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We remain trapped in Reagan-era contradictions, the decade when America roared and workers lost their security. From The Boston Globe Karen Nussbaum, cofounder of the 9to5 nonprofit organization, featured in the 2021 documentary “9to5: The Story of a Movement.” GLOBEDOCS FILM FESTIVAL Reporters like to say that our stories are the first draft of history. It’s a comforting cliché, implying that even if we miss the grand trajectory of an era while typing on deadline, our dispat

From The Guardian ‘You can just see the way he looks at the world: the glitz, the cheapness, the gold brocade everywhere. That screams 1980s’ … Donald Trump in 1987.Photograph: Joe McNally/Getty Images Donald Trump is “so much a creature of the 80s but even in the 80s, everyone made fun of him,” Jonathan Kaufman said. General Electric CEO Jack Welch, “the most prominent business figure in the country, maybe in the world, mocked him. No one took him seriously. “Even today, if

From Bloomberg John Rogers was a Wall Street pioneer during a decade of Black advancement, but his success reveals a divide within Black America that has only grown wider. Illustration: Matt Williams for Bloomberg Many Americans worry about the wealth gap between Black and White America. Less noticed is a divide that has grown even faster: the one within Black America. The top 10% of Black earners now make almost 10 times what the bottom 10% make, a wider gap than among White

From the show notes... "Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Jonathan Kaufman — director of the School of Journalism at Northeastern University — joins me to talk about his new book, "When America Roared: How the 1980s Saved, Then Broke the Country and Led Us to Today." We get into Reagan's media deregulation, the death of the Fairness Doctrine, Jack Welch and the rise of mass layoffs, the Federalist Society's origins, and how so much of what's broken today traces straight back

A sold-out event, interviewed by Jill Abramson, former executive editor of The New York Times! Thank you, Brookline Booksmith, for hosting such a memorable evening.

From Time.com fotograzia—Getty Images Like most Americans, I arrived at the election watch party on Nov. 4, 1980, expecting a long night. It was a little before 9:00 p.m. in Chicago. By 9:05 the television networks had called the election for Ronald Reagan and against Jimmy Carter. I was 24. The party’s host, a good friend and conservative, Reagan-supporting medical student, laughed exuberantly. Stragglers walking into the party were stunned that the election night was alread

Read the full piece at The New York Times. I spent the 1980s in newsrooms and boardrooms, watching companies get reshaped, watching regulators get dismantled, watching a small group of conservative strategists play a very long game. At the time, I thought I was covering a temporary correction, a pendulum swing that would eventually swing back. It didn't. In my new guest essay for The New York Times, I argue that we're not living after the 1980s. We're living in them. The deca

From The Globe and Mail “This hundred days has moved with incredible velocity,” said Jonathan Kaufman, one of the professors of the course and the director of the university’s School of Journalism. “When we got to 93 days I thought we had gone through eight years. But unlike eight years ago, there was a sense among students of outrage and going to the barricades. This year they are more reflective. They’re trying to figure out what it means rather than automatically go into o

From Market Scale The world of journalism is in a state of flux, driven by the rapid evolution of technology and the shifting dynamics of how the public consumes news. In an era where algorithms and social media dominate the dissemination of information, the role of journalism in society is under more scrutiny than ever. As we navigate these changes, the fundamental principles that have guided journalism for centuries—ethics, fairness, and the importance of in-person reportin

From Northeastern Global News Photo by Matthew Modoono/Northeastern University Since the Oct. 7 surprise attack on Israel, the Associated Press and most American news organizations have defined Hamas as a “militant group.” But not all news organizations. More than 60 dailies owned by Alden Global Capital ran an editorial urging the news media to describe Hamas a “terrorist organization.” Who’s right? It depends who you ask, says Jonathan Kaufman, director of Northeastern’s S

From WCVB Boston President Joe Biden is confirming that U.S. citizens are among the hostages captured by Hamas in this weekend’s attack on Israel. Hundreds of civilians have been killed, including at least 14 American citizens. Biden condemned the militant group for "sheer evil." A Belmont, Massachusetts, man who lives in Israel and another man whose family has been captured by Hamas are sharing their stories. More Here...

From The Guardian For two decades, Fox News has reigned supreme as America’s number one cable news channel. Until January, that is, when the network dropped to a once unthinkable third place in the ratings. The response from Fox News has not been a period of sombre self-reflection. Instead, the network seems to have made a chaotic lunge towards the right wing in recent weeks as hosts have dabbled in conspiracy theories and aggressively attacked the Joe Biden administration. M

From LA Review of Books AS A SHANGHAI-BORN WRITER, when I was invited to review journalist Jonathan Kaufman’s new biographically driven history of the city’s pre-1949 era, I readily agreed. One reason was its title, The Last Kings of Shanghai: The Rival Jewish Dynasties That Helped Create Modern China, which led me to assume, correctly, that it would deal in part with the Sassoon family. I knew the Sassoon name from a book series I read in my childhood titled Shanghai Stories

From Jewish Book Council If a Jew­ish his­to­ri­an were to advance a claim for the diver­si­ty of the expe­ri­ence of the dias­po­ra, the case would rest with the saga of the Sas­soons and the Kadoories. Once based in Bagh­dad, these two clans (and, yes, they were dis­tant­ly relat­ed) relo­cat­ed to Chi­na in the mid-nine­teenth cen­tu­ry. Instead of the mate­r­i­al strug­gles that, until the last cen­tu­ry, marked the mil­len­nia of exile for near­ly all of Jew­ry, these tw

From The Wall Street Journal Shanghai in the 1920s and ’30s was one of the world’s most modern, vibrant cities. And the city’s richest man was Victor Sassoon, a Jazz Age Richard Branson who gave costume parties in the ballroom of his swanky Cathay Hotel. Another local tycoon, Elly Kadoorie, built himself a palace modeled on Versailles, and his family moved around in a fleet of Rolls-Royces. The opulence of the Sassoons and Kadoories is all the more remarkable considering the

From NPR Illinois A new book looks at the history of China’s development and the important role played by two Jewish families with massive business empires. Here & Now’s Robin Young speaks with Jonathan Kaufman, author of “The Last Kings of Shanghai: The Rival Jewish Dynasties That Helped Create Modern China.” He is also director of the journalism school at Northeastern University. More Here...

From Asian Review of Books Chinese often claim a special relationship, sometimes verging on kinship, with Jews. The origins and reasons remain unclear but it may be at least in part due to two Jewish families—the Sassoons and their rivals, the Kadoories—both of whom played lasting roles in the development of two of China’s most modern cities: Shanghai and its rival, Hong Kong. Jonathan Kaufman’s new book, The Last Kings of Shanghai: The Rival Jewish Dynasties That Helped Crea

From The Boston Globe Jonathan Kaufman's book almost certainly will revive interest in a much-forgotten wrinkle of Jewish and Chinese history. More Here...

From Kirkus Reviews Historical account of two significant Jewish families who built wildly prosperous financial empires in Shanghai and Hong Kong that lasted for nearly two centuries. From opium trading to banking to real estate, the Sassoon and Kadoorie families “helped open the world to China—and opened China to the world.” As Pulitzer Prize–winning reporter Kaufman notes, they were “taipans,” alternately revered, feared, and loathed by the Chinese, who have largely “obscur

From Library Journal Kaufman (journalism, Northwesten Univ.; A Hole in the Heart of the World) unearths a hidden history with ties to the current global market in this account of the investments of two Jewish families who form an unexpected foundation for modern-day China. Both the Kadoorie and Sassoon families fled persecution in Iraq, escaping to China. Elias Sassoon arrived in Shanghai in 1850, trading opium. Elly Kadoorie settled in Hong Kong in 1880, as a Sassoon employe