Leroy Aarons was born in a working class neighborhood of New York, New York in 1933. He graduated from Brown University, then later earned a graduate degree in journalism from Columbia University. Aarons spent 14 years as an editor and journalist with the Washington Post before leaving in 1976 to work with friend and colleague Robert C. Maynard at the Summer Institute for Minority Journalists in Berkeley, California. In 1983 Maynard purchased theOakland Tribune and invited Aarons to join the staff. TheTribune won a Pulitzer Prize and was recognized as a model of diversity in journalism during Aaron's tenure as executive editor and vice president for news.

In 1989 the American Society of Newspaper Editors (ASNE) asked Aarons, known for his commitment to diversity in journalism, to coordinate a confidential survey of gay journalists. The survey was intended to document respondents' perceptions of coverage of gay and lesbian issues in their newspapers, as well as working conditions in their newsrooms. When Aarons reported the survey findings to an audience of peers at the ASNE convention in 1990, he also revealed that he was gay, making him the "first openly gay top-level editor at any mainstream daily newspaper in the country" (obituary of Aarons by Jon Thurber; Los Angeles Times, Nov. 30, 2004). Later in the same year Aarons and several colleagues founded the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association (NLGJA).

After leaving the Tribune in 1990, Aarons undertook a number of writing projects, including researching and writing his acclaimed bookPrayers for Bobby. He also co-authored a docu-drama about the release of the Pentagon Papers (1991) with prominent journalist and academic Geoffrey Cowan, later dean of the University of Southern California's Annenberg School of Journalism. In 1998, Aarons collaborated with Cowan on a grant from philanthropist Michael Huffington that resulted in the creation of the Program for the Study of Sexual Orientation in the News (SOIN) at the USC Annenberg School. Appointed director in 1999, Aarons facilitated a grant proposal to the Ford Foundation that secured funding for three projects: the development of an undergraduate journalism class intended to "prepare future professionals to bring context and balance to coverage of gay and lesbian issues"; a reprise of the earlier ASNE survey of gay and lesbian journalists, this time under the auspices of the Annenberg School and the NLGJA; and a content audit of coverage of lesbian and gay issues in six nationally or regionally significant newspapers.

Leroy Aarons remained a part of the SOIN program until his death in 2004.

Sources:

Leroy Aarons Papers, Coll2011-014, ONE National Gay and Lesbian Archives, Los Angeles, California. (Box 1, folder 8)