Western Writer Mines for Great Stories
by James Collector

Ray Ring

Like journalism itself, Ray Ring ('79) has come a long way since he graduated from the journalism program at CU.

Ring, senior editor for High Country News and a novelist, talked about his first reporting job as an intern at The Denver Post. In contrast to the story he recently filed via e-mail, he said he wrote his stories on a typewriter on copy paper making several carbon copies at time, which he then "spiked" onto a nail protruding from his editor's desk.

"I saw the dusk of the old technology," Ring said. "That was really the end of an era." But like the business, he said he learned to adapt. In the 30 years since his internship at the Post, Ring has written more award-winning stories than the modest Montanan cares to list. And he shows no signs of slowing down.

Since being selected for an award from the Society of Environmental Journalists in 2003, Ring has received a major reporting award every year. This year, he received the Sidney Hillman Foundation Journalism Award for Magazine Reporting for his investigation of worker safety in the oil and gas industry in seven Western states.

"Death in the Energy Fields" was also named a finalist for the Scripps Howard Foundation National Journalism Award for Investigative Reporting (Farfel Prize) and won honorable mention in the Heywood Broun Award competition.

"I've done pretty well for being mostly a one-man show," said Ring, who telecommutes with High Country News in Paonia, Colo., from his personal office in Bozeman, Mont. "But I don't like digging dirt. I like think-pieces that ask larger questions, particularly how we set our policies."

Ring might not like digging dirt, but he is willing to do whatever it takes to get the inside angle on a story. In 1982, he posed as convict for 10 days to investigate Arizona's maximum-security prisons. With help from the Arizona Department of Corrections, he assumed a fake inmate identity as a convicted murderer.

The stint earned Ring an award from Investigative Reporters & Editors for his story, "The Convicted," as well as a thorough roughing-up from the Aryan Brotherhood while he was behind bars, he said. Ring attributed his willingness to venture out of the newsroom to a hunger for experiences that his professors at the School strongly encouraged.

"While I was in Boulder, I sought out courses taught by practicing journalists," Ring said. "I wanted to learn from the people who were doing the job, really getting out there. Chuck Green's advanced reporting class was really useful. And because he wrote for The Denver Post in those days, he helped me get my internship there."

While Ring was a full-time student at the School, he was also gathering income and invaluable experience as a full-time taxi driver. People such as the little old ladies he regularly drove to the grocery store and the waitresses who generously tipped him after late-night shifts seeped into the characters of his novels.

"Since fifth grade, I always wanted to be a novelist," Ring said. "I have lived my life since then trying to get experiences to become a better writer."

Judging from the three novels Ring has had printed by New York publishing houses, he has accumulated plenty of experience, as illustrated by the intriguing opening of his latest novel, "Arizona Kiss":

"I didn't set out to kill anyone. All I wanted was a good story, which is all a journalist ever wants, but I should have seen it was going bad."

Ring said that in the 25 years that he has worked as a journalist, he has relied on his interest in how the world works to find that "good story."

"I've proved myself," Ring said. "I have a creative writing ability. I also have the skill set that comes from journalism school. I also benefited from good luck. Anyone's career does. Without it, I could easily be driving taxi now if things had turned out differently."

Ring's stories for High Country News can be found at www.hcn.org.