Bio
Robert J. Lopez is a veteran journalist and media trainer. He has combined an investigative reporting background with digital skills to produce powerful multimedia projects for the Los Angeles Times.
He was part of a reporting team that exposed government corruption in Bell, a city southeast of Los Angeles. The Bell articles were honored with the 2011 Pulitzer Prize gold medal for public service and the George Polk and Seldon Ring awards, among other awards. Lopez is currently the nighttime blogger for L.A. Now, producing multimedia reports for the popular breaking-news blog.
He has worked as a digital consultant for the Annenberg School for Communications at the University of Southern California and is a former adjunct faculty member at the school. He has also served as a media speaker for the U.S. State Department, teaching social media skills to reporters and university students students in Paraguay and the Bahamas.
He attended the Knight Foundation’s Digital Media Workshop at UC-Berkeley, as well as other multimedia boot camps. As a reporter, Lopez investigated has issues involving immigration, crime and corruption across the U.S. and in Mexico and Central America. Prior to The Times, he worked at the Oakland Tribune, where he co-authored an article exposing flaws in emergency procedures after a devastating urban wildfire. The article resulted in a state law requiring rescue agencies to coordinate tactics and radio communications during major disasters.
In addition to his journalism, Lopez authored a screenplay for an original movie bought by the FX Network, a true story of Latino immigrants killed in Operation Iraqi Freedom, which was based on a series he helped report and write for the newspaper. The series was honored as the Best Feature of 2004 by the National Association of Hispanic Journalists.
He is a graduate of the University of Hawaii.
