Over the years, people have often asked me whether I\’ve ever thought about working at a \”real newspaper.\” The idea, I guess, is if I\’m good enough why wouldn\’t I want to move up to the mainstream press? But for me that would be more of a move out than a move up.
When I started moonlighting for a Jewish weekly in the late 1950s, I often encountered sneers that implied that if I were any good, why wasn\’t I working for a \”real\” newspaper?
The events of Aug. 10, 1999, changed our culture. We would never again feel as carefree as before the madman walked into the JCC and opened fire. In some ways, the shooting began our preparation for what was to come two years later — when not just our community, but our country, experienced a shattering of innocence.
I was cross when I arrived at The Jewish Journal on Oct. 9, 1986. I had earned a master\’s degree in journalism at Northwestern University and had fantasized about becoming an arts writer (at least eventually) for, say, The New Yorker. Also, I was a bad Jew, having been turned off by lackluster synagogue services. So after I settled down at my Journal IBM Selectric, I was shocked to discover I liked — no, loved — working at a Jewish newspaper.
The eerie synchronicity of being at that Nazi crematorium during the Sept. 11 attacks continues to resonate with me in a way I cannot shake.
Bobbi Fiedler, who rode an anti-school busing platform to political prominence, stood out as the potential vanguard for Jewish conservatives when The Jewish Journal profiled her as its first cover story in February 1986. The Journal recently caught up with the still-active Fiedler, 69, between civic activities.
Say what you will about journalism as a profession, you are never unemployed. Instead, you are \”between assignments,\” a condition I found myself in during the early 1980s at the same time that The Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles was preparing to launch its new Jewish Journal. The two situations dovetailed nicely, and for the first 11 years of The Journal\’s existence, I was its associate editor, until I retired in 1993.
The role of a Jewish newspaper is to connect the Jewish community, not to unify it,\” said Gene Lichtenstein, founding editor of The Journal.\nDuring his nearly 15-year tenure, which ended in 2000, Lichtenstein\’s formula was to hire good, independent writers and columnists who could produce articles that raised the interest, and frequently the hackles, of both professional and peripheral Jews.
Jewish Journal of Los Angeles 20th Anniversary
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