Knight Center director Eric Freedman moderated a public conversation with Lansing City Pulse founder and publisher Berl Schwartz about his 50-year-and-counting career in journalism.
That career brought him in contact with such figures as Sen. Teddy Kennedy, philosopher Noam Chomsky, anthropologist Margaret Mead, boxer Muhammad Ali, President Gerald Ford and musicians ranging from Alice Cooper, Janis Joplin and Billy Joel to John Lennon, Bob Dylan and Yoko Ono.
Schwartz started as a summer copy boy at the Toledo Blade and moved on to the Philadelphia Bulletin, Louisville Times, Knoxville News-Sentinel, Scripps Howard Newspapers’ Washington Bureau, York (Pennsylvania) Daily Record and United Press International.
In 1994, he moved to Michigan to become general manager of the State News and also taught as an adjunct member at the MSU School of Journalism.
In 2001, he founded the alternative weekly newspaper Lansing City Pulse, which is celebrating its 15^th anniversary.
The Historical Society of Great Lansing sponsored the event.