For other uses, see: Juan Gonzalez
Juan González (born 1949) is an American investigative journalist. He has been a columnist for the New York Daily News since 1987. He co-hosts the radio and television program Democracy Now! with Amy Goodman.
He was born in Ponce, Puerto Rico, and was raised in East Harlem and Brooklyn. After a stint as editor of his high school newspaper, the Lane Reporter, González enrolled in Columbia University, where he began a career of political activism that would include occupying Boylan Hall—at Brooklyn College—in a public demonstration.
Although he never graduated from Columbia, he enrolled in a journalism course at Temple University during the 1970s, which would lead to a position at the Philadelphia Daily News.
In 1981, he was elected president of The National Congress for Puerto Rican Rights, a political organization that concentrated on registering new Latino voters.
González has written three books. Fallout: The Environmental Consequences of the World Trade Center Collapse (2002), ISBN 1-56584-845-4, documents cover-ups by Environmental Protection Agency and government officials with regard to health hazards at Ground Zero in New York. He is also the author of Harvest of Empire: The History of Latinos in America, and Roll Down Your Window: Stories of a Forgotten America.
In 1998, González won the George Polk Award for his investigative reporting. He is former president of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, for which he created the Parity Project, an innovative program designed to help news organizations recruit and retain Hispanic reporters and managers. He is also one of the founding members of the Young Lords Party.
In addition, he has had the honor of being named by Hispanic Business Magazine as one of this country's most influential Hispanics, as well as earning a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Hispanic Academy of Media Arts and Sciences.
For two years, González was the Belle Zeller Visiting Professor in Public Policy and Administration at Brooklyn College/CUNY, with an appointment in both the Department of Puerto Rican and Latino Studies, as well as the Political Science Department.
In December 2006, he reported the results of an exclusive interview with the purported "Fourth Man" who was present at the scene of the November 25 NYPD contagious shooting of electrician and fiance Sean Bell.
He has written extensively Ground Zero illnesses and the cover-up of Ground Zero air hazards in columns in the New York Daily News. In 2007, he received the Pulitzer Prize for his reportage in the New York Daily News on the air at the World Trade Center. He was the first reporter in New York City to write on the health effects arising from the September 11, 2001 attacks. [1]