User:Rubietuesday54/sandbox

Rubén Rosario is a veteran newspaper journalist who writes an award-winning column for the St. Paul Pioneer Press. Born in San Juan, Puerto Rico on Feb. 19, 1954 and raised in New York City, Rosario spent 11 years as a staff writer for the New York Daily News, mostly covering New York City police, law enforcement, organized crime and the courts. Rosario has covered some of the biggest and more notorious crime stories in the nation's largest city. They include subway gunman Bernhard Goetz, the Central Park Preppie Murder, the controversial Howard Beach and Bensonhurst racial killings, and a Bronx social club arson fire that killed 86 people. He also covered numerous organized crime trials involving John Gotti and other chieftains and high-level soldiers of New York's five Mafia crime enterprises. ``Journey Into the Den of Lost Souls,'' Rosario's 1986 first-hand newspaper account of the emergence and devastation of crack cocaine in Harlem and poor city neighborhoods earned him praise from local politicians and New York police brass, who later cited his series in announcing the creation of a special anti-crack narcotics task force. He has also written cover stories for national magazines, including the now defunct Nuestro and Crime Beat. Rosario joined the Pioneer Press in 1991 and worked five years as city editor and public safety team leader before launching his column in 1997. He also established and coordinated several newsroom internship programs designed to train up and coming journalists, including those from underrepresented racial/ethnic groups. Rosario and the column have won numerous accolades and awards in recent years. In 2015, for the third time since 2011. He won first place for general column writing in the Minnesota Society of Journalists’ Page One Competition. He also won the same honor in 2001, 2003, 2006 and 2008. (1) He was named a finalist for the 2008 ASNE Batten Medal and was also selected “Best Reason To Read The Pioneer Press’’ by City Pages, the Twin Cities’ alternative weekly, in its annual best of the Twin Cities edition. The weekly also named him best columnist in the Twin Cities in 1999 and 2003.(2) He received the National Alliance on Mental Illness of Minnesota’s media advocacy award in 2009 for columns on the issue. Rosario was also among 12 Minnesotans honored in 2006 with the first annual Minnesota Latino Achievement Awards from the monthly bilingual magazine Vice Versa. Other honorees included former Twins great Tony Oliva and Manuel Laureano, the lead trumpeter for the Minnesota Orchestra. He also received the “Voice of the Community Award’’ from the Immigrant Law Center of Minnesota for his body of work. In 2004, Rosario received the third annual “Access to Justice’’ award from the Minnesota Hispanic Bar Association for his columns. National honors include the 1999 Anna Quindlen Award for Excellence on Behalf of Families and Children for his series on Minnesota's child protection investigators following the beating death of a Minneapolis toddler. He also won a 2000 National Council on Crime and Delinquency PASS Award for an in-depth look at a Minnesota early intervention program that targets juvenile delinquents under 10. A survivor of Multiple Myeloma, an incurable but treatable cancer, Rosario is a father of two and a longtime member of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists. He is also treasurer for Criminal Justice Journalists, a Washington, D.C. based national organization of crime reporters and editors. 1-- Minnesota Society of Newspaper Journalists 2-- City Pages