Grahame L. Jones Named 2012 Colin Jose Media Award Recipient

This article was last updated on April 16, 2022

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Longtime Los Angeles Times Soccer Writer to be Honored

Longtime Los Angeles Times soccer writer Grahame L. Jones was named the recipient of the 2012 Colin Jose Media Award by the National Soccer Hall of Fame.

Jones will be honored at the 2012 National Soccer Hall of Fame Induction ceremony presented by Eurosport at FedExField ahead of the U.S. Men’s National Team game against Brazil on May 30 in Landover, Md.

Jones began his Los Angeles Times tenure in January of 1971 as a news reporter, but truly made his presence felt with the implementation of the newspaper’s soccer beat, and would go on to fill this role for four decades. His first soccer assignment was covering Poland against Mexico at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum on Aug. 5, 1973.

His “On Soccer” column was a fixture within Southern California for 38 years, and he retired with one final piece that ran on Sept. 3, 2011, entitled “It has been a golden era of soccer for this state.”

During his time at the newspaper, Jones’ soccer writing included coverage of the North American Soccer League, Major League Soccer, the U.S. National Team and 12 men’s or women’s FIFA World Cups, as well as four Olympic Games, two European Championships and one Copa America. He was also the editor of Soccer Corner and Soccer International magazines and a columnist for Soccer America magazine and ESPN.

Jones is the seventh recipient of the Colin Jose Media Award and joins Jerry Trecker (Sportswriter, 2004), Seamus Malin (Broadcaster, 2005), George Tiedemann (Photographer, 2007), Ike Kuhns (Sportswriter, 2008), Alex Yannis (Sportswriter, 2009) and Paul Gardner (Sportswriter, 2010) as an honoree.

The Colin Jose Media Award was created to honor the contributions of members of the print and electronic media, including reporters, columnists, authors, broadcasters, editors, public/media relations professionals and others who specialize in communications with respect to soccer in the United States. The award is named for Colin Jose, Historian Emeritus of the National Soccer Hall of Fame and the preeminent soccer historian of North America.