My ‘Jerusalem Post’ mentor | The Jerusalem Post

On this remarkable anniversary, I’d like to pay tribute to a former editor-in-chief of The Jerusalem Post who is no longer with us.

When I first entered the Post’s building, in early 1983, I was 20 years old, new to Israel, and spoke very little Hebrew. I’d mustered the courage to ask for a job, however, because I’d been to journalism school in the UK and worked for a few months on a local weekly newspaper in East London. Somebody at the Post told me kindly that the door would be open, but that I should return after a few months when I’d learned a little more of our revived language.

When I came back, I fell under the gruff, kindly eye of the Post’s then-night editor, a lanky, grizzled ex-Brit named N. David Gross. He started me out editing copy from some of the business and economics reporters. And from there I graduated to the main night desk, eventually, to my considerable delight, getting to work on articles that would appear on the next day’s front page.

David must have seen something in me that I’m not sure I’d seen myself. He critiqued my work, pointed out my errors, taught me how a story should be structured and what belonged in headlines – basically, showed me how to edit. He helped me remember to raise a quizzical eyebrow about what I was reading: Did it make sense, was it credible, were key facts missing? Like I said, I’d been to journalism school, but this was my real education.

Crucially, under David’s tutelage, I felt I was properly using my brain for about the first time in my life, and I became convinced that I had found the right profession.

The Post would become more than my employer. As with many of those who have worked at this storied newspaper, it became my first professional home in Israel.

A few years later, N. David Gross was appointed the Post’s editor-in-chief, and in that position, he set out how he saw the role of the paper in an article marking a previous major Post anniversary – its 60th.

“A daily newspaper is a peculiar thing,” he wrote. “It is at one and the same time a page of history and wrapping for tomorrow’s fish. It reflects society and thus is used for years after by social and political historians as a picture of its times. That gives us an obligation to be accurate and truthful, and warns us to be cautious in our predictions....

“We are part of the city whose name we proudly bear, and of the nation whose capital it is,” he continued. “We feel a duty to our country and to the Jewish people, those of its members in Israel and those still abroad. While not whitewashing their faults and errors, we do not intend to assist their enemies.”

David died almost four years ago, and his vision for the Post as quoted above was recalled by another great Post veteran, Judy Siegel-Itzkovich, in an appreciation she wrote to mark his passing. As I wish the Post mazal tov at 85, I couldn’t hope to better his summation of the paper he and so many of us have called home.

The writer, founding editor of The Times of Israel, edited The Jerusalem Post from 2004 to 2001.