Richard Read covered health issues as The Oregonian’s science writer at the start of his reporting career and intensively years later when COVID-19 hit the U.S. in Seattle, where he was Los Angeles Times bureau chief. Rich became the first foreign correspondent for a Northwest newspaper in 1989 when he opened an Asia Bureau in Tokyo for The Oregonian.
He won a Pulitzer Prize in 1999, The Oregonian’s first in 42 years, by following a container of french fries from a Northwest farm to the Far East in a series that ended in Jakarta with riots toppling Indonesia’s President Suharto. In 2001, Rich won the Pulitzer for Public Service for The Oregonian with a team of reporters who exposed systemic abuses by U.S. immigration officials.
He headed the board of the International School of Portland and served on the board of the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan.