LARRY JAFFEE

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                             About Me

This website is a good representation of the various writing I've done over the past several decades. By no means is it complete, and especially missing are the hundreds of articles I wrote as a staff editor for various now-defunct print and online publications or others that never digitized their pages and/or decommissioned servers.  

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Trained as a journalist, I use my analytical skills in everything I do by coupling critical thinking with a creative flair. As a wordsmith, I find interesting stories in what others might consider mundane. My B2B journalism background is particularly helpful to companies in need of online content creation, media strategy, public relations or marketing materials. I've worked as a senior copywriter at a digital advertising agency, and marketing consultant for clients in the U.S. and Europe.

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My favorite quote is from Albert Einstein: "I have no special talent. I am only passionately curious." The great scientist was obviously being humble, but as a versatile jack of all trades, I can relate to the sentiment. After writing thousands of articles over nearly four decades, being curious about everything serves me well. I have a knack for breaking down jargon for lay audiences. Editors tell me nobody pitch the story ideas that I do. I took Apple Computer's ad campaign to heart: I think differently.

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At several publishing companies, I managed editorial and production staffs and budgets, meeting deadlines for large Fortune 500 enterprises to entrepreneurial startups. I jumped on the Internet in the early 1990s and have since worked in new media, but remain fond of print media and analog technology, despite my iPhone and iPad never being far away. 

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As an entrepreneur, I published and edited for 25 years and 100 issues a quarterly newspaper about the popular British television series EastEnders. I turned over the reins of the Walford Gazette to a contributor in the spring of 2018. The publication resulted in two successful self-published books, Albert Square & Me and Walford State of Mind, and a prototype magazine called UK:Cue, celebrating the cultural exchange between Britain and America in film, theatre & television that was backed by a successful Kickstarter campaign.

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As a college professor specializing in communication arts, my goal is to get my students – now at Rutgers University in Newark, NJ – to think like journalists, much in the way Professor Kingsfield’s objective in the 1970s law school drama The Paper Chase was to get them  “think like lawyers.” I first taught on the college level in the mid-1980s, after which I concentrated on my magazine publishing career. I returned to the classroom in 2013 with the goal of improving my students' media literacy.

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Obviously, the technology available in the digital age is far greater than it was in 1986. We now explore how photographs, text, graphics, and audio, as well as data visualization tools, bring to life compelling stories on computer screens and mobile devices. But the key – no matter what medium – remains vivid writing and coming up with a compelling story.