ENTERTAINMENT
MIKE ROSENBAUM
Special to The Jewish News
li A aura Berman is a
newspaper col-
umnist, not a
mathematician.
But she under-
stands the geometric axiom
that says the shortest
distance between two points
is a straight line.
Ms. Berman, 36, was in-
terested in writing "from a
really early age. I saw it as
the greatest thing you could
do?'
So she took the straightest
possible line from her early
literary enthusiasm to her
eventual journalistic career.
She worked for her junior
high school newspaper, then
for her high school and col-
lege papers. While in college,
she had summer internships
with two newspapers in the
Knight (now Knight-Ridder)
newspaper chain. After
graduating in 1975, she got a
job with the local Knight
paper, the Free Press. Four
years ago, she moved down
Lafayette street to become a
columnist with The Detroit
News.
Of course, no road is perfect-
ly straight. And Berman's
career path featured some
twists and turns and a few
bumps. But she overcame all
obstacles, including an early
brush with First Amendment
principle — and a junior high
school principal.
While writing for her junior
high paper, she did an "Art
Buchwald-inspired parody,"
she recalls. "It was about
looking for the principal," a
mysterious man whom she
never saw. She was refused
permission to run the arti-
cle, and "I quit in a huff."
Ms. Berman's road had no
similar bumps at Oak Park
High School, where she not
only worked on the school
paper but, as a senior, work-
ed afternoons at the
Southfield Eccentric as part of
the school's vocational
program.
Although she entered the
University of Michigan in
1972 with a firm decision to
become a professional jour-
nalist, Ms. Berman did not
study journalism at U of M.
She did work for the school
paper the Michigan Daily, but
she majored in history and
English.
"I had this idea that it was
Photo by Glenn Triest
Detroit News columnist Laura Berman
is headed straight for success.
better — and I really advise
people to do this — to know
about the world than it is to
know about journalism. You
can learn how to do jour-
nalism. I'm not sure it's
something you really learn
best in school."
Ms. Berman graduated in
1975 and landed a job at the
Free Press as a feature writer
in what was then called the
"Women's Section." During
her 11 years at the Free Press,
she worked at "everything —
from writing about
refrigerator magnets on the
women's page in 1976 to be-
ing a city desk reporter and
an investigative reporter. At
one point, I was classified as
a political reporter."
Ms. Berman also wrote a
column on ,magazines, then
closed her Free Press career
with a two-year stint as a
Sunday Magazine staff writer.
In 1986, she accepted a job
at the News, before her role
was defined. When she was of-
fered her own column, she ac-
cepted without hesitation. In-
side, however, she had doubts.
"I'd never done any personal
essays. It scared me because
I'd never done any writing
like that before. It seemed
like a great opportunity, but
it seemed like I could fall flat
on my face, too."
Originally, she wanted to
write "a very contemporary
column that reflected a lot of
different concerns, that ad-
dressed the emotional as well
as the social."
Through the past four
years, the Monday-Wednes-
day-Friday column has fo-
cused on people rather than
issues. When writing recent-
ly about the Savings and
Loan mess and the involve-
ment of Neil Bush, son of
President George Bush, Ms.
Berman avoided details of the
situation, writing instead
about a father's concern for
his son.
"It's a natural tendency I
have to be interested in
things as they're expressed by
people, more than just the
issues themselves, " Ms. Ber-
man says. "The other thing is
that, as a columnist, I don't
see my role as writing
editorials. So one way to have
it be something different from
what it would be on the
editorial page is to write from
a more human perspective."
Although she had never
written personal essays before
becoming a columnist in
1986, Ms. Berman believes
THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS
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