071 - Jose R. Lopez - Photo Brigade Podcast

On this episode Robert Caplin chats with his friend, veteran New York Times staff photojournalist and editor, Jose R. Lopez. They talk about Jose's 31-year-long career at The Times covering major news events as a photographer and supporting many amazing staff and freelance photographers as an editor on various picture desks over the years!  So sit back, relax, and enjoy this episode of the Photo Brigade Podcast. 

Jose R. Lopez recently took early retirement from The New York Times as one of the 100 journalists that were offered the buyout from the Times company. In his 31 years as a journalist at The Times, he was a staff photographer for the newspaper for 16 years, which included an 8.5 year stint in the Washington bureau and covered the last three years of the Reagan administration, all four years of the Bush (41) administration and the first 1.5 years of the Clinton Administration. He returned to New York and continued to shoot a variety of assignments including 2 Olympics- 88 Winter Games in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, and the 96 Summer Games in Atlanta, GA, 5 Super Bowls, a couple of World Series, NCAA final four tournaments as well as other national and metro assignments. In December of 1995, he was sent to Bosnia Herzgovina to cover the end of the war there and the peace keeping duties that the American Military were going to take up as part of the Dayton Peace Accords. Lopez decided to become a picture editor as he felt he could better use his wisdom and talent in advocating for photographers work in the daily newspaper. He was a picture editor for the last 15 years of his career and worked on a variety of news desks. He was part of the team that won both Pulitzer Prizes in 2002 for the newspapers coverage of the Terrorist attacks of 9-11. His most recent assignment was picture editor of the digital platform, NYTNOW, the app of The New York Times. Over the course of his career, he was also an instructor in the New York Times Student Journalism Institute and taught the photojournalism aspect of this two week intensive in which 24 college journalism students, which include 4 photographers, are taught what it takes to perform at the level of a New York Times journalist. Many of his former students have gone to newspaper careers of their own as well as successful freelance careers. His time in the industry has provided him with a front row seat of the changes that the overall industry has gone through and continues to do. A native of Santa Fe, NM, he attended New Mexico State University where he holds a BA degree in journalism with a special emphasis in photojournalism.