Giving Us the Business
BIG BREAK Greg Zuckerman got his big break at the Journal writing about the bond market which didn’t particularly interest him — but was the step to two decades of prestigious stints (Photos: Amir Levy)
I
t’s rare to come across a teenager let alone an Orthodox Jewish one who’s had a book of his own published by age 14 but two teen co-authors — brothers too — is an absolute one-of-a-kind. Then again Gabriel and Eli Zuckerman have an exceptional role model in their dad Wall Street Journal business writer Gregory Zuckerman whose name graces the book’s cover as well.
Rising Above published this past May is intended to inspire younger readers with the stories of 11 pro athletes who faced and overcame daunting personal challenges to become stars in their chosen sports. For Greg the idea of melding two loves — in this case of family and writing — is nothing new. It’s something he’s done throughout his 20 years at the Journal and at the New York Post before that combining a lifelong interest in matters financial with an artisan’s affinity for words.
“I’ve always loved Wall Street” Greg muses as we sit down to chat in a conference room at the midtown Manhattan headquarters of Rupert Murdoch’s NewsCorp the Journal’s parent company. “In camp the counselors would leave on days off and bring me back the Barron’s financial newspaper. I was literally trading stocks during camp. What little bar mitzvah money I had I put into the market and lost most of it but it was good experience. And I always loved writing. But I never thought about combining these loves because I had never known anyone who’d been a journalist. How many day school kids go on to become journalists?”
With a freshly-minted poli sci degree from Brandeis that couldn’t even land him an interview — let alone a job — in the financial sector and a young family to support the native of Providence Rhode Island did various and sundry things for a few years including giving bar mitzvah lessons (“It’s a good skill to have and good money”). His entry into the field of journalism finally came the old-fashioned way — he stumbled into it.
“I’ve seen people at the Journal and elsewhere who wanted to keep Shabbat but once you’re flexible one week then you’re finished because what about the next week and the week after that? It’s no longer a principle but an option ” laments Zuckerman
From there he went on to write about the business world for the Post until one day he learned of an opening at the Journal for someone to write about the bond market. This was the big time a plum slot at America’s premier financial publication. But ever the straight-shooter Greg told the Journal’s interviewer that while he liked finance he wasn’t particularly interested in or knowledgeable about the bond market. If this was his one shot at joining the Journal he said he’d take it but he preferred to wait for other opportunities. Returning to his desk at the Post he took calls from two friends with the same message: “Don’t be crazy. They may never call again. Take the job.”
He did and in the two decades since Greg has moved on from the bond market to cover a variety of beats including a prestigious stint writing the paper’s influential Heard on the Street column. Now he holds the title of “special writer ” which he says chuckling “just means they ran out of money to give me a raise so they gave me a nice title.” But self-deprecation aside Greg feels fortunate to have his current role in which “they kind of let me wander a bit. They let me look for good stories so I’ve been very blessed that if I find a good one they’ll let me run it. I just did a story about 9/11 and a brother who lost his sister that day — but who for years couldn’t deal with it. Finally after 15 years he decided to find out what had happened in his sister’s last moments at Cantor Fitzgerald where she worked. He tried to piece it together and my story is about his journey and how he put it all together. This one was unusual because most of my work has a financial angle.”
Although covering the world of high finance doesn’t naturally lend itself to a connection with things Jewish Greg says the Jewish angle comes out in surprising ways in his writing especially in the books he’s written which now number three with the appearance of Rising Above. In the latter book for example among the profiles of celebrated sports figures who surmounted challenges is one of Jacques Demers who survived childhood abuse at the hands of his father to become the coach of the Montreal Canadiens hockey team.
Demers told Zuckerman that he never knew what a happy loving family looked like until he was hired by a local Jewish grocer in his Montreal neighborhood and observed the way this man treated his loved ones. “I put the story in there” Greg observes “because I felt it was a kiddush Hashem. So stuff sneaks into my writing. I don’t force it in but because it’s of interest to me it finds its way in there.”
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