BY JANET SILVER GHENT
The staff at the Bulletin surprised me with a pre-wedding ice cream cake
The Oakland Tribune, where I’d worked as a reporter for more than 12 years, was sold and essentially died in fall 1992, leaving me unemployed. I was 50, jobless and without a home after selling it amid a divorce settlement.
One of the first people I phoned was Marc Klein, editor and publisher of the Jewish Bulletin — the predecessor of J.
Since Marc’s death on May 25, I’ve been reflecting on what he taught me.
When I phoned about job opportunities at the Bulletin, Marc wasn’t one to waste time by saying hello. Instead, he opened the conversation with “What took you so long?”
When Marc told me he couldn’t pay me what I was used to earning, I accepted an editorial job at a state university. The pay was decent, but I was miserable. One night I walked through a downtrodden rose garden and then wrote about moving “among the ashes.” At the time, I was diagnosed with depression.
Six months after I was hired provisionally at that university, I was canned. My boss didn’t use the word “fire” or “terminate.” Instead, I was told that I was “not a match.” Oddly enough, my depression began to lift.
Then in the fall of 1993, I spotted an ad in the Bulletin seeking a copy editor. I opened my chutzpadik application letter with the phrase: “Why am I writing to the Jewish Bulletin when I know you pay bupkis?” Somehow, I still got the job.
“I’m offering you the opportunity to stay in journalism,” Marc said, knowing how important that was to me.
Marc Klein in the Jewish Bulletin newsroom in 1994 with (from left) Sue Barnett, Taryn Thomas and Leslie Katz.
In 1994, when I purchased a condo in Alameda, where Marc was a member of Temple Israel, he welcomed me warmly into the congregation. In 1998, when I celebrated my adult bat mitzvah there, Marc told my father how hard I had worked and how proud he must be.
And at the end of 1999, when I told Marc that I was marrying a man I met through the Bulletin’s “Such a Match” personal ads, he kvelled. In his toast at our wedding the next year, Marc teased that the groom had responded to an ad in a publication that he “didn’t even spend 75 cents for” because Allen had spotted my ad while taking in his tenant’s mail. Without missing a beat, Allen reached into his pocket and offered Marc three quarters.
Marc did indeed give me the opportunity to stay in journalism, and it was a match. I worked there full time for 12 years, then came back part time and have continued to work as a freelancer to this day, so I never really left.
Still, the atmosphere at the Bulletin was unlike that at any other newspaper where I had worked. I often felt like I was overhearing family squabbles in the back room of a delicatessen. If the noise in Marc’s office became intense, one of us in the newsroom would close his door.
When Marc was happy with my work, he let me know. When he was disappointed, he would not mince words. “I’m somewhat in shock,” he wrote after I turned in a feature on Trimpin, a German artist who had created a kinetic Holocaust memorial. “You write so much better than this. I don’t even understand what the story is about. Worse, I don’t even care.”
Writers, like performers, need to develop thick skins because criticism and rejection are part of the process, so I saved that note and shared it with a writing group.
When I ran the note past Marc a few years ago, he apologized. “Whoa, was I brutal in this email. I’m terribly sorry. I guess the pressure of the job too often took control of me,” he wrote to me.
Nurtured on hard news, Marc told it straight, so I always knew where he stood. When I reworked the Trimpin piece to his satisfaction, he wrote: “Much better. I think you are going in a very good direction with your approach. I appreciate very much that you came up with it so quickly.”
Tact took time and patience, and Marc knew they were not his strong points. When he needed to write a tactful letter to a prominent community member, he sometimes called upon me for help.
After three decades as colleagues, I think we both learned from each other. Marc, thank you for bringing me into the world of Jewish journalism. You changed my life’s path.
This column was previously published on August 5 in J. The Jewish News of Northern California.
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