Ron Goben, a longtime Bay Area journalist who was a top editor at the Palo Alto Times and Peninsula Times Tribune for more than two decades, died June 20 of cancer at a hospital in Placerville (El Dorado County). He was 88.
From 1964 to 1988, Mr. Goben was a reporter, assistant city editor, city editor, news editor and editorial writer for the Palo Alto Times and the Peninsula Times Tribune, which was formed when the Times merged with the Redwood City Tribune in 1979. He directed those newspapers’ local news coverage, calmly mentoring young reporters and inviting staff members’ children to bang away at the manual typewriters in the hope that they might some day become as hooked on newspapering as he was.
