C. Jackson; Editor Strove for Diversity

Charles Jackson, former editor of the Oakland Tribune and champion of racial and ethnic diversity in the nation’s newsrooms, has died at 55.

Jackson died Wednesday at a San Francisco hospice, according to the Robert C. Maynard Institute for Journalism Education, where Jackson trained dozens of minority journalists. During the last year, he had suffered a stroke and kidney and liver failure.

“As a teacher he was extraordinary,” said Dori J. Maynard, president of the Oakland-based nonprofit named for her late father, who co-founded the institute and was publisher of the Oakland Tribune.

Jackson’s 35 years in print journalism were devoted to persuading newspapers nationwide to embrace people of all races and cultures.

He joined the Tribune as a part-time copy editor in 1990, and rose to editor by 1998. In the last year, poor health forced him to reduce his workload, and he became editor-at-large and director of the NewsWatch project for San Francisco State University’s Center for Integration and Improvement of Journalism.

As a college student at Wichita State University in Kansas, he began working at the Wichita Eagle-Beacon. There, at age 21, he noticed he was the only black in the newsroom.

He graduated with majors in journalism and English, then got a reporting job at the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.

The Star-Telegram’s personnel director initially told him, “I’m sorry, we don’t have any porter jobs available,” Jackson recalled. His response: “No, no, no! You misunderstood. I said RE-porter. RE-porter!”

Years later, in 1980, Jackson became the paper’s deputy metropolitan editor, running the entire 200-journalist news operation.