Bill Falk: Launching a New Weekly

When Bill Falk was an undergrad at New York University in the mid-70s, he changed his major three times before settling on journalism. For a while, he even dabbled in astronomy. Fortunately for the world of writing, Falk, who is currently the editor-in-chief of a news magazine, The Week, quickly realized he wouldn’t able to handle the more advanced physics.

More than 26 years later, Falk is “having the most fun I’ve had in my career,” working at The Week, the magazine he helped launch in April 2001. Falk enjoys the wide variety of subject matter he deals with, a mix of politics, culture, science, health, and more, “It’s really a forum for ideas on what’s going on in the world today,” he says.

Work wasn’t always this much fun. After graduating, Falk landed a job at the Gannett Westchester newspaper as an overnight copy desk editor. “My schedule was 11 p.m. to 7 a.m.,” he says. “It was tough, but it was a way in the door.” He eventually moved into a day editing job, and then – after much lobbying – a reporting job. He stayed at the newspaper for 12 years, writing for the Sunday magazine, reporting on the county government and court systems, and writing a column for which he was recognized as ‘Best Columnist of the Year’ in 1989 for all newspapers in the Gannett chain.

Falk then spent nine years at Newsday, where he covered Long Island, sports, and worked on the daily feature section, Part Two. When a new editor at the Gannett Westchester newspapers was looking for someone to give the papers a more united, clean look, he called Falk, who returned to the paper as deputy managing editor. He stayed there for three years before moving into his current position at The Week in 2001.

Although he has a hard time pinpointing the most interesting story he’s ever worked on, he did mention that he had a great time researching a piece on people who claimed they’d been abducted by aliens. Falk attended a support group meeting for “abductees” and interviewed many of them, a process he called a “fascinating tour through the human mind.”

This is the part of journalism Falk loves best – the part that allows him to “stick my nose into hundreds of nooks and crannies.” For aspiring journalists with the same curiosity for information, Falk has the following advice, “If you want to be a shoemaker, you go make shoes. If you want to be a journalist, it’s the same thing. You have to start honing your craft somewhere. I think a big mistake people make is thinking they’re too good for their college paper.”

–Mackenzie Dawson Parks, G’04