I thought I should say a few words about what I’m up to.
For the next year, I’ll be on sabbatical from Northeastern as I work on a book about how three business people who are passionate about newspapers are using their wealth to reinvent their papers and possibly to show the way for others. They are John Henry of The Boston Globe, Jeff Bezos of The Washington Post and Aaron Kushner of the Orange County Register. Kushner is no longer running the Register, but the print-centric orientation he took during his time at the helm has much to tell us.
My project actually became public two years ago when the Globe somehow got word. That item has proved useful in helping me to line up interviews. But only now am I embarking on the bulk of my reporting. I lost a year when I agreed to serve as interim director of Northeastern’s School of Journalism following the death of my friend and mentor Steve Burgard. Steve’s death was a difficult blow. In terms of the book, though, the delay may prove to be a good thing, as it seems to me that Henry’s and Bezos’ visions are still coming into focus.
I have a contract with University Press of New England and a year that should be (I hope) free of distractions. I’m excited to push ahead.
Today is an exciting day for Northeastern University’s School of Journalism: We are finally able to announce that our new director will be Jonathan Kaufman, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and the executive editor of Bloomberg News. Kaufman, who is also a veteran of The Boston Globe and The Wall Street Journal, will be joining us on July 13.
Jonathan’s arrival means that my stint as interim director will soon be coming to an end. I’ve been serving in that role since last September, filling in for Steve Burgard, who was taking a sabbatical to work on a book project. My term was unexpectedly extended last October when Steve died after a brief illness.
It’s been an interesting and sometimes difficult year to say the least. But Jonathan will be a worthy successor to Steve. We are all expecting great things.
BOSTON — Northeastern University’s School of Journalism today announced the appointment of veteran business journalist and Bloomberg News Executive Editor Jonathan Kaufman as the school’s new director. Kaufman will begin his new role at Northeastern on July 13.
“I am thrilled to be joining Northeastern to help shape the next generation of journalists in the U.S. and globally, expand new media and digital innovation, and reflect and speak out about the challenges and opportunities journalism faces in the 21st century,” said Kaufman. “Northeastern has blazed a trail with its blend of classroom and experiential learning. I look forward to working with the faculty and students in the exciting years ahead.”
As Bloomberg’s Executive Editor for Company News, Kaufman oversees more than 300 reporters and editors worldwide covering business, health, science, education and international news for Bloomberg News newswire, Bloomberg Businessweek, and Bloomberg.com. Under his leadership, Kaufman’s team at Bloomberg has won numerous awards, including a 2015 Pulitzer Prize, several George Polk Awards, an Overseas Press Club Award, a Gerald Loeb Award, and an Education Writers Association Grand Prize.
Before joining Bloomberg, Kaufman held various positions at The Wall Street Journal, most recently as Senior Editor. During his time as the Journal‘s China Bureau Chief, Kaufman led coverage of the country’s emergence as a global economic superpower, the SARS outbreak, and environmental and social issues. A graduate of Yale University (BA) and Harvard (MA), Kaufman began his journalism career at The Boston Globe in the early 1980s, where he won a Pulitzer Prize as part of a team examining racism and job discrimination in Boston. He is the author of two books, “A Hole in the Heart of the World: Being Jewish in Eastern Europe” and “Broken Alliance: The Turbulent Times Between Blacks and Jews in America.”
“Jonathan is a gifted journalist and an acknowledged leader in his field,” said Bruce Ronkin, Interim Dean in the College of Arts, Media and Design, which houses the School of Journalism. “He brings decades of experience across traditional and digital media to Northeastern, along with deep knowledge of the business sector and a global worldview. He is a perfect fit for our school and the university.”
At the helm of the School of Journalism, Kaufman will lead an accomplished team of faculty, oversee the school’s undergraduate program serving 225 students, and continue to grow graduate programs in professional journalism and media innovation. He succeeds Associate Professor Dan Kennedy, who is serving as the school’s interim director after long-time School of Journalism director Stephen Burgard passed away in 2014.
This morning I woke up to the awful news that New York Times media columnist David Carr has died at the age of 58.
Carr’s Monday column, “The Media Equation,” was a ritual — all of us who watch the media for a living would check out what Carr had to say, often on Sunday evenings, when his weekly missive would be posted ahead of the next day’s print edition. His fierce intelligence and passion for what’s good in journalism made him the leading media commentator of our time. He was also a master of Twitter, and his quirky feed will be missed nearly as much as his more substantial work.
I knew Carr slightly. I vaguely recall talking with him a few times back when he was at the Washington City Paper and I was writing for the Boston Phoenix. In 2010, I had the honor of sharing a stage with him at MIT. His magnum opus on the Chicago Tribune under Sam Zell (one of the finest pieces of media reporting I’ve seen) had just been published, and Carr was at his profane, funny best.
In December 2013, Boston University announced that Carr would be taking a high-profile role in its journalism department. I remember talking with the director of our journalism school at Northeastern, Steve Burgard, about what it meant for the perpetual rivalry between the two programs.
Now Steve and David are both gone, well before their time.
My friend and mentor Stephen Burgard, director of Northeastern’s School of Journalism for the past dozen years, died on Sunday. It was unexpected — he was on sabbatical, happily working on a new version of his book about religion and the media, when a longstanding lung ailment suddenly worsened.
I first met Steve online in the late ’90s, when I was covering the media for the Boston Phoenix and Steve was writing editorials for the Los Angeles Times. He was a Boston native, and he took an interest in what I was reporting about the Globe. We became frequent email correspondents as he wrote to me with ideas, observations and occasional criticism.
In 2002 he took the Northeastern position. After I expressed an interest in joining the faculty of my alma mater, he became my staunchest supporter, clearing the way for my hiring, helping me to learn the ropes as I worked toward tenure, and encouraging me every step of the way.
Steve was a huge baseball fan and had Red Sox season tickets. Last July 1, he took me to Fenway, where we watched the Sox lose to the Cubs, 2-1. Steve was truly in his element — but no more so than when he would drop by my office to talk about school business, gossip about something we’d seen on Romenesko, or just shoot the breeze.
I can’t believe we won’t be doing that again.
Bryan Marquard has written a masterful obit of Steve that appears in today’s Globe. And here is a growing tribute page that appears on our school’s website.
The director of our School of Journalism, Steve Burgard, was an editorial writer at the Los Angeles Times before coming to Northeastern. He passes along an anecdote about Paul Conrad, the Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist who died on Saturday at the age of 86:
I was a newly minted editorial writer at the Los Angeles Times in the early 1990s, camped at a pod in the secluded second-floor editorlal page spaces at the desk of somebody who was out on vacation. While I had high hopes for the work I might later do at the page in the coming years, I was certainly a new kid on the block in every respect at that time.
One afternoon while laboring over a draft editorial, I felt a woosh of air behind my head as a drawing plopped down in the desk in front of me. The great cartoonist was looming up behind over my shoulder. He didn’t give a hoot about my stature, and I’m not sure he yet knew my name. He was looking for reaction to something he’d just drawn, and for that important purpose anybody would do. A nod and a grin of affirmation later, he picked it up and moved on.
Like Daniel Schorr, who died earlier this summer, Conrad was a member of Richard Nixon’s “enemies list,” which, according to his obituary, he considered one of his greatest honors.
The newspaper business is greatly diminished from what it was when Conrad was at his peak. His passing diminishes it a little more.
