James Raymond Ripton; Former Times Reporter

James Raymond Ripton, 69, a veteran Los Angeles Times reporter. Ripton joined The Times in 1963 as a copy editor. Two years later, he became a reporter assigned to the suburban news operation. For nearly three decades he covered news and sports for the sections that circulated on the Westside and in the South Bay region. A native of Cleveland, he served in the Marine Corps during the Korean War, and later earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in journalism from Northwestern University. He briefly taught English at Yankton College in South Dakota and journalism at New Jersey’s Rutgers University. He retired from The Times in 1992. On Aug. 31 of cancer in Moraga, Calif.