If I had NIS 10 for every time I ran into someone at an event or on the street who, learning that I was an editor at The Jerusalem Post, told me, “Ah, The Jerusalem Post. I used to read it before it became so [take your pick] right-wing/left-wing,” I could retire.
Wait a minute… I am retiring! Sort of.
So, thank you, all those bewildered former readers, for filling the coffers and enabling me, after spending 30 of the last 35 years as a staffer at the Post, to step back and get off the news merry-go-round.
It’s been more like a high-thrill roller coaster, actually. Cataclysmic events unfolded on a weekly, daily, and sometime hourly basis as both Israel and the Post evolved from their former selves into whole other entities entirely, that someone in 1990, the year I began to work at the paper, might hardly recognize.
Employed as a page layout designer for In Jerusalem, I was the new kid on the block, learning journalism from generous colleagues like Esther Hecht and Liat Collins, who insisted to the paper’s management that my trial position be saved for me when I was drafted for my shlav bet IDF service after only four months on the job.
It was a time when computers had recently replaced the typewriter in the newsroom, but modern day necessities such as email, Google, and websites were still in the laboratories. In a major innovation of the early 1990s, the paper switched over to a computerized layout system called Atex. And once again, my job was saved.
Upon learning that I was on the list of staffers being laid off, I convinced then-editor N. David Gross, with more than a little creative embellishment, that I was a computer whiz and vital to the paper easing into this new system of the future. Instead of getting the pink slip, I was given a plane ticket to Boston, where I spent a week with Ori Lewis, my colleague to this day, learning the new system and then returning to Jerusalem to train the rest of the staff.
That was the last time my position was in jeopardy. Evidently impressing my seniors with some level of competence, I was soon promoted to the daily paper, first doing layout, but quickly being targeted as a night editor.
“Have you listened to the news today on the radio?” Gross asked me one afternoon as I arrived for the night shift. After answering affirmatively, he said, “Good, because tomorrow night, you’re the night editor.”
The rest, as they say, is history.
One of the first shifts on my own was the evening that former prime minister Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated. One of my most recent shifts as night editor was on October 7, 2023. Between them was a whole life and enough news to fill a few thousand newspapers… or websites.
I was fortunate to be on the small team of editors that inaugurated Jpost.com, The Jerusalem Post website, which today is among the world’s most popular news sites. Back then, with Ilan Chaim at the helm, we would stay after the night shift was over at 11:30 p.m. and painstakingly upload five stories we had chosen to appear on the website.
It took between 60 and 90 minutes, and those stories would remain on the site stagnant for 24 hours until we uploaded the next night’s batch.
We thought that it was amazing. And it was.
Today is the first day in 18 years that my name is not on the masthead of the paper above the daily editorial. It was then, at the beginning of 2007, that I returned to the paper – after a five-year sabbatical – in the position of deputy managing editor, which evolved into managing editor when Steve Linde took over the reins in 2011.
I’ve had the honor of serving under nine editors, beginning with Gross and moving on to David Bar Ilan, Jeff Barak, David Makovsky, Carl Schrag, Bret Stephens, David Horovitz, Linde, Yaakov Katz, Avi Mayer, and Zvika Klein. I learned something from all of them and feel privileged to have worked with each one. Mostly, I learned that I didn’t want to be the editor of the Post.
It’s something that I’ve been asked more than once to do, and I’ve always turned it down. One of the former editors confided in me that I was making the right choice, staying one level below the surface as a loyal lieutenant. Editors come and go, as the above list attests. Managing editors can stay forever, or, as today marks, when they decide to step down.
Not a goodbye, but see you later
For me, stepping down isn’t saying goodbye, it’s saying “l’hitraot.” I’ll be staying on staff part-time, managing an occasional night shift, writing an editorial here and there, working on feature stories or columns like this when I find a topic I’m passionate about, and anchoring The Jerusalem Post Sessions on our site in which I talk to some great Israeli musicians.
But mainly, I’ll be trying to wean myself from the news, which has been a jealous mistress for far too long. I’ve got my ever-growing family to focus on, and I’m still intent on becoming a successful rock star before I turn 70. So off we go into the great unknown.
The Post has been my home for over three decades, and I’m immensely proud of the service that we provide and the dedication that the staff demonstrates on a daily basis to make sense of what’s going on out there. Realizing early on that I would never be the one to discover a cure for cancer, I can’t think of a better way to have spent the last few thousand days and nights.
And for all those former – and maybe even current – readers who are scratching their heads over the question of whether the Post leans to the Right or the Left, all I can say is that when I figure it out, you’ll be the first to know.