Ray joined “NewsHour” in October 1999 from NPR, where he had hosted “Talk of the Nation“ since 1993. Before that, he spent 7 years covering local and national stories for WMAQ-TV, NBC’s O&O in Chicago.
Earlier in his career, he was a Los Angeles correspondent for CNN, a producer for the ABC Radio Network in New York, a reporter for CBS Radio in Rome, and a reporter for various American and British news services in London.
Ray most recently published the book, Latino Americans: The 500-Year Legacy That Shaped a Nation, a companion volume to the PBS series.
He is also the author of The Holy Vote: The Politics of Faith in America and The Old Neighborhood: What We Lost in the Great Suburban Migration. He has contributed to several other books, including The Oxford Companion to American Politics, How I Learned English and Saving America’s Treasures, among others.
In 2010, Ray was inducted into the Hall of Fame of the National Assocation of Hispanic Journalists.