Transcript: Lee Kravitz on Journalism’s Evolution, Storytelling, and the Power of Reflection

Good morning, and welcome back to the show. We are here with Mr. Lee Kravitz, former editorial director of Scholastic, former editor-in-chief of Parade Magazine, and author of Unfinished Business. How are you, Mr.

Kravitz? I am great and really happy to be here with you. No, it's great to have you on the show. Thanks for making the time.

I'll start off kind of going back to your beginnings. When you first started at U.S., when did you start the school? And early on, did you kind of already have the idea of being a journalist or editor? Well, I started in fourth grade, and I had no idea then what I wanted to do.

I grew up in University Heights, went to a public school, Belvoir Elementary School, and then there I was sitting in a classroom at U.S. with people I hadn't met before. Wow. I mean, it's interesting to hear everybody's journeys coming to U.S., but do you have any fond memories of school traditions, events, or just moments that really stand out to you to this day? Dozens, dozens and dozens.

And some of them were great moments, happy moments, and others were a product of being at U.S. at a time of transition in the world. I mean, this was the early to late 1960s. 1971. I was at U.S. at a time where there were very few Jews. I was the first Jew in my class of 1971.

And there were even fewer African Americans. And yet I came to a place of just stunning and wonderful traditions. Some of those traditions challenged me a bit. You know, as a Jewish kid, going into chapel and reciting the Lord's Prayer put me into a sort of early ethical bind, but I really took to the basic culture of the school and the essential mission of the school, which was to create boys who were all around, you know, who really didn't only just develop their minds, but also their bodies, their ethical very strong at U.S. and has been with me through life.

I did not even think of becoming a journalist. In fact, I didn't work on the U.S. news. I did become editor of The Record II, the literary publication. And my life as an editor probably began there.

I wrote poetry at the time. I really thought I'd be a poet when I was in 10th grade. a professional athlete and was sort of headed in the direction, at least, of being a college athlete and then got very badly hurt playing football, varsity football and baseball and had to kind of recalibrate myself, look deeply inside myself. And what I turned out to want to do or the vehicle for doing that was writing. life, and that's where it began. I read books.

Yeah, that's great. Was there any type of story or book that you enjoyed reading? I know you mentioned poetry, but did you have a specific genre that you loved? Back then, I took to literature.

I just couldn't get enough of it. I couldn't get enough of the Hemingway I read in class, Picard had Jewish American literature. And the greatest, greatest stuff that I took to was philosophy and psychology. Can you imagine that?

I mean, you imagine that because you have classes that have that, those works, the works of Camus and Sartre and all the great philosophers, Plato, Freud. That's what I was reading in 11th grade, thanks to a couple, of the teachers, and I'd spend my every free hour sitting in the backyard of my house reading that and thinking about it and taking to heart what those great thinkers and writers said. What do you think is so important about, you know, reading and kind of fostering that love for reading? Because in a time where we have these things, the phones, you know, reading kind of goes to the side.

What do you think is the importance of fostering a love of reading? Well, I think, For me, for my children grew up in a house of readers. My wife's a literary agent. You know, I've immersed in writing books, editing books.

And many of the authors or some of the authors I read at university school, I ended up being their editors later in life. People like Norman Mailer and David Halberstam, who were writing important works in the 60s. their editor of when I was at Parade of many, many stories. And what it is, is I think it's not only the act of imagination and contemplativeness that happens when you read a book, but books help you to develop empathy for other people, new ideas. They force you to kind of sit down and grapple with the thoughts of other people.

Tremendous preparation for life. You know, throughout your high school career and just career in general, did you have any mentors who significantly influenced you? And if so, how did they impact you? Well, the big mentor was there was one teacher who changed my life.

And it was F. Washington Jarvis of the Jarvis Scholars. was and what I wanted to become, entered this 29-year-old Episcopal priest who, bookshelves were full of all these great thinkers and writers, and really led us to examine what did we want, what meaning did we want to gain through life. He stuck with me the most. He asked everyone, and when he went on to Roxbury Latin School, You always had to try to ascertain what your epitaph would be.

What would it be at the end of your life that you'd look back on your life and want to achieve? And that was a starting point for really looking inside oneself and setting one's goals, ethical, moral, how you're going to live your life. 54 after a career as a journalist and editor of the largest publication, most widely read publication in the world. At that point, I suffered a moment of adversity. I lost my job.

I was fired for reasons I didn't, were never told me. And I went into a real questioning of who I was. to get a job was to go back and take 10 journeys to take care of and address the unfinished emotional, spiritual business of my life. And number one, or not number one, but one of the 10 things I did was I realized I'd never thank Tony Jarvis for the role he had played in my life. Here's someone who really shaped me, this teacher that U.S. gifted to me and so many of my peers at that time. both feeling a need to have a serious conversation with him again, and also just to be grateful to him, to be thank you.

And so what I did was I ended up spending three days with him in Boston, shadowing him and picking up on conversation we had, well, 40 years before about the meaning of life. And it was powerful. A chapter is very powerful. inspired by it, which means they were moved and inspired by the idea that you could have a teacher as great as Tony, and also by the idea of being able to return at a later stage of your life and getting perspective on it with that teacher. It was just extraordinary, and I'm so glad that I had that opportunity.

I think he was glad, too, that I wrote his story. campaigns with organizations like the American Heart Association, the Nature Conservancy. What drove these initiatives and what impact did they really have? Well, they had a tremendous impact, first of all, because there were 75 million readers every Sunday of Parade Magazine. You know, it was the one place that all of America congregated.

At the end of the day, they went to 60 Minutes. The beginning of the day, they were with Parade, all at the same time. So I was aware of the great, great honor, privilege, and obligation involved in having that publication. It was almost like I had my own pulpit every Sunday.

It also let me partner with organizations to raise awareness about important causes. For example, you mentioned the American Heart Association. I got Bill Clinton to become involved in that campaign. attack. What better messenger for the American people than a former president telling them how much heart health is important, how eating well is important.

And so I could start these campaigns. I did Child Hunger for three years with an organization called Share Our Strength, ABC TV that would devote Friday nights programming to the theme of fighting child hunger. We had a goal of eradicating it, reporting from all over. I have the ability to do that.

And my prime motivation was that's why I was in journalism. I was in journalism not to necessarily investigate and tear down. I mean, there are others who did that better, but I could bring people together. I could give people information.

I could tell stories through the publication that would touch people. and help them improve their lives. So that was the motivation. It was to have just that little bit of an impact on other people. And as a result, some great things happened.

Some laws changed in Congress. People around the country started all talking about the same issues at the same time. People were moved and inspired. privilege that always was for me. And I'll tell you that it's scholastic.

I had the same opportunity because the magazines I was in charge of went into 95% of American schools. So I got to introduce topics through those some one-issue magazines that had never been taught in those schools, like AIDS. When it came out, I made issues like homelessness, something teachers could discuss racism, human rights. We did the largest human rights campaign awareness at the time in the United States.

All this stuff. And it comes out of university school in a way because that's the kind of nudge you get that you, I know you're doing right now because I see it in the alumni journal. I see this for your podcast. It's a real nudge to make the world a better place, your communities a better place, to use your own gifts and your own platforms for the greater common good.

Yeah, that's amazing. So how did you get to such a powerful position? How did you work your way up through the ranks of the journalism world? of college with one goal, which was to travel and see the world. I had a very provincial upbringing.

My family didn't have resources at that point to take us places. I was hungry to experience things. And so what I did was take a year, traveled by Land Rover, overland from London to Calcutta. a time of great conflict brewing in the world. You know, the world was on the cusp of cataclysmic change.

This was in the late 1970s, right before the Ayatollah Khomeini came into Iran. The Shah was overthrown. It was before the Soviets went into Afghanistan. And I was traveling by the overland during that time, something you cannot do since that time that I did it. war in Pakistan and Balochistan, Mrs.

Gandhi's emergency in India. And so at 22 years old, I was with no journalistic background having that experience. And it opened my eyes. It just opened my eyes to the world.

And I started writing articles and photographing along the way and selling them to places like the and Science Monitor and just newspapers back home. And that became the beginning of my journalism career. I learned that journalism was this tremendous opportunity to experience things I would not ever have otherwise been able to. I could spend time with leaders of tribes in Pakistan.

I could just have a first row seat at so much of the stuff going on. and share those stories with people back home. And that's how I became a journalist. That's amazing. I came back to Cleveland and freelanced as a journalist.

After that, I was broke and I bartended for five years and wrote for magazines, The Plain Dealer. I was even director of publications at university school for a couple of those years in my mid to late. So that's how it all began. And then I went to journalism school.

What were some of those most memorable moments during your time in journalism and some that really stick with you today and have taught you some of the greatest lessons? Oh, you know, I was lucky enough to be in a lot of places that were really interesting, that were being reported about that most people don't get to experience. You know, I saw, I was at the inauguration of Daniel Ortega as president of Nicaragua in 1985 during the Contra War. And it's still very vivid in my mind, particularly in the context of today, 40 years later, when this great hope for a new way of life in Nicaragua has turned into a dictator.

You know, I've been in Castro's Cuba. Russia reporting when Yeltsin stood on the tank and the Soviet Union was falling apart in 1991. All those experiences, particularly what sticks with me, is not just a spectacle of them, but the stories of the people I got to interview, the people in their homes and on the streets, longing for a future that would be more free, have more opportunity. That stuff sticks with me.

I used to spend a lot of time in refugee camps in Africa, in Thailand, reporting from there, trying to raise awareness. You know, the faces, the eyes, the aspirations of those people the people there really sticks with me. You know, there are lessons that I've gotten along the way, the whole way for me, life, the main lesson, and it's part of every memoir I've written and book, is I've taken it personally, that life is a journey. You know, I structure my life as a journey.

When I want to answer questions, for myself about who I am and what the world's like and what I can contribute to the world. It always begins with a journey. I go on it. I write about it.

And then I share my story with others and hope others will. That's so powerful. Yeah. You know, going to one of the two stories, it's kind of one of the ones that we're going to focus on for this next part, Unfinished Business.

And you talk about how after your time at Prame, you reconnected with people. not seen as much during your busy schedule. To start, what advice would you give to individuals struggling to balance demanding careers with personal relationships? And also, what's Unfinished Business about? Well, Unfinished Business is, for me, it was what I left behind in my pursuit of my career.

I think a lot of people face this. I know they do. And I know many of the university school students, you and your peers, also face this because you're ambitious. You want to have full lives.

You want to, and you're going to have much opportunity to do that. You're going to, like all of us, have ups and downs. But as you shape a career and make a career, it's easy to lose sight of your values and where you've come from. And that happened at the end of my career, which was, as an editor, which was an exciting one.

All of a sudden, all my spiritual, what I was really most interested in on the deepest level were often spiritual quests, was often my relationships and my friendships. They had, it's easy to put them in the back burner. And then you reach a time like I did when you feel empty for a second. And you realize that that's really important stuff, that you aren't going to feel full and fulfilled and happy and connected.

Connection is the main word here. It's a really important one. That's how I felt when I was 54 years old, looking out at my future and back at my past. I have an aunt who was the most important person in my youth in terms of the person I felt loved me most and gave me support.

For 15 years, no one had seen her. She was a schizophrenic and had been institutionalized. And when I had a moment to think about, I said, nobody in my family has seen this person who loved me so much and who I still love. So I searched for her and I found her and I connected with her and visited her and spent time with her in the facility she was in.

I can't tell you how happy and meaningful that was for me, how it was for her. That was the first journey I took of 10 to reconnect. So Unfinished Business was really about that. And it was also about, for me, sometimes if you don't address that unfinished business in your life, those connections and issues on the back burner, they kind of build up.

They build up. For me, it was, you know, there were people I had to make amends to. I had to say I'm sorry to because unwittingly I may have done some harm. Sometimes we get a feedback loop in our mind.

The same stories go over and over again of should have, should have, should have, should have. If you don't address that stuff, it builds up and it can hold you back. It can become an albatross. It can sap you of energy.

And so it's good to mine to it. And it's essential to do if you are going to, as you asked me the question before, create a meaningful balance in your life between work and family and community and friends. You don't want to be weighted down. what it is. And for me, it allowed me taking those 10 journeys in a book about my journey to move forward in my life at a point in life where I still had, hopefully, a third of it left.

How do I make the most of this very short and precious life I had that helped me go forward? And I think that's so great because everyone at some point struggles with that balance because there is no perfect balance. But do you think there's a way to recognize when things are getting out of balance, when maybe like the work life is taking over personal life? Is there a way to recognize that so that it doesn't get too out of balance?

And like you talked about, build up. Yeah. And especially for you guys, I'm sure you already have seen signs of that. tired, when you're on edge, when you're irritable, when self-doubt kind of feels out of control. It's a sign to yourself to look and do something a little different or take a break, take a rest.

I do it, and I've done it for years through meditation, yoga. I put myself in situations where I can be contemplative. called Pilgrim was about my search for a spiritual home and a place where I could be among a community of people that mattered. And for me, you know, you'll know it by the signs that something is not just right. And you also know it in the reaction people who you care about or love have to you, you know, their feeling being neglected.

When you feel off balance, it's a time to kind of take stock. Take stock of where you are, where you want to be, and make use of the resources around you, the people you trust. So maybe dig into a book, as I often did, that can give you not only tips, but wisdom. And just treat yourself well.

It's amazing what happens when you just go out of your day-to-day, go to a museum, go to a park, you know, work out. I work out all the time. I know you had my good friend and former teammate Mark Burns on your show, and it was great to hear about how he's taken care of himself in tough times. And these are all strategies, I think, that you will find on your own.

It's tough. You go to college. You are going to be faced with challenges and opportunities all the way and take care of yourself. What strategies have you found effective in confronting and overcoming these personal regrets?

I know you talked about meditation, that introspectiveness of it. see anything help in lowering the amount of work that you had kind of on your plate or maybe focusing a little bit more on personal relationships? I did a lot of that, but I also, because I found meaning in this idea of going on journeys and writing about it, that creates tremendous stress because the thing that's hardest for me in the world is writing. It's always been that way. It's not easy.

I've found being with my family, my pets. We have lots of pets. We have dogs, cats. All that focus on other people, the needs of family.

I've been involved in lots of boards of organizations and causes that are meaningful to me. been a tonic for me. It helps you get out of yourself and focus on what you can give to other people to help them live good lives and full lives. So that's what works for me. Otherwise, I watch a lot of Law and Order and a lot of things that probably, I mean, just like everyone else, and I have to fight against social media, and it's holding my attention hostage. and so on.

So, and by staying curious, you know, getting out of any routine and sort of following the path of what am I really curious about? What do I want to know about? Experiencing beauty of any sort by going to nature and art museum. For me, those are all wonderful ways to, Just achieve balance and keep on going.

I'll tell you that speaking of old friends, every Monday I have a Zoom with my roommates from college. It started during COVID when we were all alone. I've also started going to museums with a handful of those people. We do it every two months. afterwards.

That's reconnection. Something wonderful in that. You know, what do you kind of hope your legacy will be, both in the publishing world and in your personal life? Well, in the publishing world, you know, the publishing world's in a state of major, major transition and change.

The last couple of years, I chaired the board of a startup news organization. in upstate New York, where I have a country home, and it had become a news desert. It's one of those places where it had seven newspapers, and they were all gone by 10 years ago. And to me, that was, I saw what was dangerous about that. It led to polarization politically, a meanness in the community.

People weren't seeing the faces of their neighbors. They didn't have a common set of issues in town meetings to discuss So I helped to start what's become a very strong online news organization in Dutchess County, upstate New York. I don't know if that's going to be a legacy, but I felt that it was something that as long as I'm alive, I wanted to feel secure and that there might be a sustainable local news presence where people actually got news and contributed to the news. It was really, they were directly involved in, and they didn't just shout at each other over issues that were being discussed at a national level.

So that's something I'd like to see happen, is that it's moving in that direction. I did a book with Andy Stern, who was the head of the SEIU. He was probably America's most prominent labor leader in the 90s and 2000s. together to find out what the future of work in America might be. And what we found by two years of talking to everyone was that we thought about 45, 47 percent of the jobs 25, 30 years from now will be obsolete and many of them will be taken over by AI and other technologies.

And so it seemed to us what we offered was the idea of a real detailed plan for universal basic income for raising the 40. You may have heard about that. One of the readers of our book was a guy named Andrew Yang. He read our book and he took our suggestion of running for president on the ticket of universal basic income.

He did that. He ran for the Democratic nomination and raised that issue nationally. And I think that we have to really think about what society we're going to have and how we're going to take care of people and help give them a sense of meaning in the future. So I'd like to have been a little piece of that story.

But my legacy really is my children. You know, I hope that they're empathetic people. You know, my family, my family itself had a lot of dysfunction in it. I hope that they've broken the cycle of dysfunction.

Some of you in your audience may feel that in their own families. In journalism, it's going to go in its own direction for the most part. Who knows? But I've told my story, and I've told it in books, and I hope somewhere along the way some of my grandchildren and great-grandchildren will read those and at least know and feel connected to their own past people whose shoulders I stood on.

I think that's a good legacy. It's a legacy grounded in a certain amount of love. What my next memoir is, it's a memoir of my life as a dreamer. And this is directly related to what I want to, as part of my legacy, contribute. which I love because it is a crucial question.

What gets you up in the morning? And what gets me up in the morning is writing down my dreams. I'm one of those people who recalls their dreams with incredible specificity. Just through, during COVID, I found that I wasn't going to ever, I realized in my state of health, my age, I was never going to be the guy running around the world taking journeys and being at war zones or whatever it was.

But every night during that period when I was isolated often in quarantine, I would take a journey in my dreams. Every night was an adventure. And I made it my reporting beat. You know, going to that why question, I'll ask it now because you're going to ask it anyway.

Parade Magazine, and ultimately writing Unfinished Business and many other memoirs and books, you've told powerful stories connected with incredible people and reflected on the importance of personal and professional growth. Looking back, what has been the deeper purpose doing everything you've done, and what is the core motivation that keeps you telling those same stories, exploring those new ideas, and pushing yourself forward no matter the set book? In other words, as we always ask, what is your why? is self-discovery on one level. I write my books both for me to go on a journey, a journey of self-discovery and of curiosity, sharing it with others and hoping that I can inspire others to do their own forms of self-discovery and journeying and all in the service of becoming a more compassionate and empathetic person.

That's been a big push and lesson in my life is that you have to really, I'll quote you something that Proust said that I used at the beginning of one of my books. We don't receive wisdom. We must discover it for ourselves after a journey that no one can take for us or spare us. So one of the things I hope to do through my storytelling and my own experience and writing about it is to help inspire people to honor their own journeys.

You're going to go on it anyway. That's what life is. And you discover wisdom along the way in a way that only you can ascertain. Well, I want to go back to your experience in the journalism world and just the news reporting world.

We have so much information coming at us at all times. How do you think that impacts the journalism world and the impact of having those news sources coming at us from everywhere at all times? Well, there are a couple of things that are definitely happening. One is that people tend to only listen to the news sources that already kind of confirm whatever bias or interest they have.

There's a real problem in that. that particularly with this in social media and with AI is going to continue to be incorporated and interwoven into it is the fine-tuning that the technology itself does to kind of manipulate you or give you what you'll click on. We've already seen evidence of it that's not been particularly good society. It's not good for having a common set of facts. Fact-checking is something that's almost non-existent and not even believed in anymore by wide swaths of the American public.

Meta just has eliminated its fact-checkers. I'll tell you at Parade, I had a whole team of them who fact-checked every single word. In fact, in the publication, I had lawyers go over the stuff for the simple reason that if I got things wrong, my 75 million readers would tell me and someone would sue the company that owned the publication. It's kind of the Wild West right now.

So I don't know what is going to, outside of a certain degree of regulation, kind of be a corrective on that. One thing that I, you've got to be a smart consumer of the media. I mean, I'm a big fan of media literacy. I don't know if you have classes in it at university school.

It's going to be important. So that's one answer. You know, it's so easy to become in an echo chamber, so easy not to be exposed to other points of view. It's so easy to be misled.

It's so easy for technology to change the reality of what we see with our own eyes. These are all challenges that the news industry is facing. And the news industry and journalism also faces the problem of funding. You know, it takes money to have reporters out there in the world.

So in a sense, you have to be a wise consumer, observer of life. What makes it so important to uphold the integrity of reporting? accountable their local officials to really know where their taxpayer funding is going. You need to have people who will counter what you're told through opinion makers with what's really going on. I could give you a thousand examples of that and I don't have to because you see it every day in your own consumption of news.

I've created news magazines for young people in my career. And it's just so important to have a check, to have real information so that you can make decisions that are good for you and your communities and your families and your futures. You don't have to trust fully every reporter. You should always have a skeptical mind about everything you But if we don't have that coming in, I don't know what's going to happen.

You see it in a lot of foreign countries where I've reported, for example, Cuba and the Soviet Union, where they have a press that is controlled by the state, where it's a propaganda arm of the state. And it's like the people are either manipulated or utterly cynical. You know, I think this might be one of our last questions, but if you could give advice to current U.S. students who are interested in writing or publishing or being just a writer like you, what would it be? Do it.

I mean, do it on whatever level you feel compelled to do it. Write a daily journal. thoughts down as poetry. Get involved in your school media. Do what you guys are doing, putting out a podcast.

You're learning skills. You're developing an audience. You're creating a podcast that goes to an audience. That is like a source of what media is.

I would say become conversant and skilled in the technologies of now and in the future. Don't get wedded to any one of them. They're going to change. Interview your parents and your grandparents and get their stories down and create a legacy for yourself and your own family.

Through them, every action like that you take will lead you more and more to a career as a writer, an editor, a journalist. look like in terms of job opportunity. Take internships if you can. Be curious, ask questions. Get your voice heard.

Shape your words on the paper. Take seriously when your teachers say you're not making sense, as Tony Jarvis did when I was in high school, said that's a non sequedur, that doesn't make any sense. Vague, you know, in the red marks. All that stuff will help you to be a person who can communicate who can look inside themselves and observe the world with the skills it takes to tell stories, present information, and share it in ways that will help your communities and the country.

Well, Mr. Kravitz, it's been great having you on the show today. Thank you so much for taking the time to share your insights, experiences, and just stories with us. To our listeners, thank you so much for tuning in, and we'll hope you join us next Wednesday. day for the next episode of the Late Start Show.

Thank you, Mr. Kravitz. And thank you, guys.