The Richmond Times-Dispatch is reporting that veteran journalist Raymond H. Boone has been laid to rest. Boone, founder of weekly newspaper the Richmond Free Press succumbed to pancreatic cancer in his home on Tuesday, June 3.
In addition to founding the Richmond Free Press, Boon was a veteran newspaper reporter and former associate professor of journalism at Howard University in Washington, D.C., where he taught for nearly nine years.
WRIC reports:
Boone started Richmond Free Press in January of 1992. The publications has received numerous awards over the years from a range of organizations, including the Virginia Press Association, the Virginia Trial Lawyers Association, and the National Newspaper Publishers Association. It currently boasts 135,000 weekly readers.
Organizations and publications from around the country bestowed a variety of awards and honors upon Boone; he was the recipient of the 2006 Oliver W. Hill Freedom Fighter Award, the Virginia NAACP’s highest honor; the 2006 DaimlerChrysler Entrepreneurial Award as well as a 2006 first-place Virginia Press Association editorial writing award.
Richmond Magazine named Boone to its list of “100 Power Players” in Central Virginia in 1998. In 1999, Style Weekly named Boone among Richmond’s “Movers and Shapers” of the 20th century.
In 2000, Boone was inducted into the Virginia Communications Hall of Fame at Virginia Commonwealth University.
Boone was also well-known in the Richmond community for his outspoken views. In 2013, The Richmond Free Press dropped the Redskins nickname for the Washington NFL team from its pages, calling it racist.
‘We want to make it absolutely clear that the Richmond Free Press does not endorse or promote that outrageous nickname,’ Boone said of the change.
Boone is survived by his wife of 47 years Jean Patterson Boone, his daughter Regina H. Boone, a photographer with the Detroit Free Press and Raymond H. Boone, Jr. of the Richmond Free Press.
R.I.P. to Mr. Boone, who was 76.
Read more at WRIC.
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