complications related to multiple myeloma.

He was 70.

“I would never describe Rubén as a journalist or as a columnist. I would describe Rubén as a newspaper man. He was an old-school newspaper man,” said Tony Marcano, from Southern California Public Radio. “We’re going to miss him a lot.”

Known as the ‘OG street reporter’ to many, Rosario began his career at the New York Daily News, where he began as a copy boy, mail sorter and eventually covered crime for that publication from 1976 to 1991.

Marcano remembers when he first met Rosario at the New York Daily News in the 1980s when Marcano started his career as a copy boy, too.

“He was an inspiration to me because he was also from the Bronx and a Puerto Rican guy. And in those days it was really hard for Latino reporters to advance at all,” said Marcano. “Rubén was an inspiration to me, that this was a viable career for me.”

A Bronx native and Nuyorican, Rosario cared about the people he interviewed and knew his audience.

“In the 1970s and 80s, you didn’t see a lot of Latin names in New York’s newspapers, despite having a large Latin community. That’s kind of when I first spotted him,” David Gonzalez, journalist from the New York Times, said.

“We’d see each other at these conventions every now and then so we’d always touch base.”

When he moved to Minneapolis in 1991 to pursue storytelling as a columnist for the Pioneer Press, his friends didn’t blame him for the move.

“The chance to have his own column– it just made sense,” said Gonzalez. “He’s a New Yorker through and through, but that doesn’t get lost. He was just living somewhere else. But all the benefits and skills of having worked in New York and being a New York journalist comes in handy.”

At the Pioneer Press, he spent 29 years highlighting “ordinary people and issues that deserved more attention,” as he wrote in his column in 2020 to announce his “retirement.” But he continued to write once in a while, continuing the storytelling from his home in Minnesota.

A portrait of Rubén Rosario. PHOTO CONTRIBUTED BY BEN GARVIN/PIONEER PRESS

“He would write columns about himself and his own experiences sometimes, but when he was writing about other people, it was like this is Rubén using his storytelling skills to really connect with people,” Marcano said.

When Rosario was diagnosed in 2011 with terminal stage multiple myeloma, an incurable blood cancer that takes over healthy plasma cells, he documented his battle with the disease in his column. He used the platform to inform his audience about his process of understanding and living with that condition.

Gonzalez said Rosario was the best person to talk to about multiple myeloma, since they both were diagnosed.

“I remember one time, he was in New York on a visit,” Gonzalez said. “We got together in Midtown and hung out and kind of compared notes on our conditions and just talked about it,” he said. “I think Rubén and I had this kind of attitude, because we grew up in the South Bronx and we survived the South Bronx– we’re pretty tough. I decided and I’m pretty sure he decided, ‘we’ll deal with it.'”

Even while facing an incurable cancer, David Handschuh, a former colleague from the New York Daily News, said Rosario, “was afraid of nothing.” Handschuh said Rosario was, “always laughing, always smiling, and never bothered by deadlines,” person in the newsroom.

“He was great at being him and it worked out in terms of his journalism,” Gonzalez said. “He followed in the good tradition of reporters and columnists who looked out for the people that are all too often overlooked.”

Marcano is attending the 2024 NAHJ conference this week and remembering Rosario for the liveliness that he brought to the Gran Baile dance floor during the previous years that they attended the annual conference together.

“He was kind of a quiet soft spoken guy and all of a sudden he’d be out there on the dance floor and women would just be lining up to dance with him because he was that good,” Marcano said, recalling the times he and Rosario attended the NAHJ conference together. His energy will be missed on the dance floor this week by the OG reporters and says the young reporters in attendance could learn a thing or two from Rosario, he said.

Rosario is survived by his father, wife and two adult children.

Shawntay Lewis is a senior at Wayne State University in Detroit for a B.A. in broadcast journalism and Spanish language. She is a Caregiving Reporting Intern for Urban Aging News, a nonprofit publication on all things aging in metro Detroit. Lewis covers healthcare, vulnerable communities, culture and entertainment. She aspires to pursue a career as a producer. Reach her at shawntaylewis93 [at] gmail [dot] com or on X at @Shawntay Lewis.

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