Farewell Thoughts from This Business Editor
It’s been hundreds, at least. Since I received the honor of joining the ranks of Commentator editors, I’ve received hundreds of pitches for articles from students and school officials. With each pitched article, I immediately flocked to the same question: would publishing this topic provide value to the students of Yeshiva University? That has been my driving force since I became Business Editor and before that, when I was a staff writer: Provide value and sometimes a voice to the student body.
Whether it has been by publishing pieces aimed at helping students secure accounting jobs, jobs in other industries, keep up with the latest Syms happenings, or gain knowledge of the finance and business world, I am humbled by the value I have been allowed to provide to the students of this tremendous University. Oftentimes, providing value meant publishing pieces the YU administration may appreciate. One such piece was highlighting all the great things about the programs’ five majors through an interview with the five departmental chairs. Sometimes, providing value meant publishing pieces which resulted in top administration officials expressing their displeasure with the article.
Since my responsibility was never to the YU or Syms administration, I did my best not to let any rebukes shake or affect me in performing my duty to the students of providing them value and sometimes a voice. I hope my readers feel that my writing and editing lived up to this standard.
This focus on serving readership should not be unique to Yeshiva University’s official school newspaper. Every newspaper or media outlet must, absolutely must, be devoted to serving the interests of its readership or viewership. It seems that far too often in today’s society, newspapers and other media outlets exist only to serve themselves and will, therefore, proceed with any story if they feel it will help make them an extra buck. Yes, I am pointing my finger squarely at news outlets who proclaim to be mainstream and unbiased, such as ABC, CBS, CNN and NBC. A quick YouTube search will show that they are far from unbiased. Outlets such as Fox News and MSNBC are actually a shining light in today’s dark world of skewed media. While granted that they exist to make money and certainly serve particular ideologies, they do not pretend to be without bias. The selfish and politically skewed approach of the above listed and other self-proclaimed impartial news outlets does little more than harm the very people they are supposed to be serving, by infusing them with false or misleading narratives masked as impartial narratives.
Hellos are awkward and goodbyes stink. I’ll take the awkwardness over the latter any day. Yet, here I am, wishing you, my readers, farewell. My time as editor would have been painfully impossible without my strong team of writers. Thank you to those who have stuck by my side. I must single out Ariel Axelrod, Avishai Cohen and Ezra Berman, but the rest who have written for me along the way know who you are. I couldn’t have done it without you.
I would be foolish not to thank Raymond Cohen, the founder of the Commentator Business Section, who brought me aboard a year and a half ago and later entrusted me to help continue his strong legacy. On the topic of editors, these past two semesters would have been a far more difficult journey without the guidance and steady hand of fellow Business Editor Adam Kramer. Thank you to Yechiel Schwab, last year’s Editor-in-Chief, for welcoming me mid-year with open arms and putting up with my at times over-the-top excitement. Thank you as well to this year’s Editor-in-Chief, Doron Levine; it is beyond me how good you have continued to be to me in spite of my occasional mistake.
My most unforgettable article had zero to do with business. In last year’s final edition, I used the Commentator’s strong platform to pen the article It is Time to End the Secrecy: My Mental Health. In it, I detailed my battles with mental illness and message that we, as a society, must end the secrecy surrounding mental health and how doing so will help put to bed the damaging and laughably untrue stigmas of mental health illnesses.
Lastly and most importantly, I must thank my readers: There is no Business Editor, or paper for that matter, without its readers. So, I thank every one of you for sticking with me and the paper and making these past three semesters perhaps the most successful the Commentator has ever had. It has been a pleasure and privilege to serve you. Let’s do this again sometime, but for now, this is farewell.
