Former Chronicle editor Joel Roteman dies at 87
A "quintessential Pittsburgher" and a "quintessential newsman"
When, in 1986, a rabbinical student was murdered on a Squirrel Hill street in a random act of antisemitism, The Jewish Chronicle’s executive editor Joel Roteman received phone tips about the identity of the shooter, which he passed on to authorities.
“Joel got the calls because he was seen by the community as the right person to go to,” recalled Iris Samson, the Chronicle’s assistant editor at the time. “People were frightened but Joel held steady.”
Samson worked with Roteman for all of the 18 years that he was at the helm of The Jewish Chronicle (now, the Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle), writing award-winning editorials, covering news locally and abroad, and mentoring young journalists.
Roteman died Jan. 27 at age 87, leaving behind Micki Roteman, his wife of 60 years, daughter Phyllis Roteman, of Los Angeles, and son Dan Roteman, of Hillsborough,, New Jersey.
“Joel was the quintessential Pittsburgher but also the quintessential newsman who brought his professionalism every day to the Chronicle,” said Samson, who went on to work for WQED as a documentary filmmaker. “The community was fortunate to have him.”
So, too, was staff, she said. “We were a motley assortment, and Joel was the leader of the pack. He was great about letting people do what they were good at doing, and not just the older, established writers. A lot of young people came and went over the years and Joel gave them plum assignments, too.”
Barbara Befferman, retired Chronicle CEO, remembers Roteman as “good-natured and very bright — a genuinely nice man.”
“I was divorced and the mother of two young children when I was hired as advertising coordinator,” she said. “Joel struck me as kind and compassionate. I might not have gone to work there if he hadn’t been so welcoming.”
Roteman grew up in the East End and attended B’nai Israel Congregation. While at Peabody High School, he was librarian of the Pittsburgh Symphony Youth Orchestra. He served in the U.S. Army in Korea, and graduated from Duquesne University with a degree in journalism in 1964, according to the Rauh Jewish Archives at the Heinz History Center.
His career began with the Mt. Lebanon News and the Aliquippa News in both editorial and advertising capacities, and he was editor of the Carnegie-Signal Item before joining The Jewish Chronicle as a staff writer in 1966.
He rose through the ranks to become news editor, then assistant editor, and, in 1984, executive editor, winning at least four American Jewish Press Association Rockower Awards, and the Joseph Polakoff Lifetime Achievement Award in Journalism.
“During all the years that Joel was executive editor, the paper was important to a lot of people and a lot of households,” Samson said. “We covered every denomination of Jew.”
He was in charge when fire tore through Congregation Beth Shalom in Squirrel Hill in 1996. causing massive damage. Community members ran into the building to save the Torah, recalled Samson, noting that, although the fire was a front-page story Roteman might have wanted to cover himself, he let one of his reporters take it.
“He let each of our three full-time writers do front page articles,” said Samson. “And he really did give young writers wonderful opportunities to develop. He made you rise to the occasion and want to do your best for him.”
Roteman could be “silly,” too, using humor to ease the pressure of constant deadlines, Samson said. “He had these expressions we called ‘Joelisms,’ like, ‘I’m busier than a three-legged cockroach.’”
His quick wit and unflappable nature served him well when a former intern armed with a gun took Roteman hostage, threatening to kill him unless he printed his story, verbatim, about the plight of Jews in the Soviet Union.
Roteman reportedly said, “If you blow my head off, the story is going to be, ‘Chronicle editor gets his head blown off.’ They won’t even look at your story. Besides, I wouldn’t even promise the president that I would print his story word-for-word.”
Eventually, the boy’s family came and took him home.
Besides hammering out an editorial every week, Roteman wrote several stories, sometimes under the pen name Leo J. Nametor — his name spelled backwards — so his byline didn’t dominate the paper.
“He didn’t want people to think the Chronicle was small,” his son, Dan Roteman, said.
To that point, Roteman picked up a column by Wolf Blitzer, then a correspondent for The Jerusalem Post, long before he became a major CNN personality, Samson said. He called the column “Washington’s Wolf on the Prowl.”
Roteman himself brought a worldview to the Chronicle, traveling often to Israel and other parts of the globe to interview people and cover events, including Spain, in 1992, when King Juan Carlos apologized to Jews 500 years after the edict of expulsion.
“My father saw things that most of us will never see,” Dan Roteman said, “and not just on trips to Israel.”
Meeting fascinating people, from Moshe Dayan’s widow to comedian Phyllis Diller to Nobel Prize winners, was what Roteman loved most, according to his daughter, Phyllis Roteman. “That, and telling their stories.”
She recalled that when she was a child, her father let her tag along on an interview with Randy Grossman, a Pittsburgh Steelers tight end and one of few Jews to play professional football. “I waited outside the locker room,” she said. “But I got to meet Randy. It was very cool.”
Another time, her father presented her with a photo of himself arm wrestling Lee Majors, TV’s popular “Six Million Dollar Man.”
Roteman was driven by innate curiosity, and he enjoyed the prestige of being editor, Phyllis Roteman said. “He liked that people would read what he wrote and then contact him. He liked knowing he was doing something for the community, that people were impacted.”
Samson agreed.
“He had an immense love for Pittsburgh’s Jewish community, Israel and the Jewish people,” she said. “When he ran the paper with (then general manager) Al Zecher he did so with love.”
As an old school newsman, Roteman worked during a time when newspapers were put together by cut and paste, and when he left the Chronicle, in 2001, computers were driving production.
In retirement, he freelanced a little for Mt. Lebanon Magazine, but eventually turned his attention to simpler pleasures, Phyllis Roteman said, noting her father was a bridge grand master, a bowler and a poker player.
“He enjoyed life. He played tennis a lot and was devoted to my mom. They’d play Boggle every night.”
In his final years at Asbury Place, with Micki, Roteman would regale staff and other residents with colorful memories of his journalism career, Phyllis said.
“He was Mr. Social. Everybody knew him and everybody knew he was a storyteller.” PJC
Deborah Weisberg is a freelance writer living in Pittsburgh.
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