Ben Fong-Torres

Benjamin Fong-Torres (方振豪; Cantonese: Fong Chan Ho; born January 7, 1945) is an American rock journalist best known for his association with Rolling Stone magazine (until 1981) and the San Francisco Chronicle (from around 1982).

Due to the Chinese Exclusion Act, Fong-Torres's father Ricardo (born Fong Kwok Seung), changed his surname to Torres and posed as a Filipino to immigrate to the United States. The family later adopted the hyphenated surname "Fong-Torres". Ben is the brother of the late Shirley Fong-Torres.

He grew up in Oakland, California, where he served as student body president at Westlake Junior High as well as a newspaper reporter/columnist and commissioner of assemblies at Oakland High School.

Fong-Torres, who graduated from San Francisco State University in 1966 with a B.A. in radio-TV-film, was a writer and senior editor of Rolling Stone nearly from the magazine's inception.

In 1972, Ben's older brother, Barry, a probation officer and community worker, was murdered. Barry had been passionate about working with the Chinese community. In the Netflix documentary about Ben's work with Rolling Stone, Ben states that some may wrongly have thought his brother was with law enforcement.

He conducted interviews for Rolling Stone of entertainment figures including Bob Dylan, the Rolling Stones, comedian Steve Martin and Linda Ronstadt's first cover story in 1975. He also profiled Ike & Tina Turner, Marvin Gaye, Sly and the Family Stone, Bonnie Raitt, Paul McCartney and Rodney Dangerfield. A Fong-Torres interview with Ray Charles was awarded the Deems Taylor Award for Magazine Writing in 1974.

Fong-Torres was also a rock DJ for San Francisco radio station KSAN-FM in the 1970s. He later hosted a live, weekly entertainment and talk show, Fog City Radio, on NPR affiliate KQED-FM. On television, he is the five-time Emmy Award-winning co-anchor of the Chinese New Year Parade broadcast on KTVU (Fox) in San Francisco.

Fong-Torres was a contestant on the game show Wheel of Fortune in 1993.