Jeff Jacoby | |
|---|---|
 Jacoby in 2021 | |
| Born | February 10, 1959 |
| Alma mater | George Washington University (B.A.) Boston University School of Law (J.D.) |
| Occupation | Journalist |
| Employer | The Boston Globe |
| Known for | Op-ed column |
Jeffrey Jacoby (born February 10, 1959) is an American conservative journalist and syndicated newspaper columnist.
Born in Cleveland, Ohio, United States, to a Jewish family, Jacoby received a B.A. degree with honors from The George Washington University and a J.D. degree from the Boston University School of Law. His father, a Holocaust survivor, was born in present-day Slovakia in 1925 and came to the United States in 1948.
Before becoming a columnist, Jacoby worked briefly as an attorney with the firm BakerHostetler and as deputy manager of Raymond Shamie's senatorial campaign in 1984. Following Shamie's loss, Jacoby worked for 15 months as an assistant to John Silber, then-president of Boston University. Jacoby is a member of the Ford Hall Forum board, the nation's oldest free public lecture series. [1]
Jacoby's column has been published on the op-ed page of The Boston Globe since 1994. From 1987 to 1994, he was chief editorial writer for the Boston Herald . Within months of his debut at the Globe, he was described by the left-leaning Boston Phoenix as "the region's pre-eminent spokesman for the Conservative Nation," and a columnist who had "quickly established himself as a must-read." Jacoby has also been a commentator on the local NPR affiliate, WBUR, and for several years hosted a talk show on local television. He is also a public speaker who lectures nationwide.
In 1997, Jacoby published "A message to my newborn son". [2] The article became the first in an annual tradition, publishing "Letters to Caleb" until 2009. [3]
In 2000, Jacoby was suspended by the Globe for four months without pay for what the paper called his "serious journalistic misconduct" in failing to provide sources for a Fourth of July column on the fate of the signers of the Declaration of Independence. Although the themes and ideas in the column had already appeared in other media outlets, Jacoby should have mentioned that the column's content needed to be more original. The Globe "avoided calling the column a work of plagiarism but stated that Jacoby should have alerted readers to similar accounts published elsewhere over the years." [4] On CNN's Reliable Sources , veteran journalists Bernard Kalb and Howard Kurtz concluded that "Jeff Jacoby got shafted by the Boston Globe." [5] Time magazine's Lance Morrow wrote that "Jacoby's offense was no offense." [6] Many conservative organizations and commentators expressed outrage, saying that Jacoby had been unfairly held to a far stricter standard than other journalists would be. [7] The Boston Phoenix, often at odds with Jacoby's views, also rose to Jacoby's defense. [8]
Jacoby acknowledged having "made a mistake" in not including a disclaimer that the material in the column had been recycled but called the critical reaction of the Globe ombudsman, Jack Thomas, "disgraceful and nonsensical." [9] He told Fox News' Bill O'Reilly that he had received an offer from another media outlet.[ citation needed ] The suspension came two years after the forced resignations of Globe columnists Mike Barnicle and Patricia Smith, who were caught fabricating stories and quotes. Boston University professor Tobe Berkovitz hypothesized that the scandals surrounding those two columnists had influenced the Globe's decision to suspend Jacoby. "Considering the recent track record with problems with columnists at the Globe, I'm not surprised with the action they took," Berkovitz said.[ citation needed ]
Jacoby claimed that as the only conservative columnist on the otherwise liberal Globe op-ed pages, he was held to a higher standard. "I've been aware from the outset that I have to be extremely aware of my column," he told the Associated Press. [10] In August 2000, Jacoby filed a grievance through his union, The Newspaper Guild. [11] [12]
In 1999, Jacoby became the first recipient of the Breindel Prize, a $10,000 award (since increased to $20,000) for excellence in opinion journalism awarded by Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation. In 2004, he received the Thomas Paine Award from the libertarian law firm the Institute for Justice, an award presented to journalists "who dedicate their work to the preservation and championing of individual liberty." [13] In December 2009, he was presented by the Zionist Organization of America with its Ben Hecht Award for Outstanding Journalism on the Middle East, an award previously won by, among others, the Jerusalem Post's Caroline Glick, syndicated columnist Cal Thomas, the late A.M. Rosenthal of The New York Times , and Daniel Pipes, founder of the Middle East Forum and publisher of Middle East Quarterly. [14]
Jacoby and his wife, Laura Weller, have two sons, Caleb (born 1997) and Micah (born 2003); Micah was born in Guatemala and adopted by the Jacoby family in 2004. [15] They live in Brookline Village, Brookline, Massachusetts. [16] On January 6, 2014, Caleb, a student at the Maimonides School, was reported missing. [16] Three days later, he was found safe in Times Square in New York City. [17] Brookline police later announced that Caleb had run away from home of his own volition. [18] [19] Jacoby wrote a column about the community's response in the Boston Globe. [20]
The Boston Globe, also known locally as the Globe, is an American daily newspaper founded and based in Boston, Massachusetts. The newspaper has won a total of 27 Pulitzer Prizes.
Haaretz is an Israeli newspaper. It was founded in 1918, making it the longest running newspaper currently in print in Israel. It is published in both Hebrew and English in the Berliner format. The English edition is published and sold together with The New York Times International Edition. Its Hebrew and English editions are available on the internet. In North America, it is published as a weekly newspaper, combining articles from the Friday edition with a roundup from the rest of the week. Haaretz is Israel's newspaper of record. It is known for its left-wing and liberal stances on domestic and foreign issues.
Brookline is a town in Norfolk County, Massachusetts, United States, and part of the Boston metropolitan area. An exclave of Norfolk County, Brookline borders six of Boston's neighborhoods: Brighton, Allston, Fenway–Kenmore, Mission Hill, Jamaica Plain, and West Roxbury. The city of Newton borders Brookline to the west. It is known as the birthplace of John F. Kennedy.
Nathan Irving Hentoff was an American historian, novelist, jazz and country music critic, and syndicated columnist for United Media. Hentoff was a columnist for The Village Voice from 1958 to 2009. Following his departure from The Village Voice, Hentoff became a senior fellow at the Cato Institute and continued writing his music column for The Wall Street Journal, which published his works until his death. He often wrote on First Amendment issues, vigorously defending the freedom of the press.
Michael Barnicle is an American journalist and commentator who has worked in print, radio, and television. He is a senior contributor and the veteran columnist on MSNBC's Morning Joe. He is also seen on NBC's Today Show with news/feature segments. He was a regular contributor to the local Boston television news magazine, Chronicle on WCVB-TV, since 1986. Barnicle has also appeared on PBS's Charlie Rose, the PBS NewsHour, CBS's 60 Minutes, MSNBC's Hardball with Chris Matthews, ESPN, and HBO sports programming.
Peter Gammons is an American media personality and recipient of the J. G. Taylor Spink Award for outstanding baseball writing, given by the Baseball Writers' Association of America.
Robert P. Ryan is an American sportswriter, formerly with The Boston Globe, and author. He has been described as "the quintessential American sportswriter" and a basketball guru, and is well known for his coverage of the sport including his famous stories covering the Boston Celtics in the 1970s. After graduating from Boston College, Ryan started as a sports intern for the Globe on the same day as Peter Gammons, and later worked with other notable Globe sportswriters Will McDonough and Leigh Montville. In early 2012, Ryan announced his retirement from sports writing after 44 years, effective at the conclusion of the 2012 Summer Olympics. His final column in the Globe was published August 12, 2012.
Ellen Goodman is an American journalist and syndicated columnist. She won a Pulitzer Prize in 1980. She is also a speaker and commentator.
The Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) is an American nonprofit pro-Israel organization. Founded in 1897, as the Federation of American Zionists, it was the first official Zionist organization in the United States. Early in the 20th century, it was the primary representative of American Jews to the World Zionist Organization, espousing primarily Political Zionism.
Anthony Ezio Massarotti is an American author and a former sportswriter for the Boston Herald and The Boston Globe. He co-hosts a sports talk radio show, Felger & Mazz, on 98.5 The Sports Hub with former Boston Herald columnist Michael Felger. Massarotti has also served as a color commentator for the Boston Red Sox, during their 2022 season.
Raymond Shamie was an American politician and businessman from Massachusetts. Shamie served as the chair of the Massachusetts Republican Party and was twice the Republican nominee for the United States Senate.
Frederick Samuel Hiatt was an American journalist. He was the editorial page editor of The Washington Post, where he oversaw the newspaper's opinion pages and wrote editorials and a biweekly column. He was part of the Post team that won the 2022 Pulitzer Prize in Public Service.
Brookline High School is a four-year public high school in Brookline, Massachusetts. It is a part of Public Schools of Brookline.
The Hebrew Academy of Cleveland is a private day school in Cleveland, Ohio with over 1,000 students. It provides Judaic and secular education from pre-school through high school. The Hebrew Academy was established in 1943 by the Telshe Yeshiva and was the first Jewish day school founded outside the east coast. In 1947, Yavne, a girls division, was added.
Jacoby McCabe Ellsbury is an American former professional baseball center fielder. He played in Major League Baseball (MLB) for the Boston Red Sox from 2007 through 2013 and then played for the New York Yankees from 2014 to 2017. An enrolled member of the Colorado River Indian Tribes, Ellsbury is the first Native American of Navajo descent to play Major League Baseball.
Margaret Wente is a Canadian journalist and was a long-time columnist for The Globe and Mail until August 2019. She received the National Newspaper Award for column-writing in 2000 and 2001. In 2012, Wente was found to have plagiarized on a number of occasions. She was suspended from writing her column, but later reinstated. However, in 2016, she was found to have failed to meet her newspaper's attribution standards in two more columns.
Steve Gilliard was an American freelance journalist and left-wing political blogger who ran the website The News Blog. An outspoken and at times controversial figure, he was an influential voice in the left-wing political blogosphere.
Benjamin Zimmer is an American linguist, lexicographer, and language commentator. He is a language columnist for The Wall Street Journal and contributing editor for The Atlantic. He was formerly a language columnist for The Boston Globe and The New York Times Magazine, and editor of American dictionaries at Oxford University Press. Zimmer was also an executive editor of Vocabulary.com and VisualThesaurus.com.
Brian McGrory is an American journalist, author and publishing executive. He is currently the chair of the department of journalism at Boston University. He was the editor of The Boston Globe from December 2012 through December 2022.
Kevin Cullen is an American journalist and author. He was a member of The Boston Globe's 2003 investigative team. The Boston Globe as an institution won a Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for coverage of the sexual abuse scandal in the Catholic archdiocese of Boston. Cullen is co-author of The New York Times bestsellerWhitey Bulger: America's Most Wanted Gangster and the Manhunt That Brought Him to Justice.