My Story

Light in the Darkness

My grandfather, Herman "Pops" Barish, had a habit that my grandmother hated: He smoked a pipe. In his front pocket, he always carried a pouch of Bond Street tobacco and his steel Zippo lighter. He took that lighter everywhere he went, from USC games at the Coliseum to summer day games at Dodger Stadium. 

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That lighter, to me, was always a symbol of what storytellers do: We're a light in the darkness. Pops could always spin a good yarn, and taught me to appreciate others who could do the same.

I became a journalist because, like my grandfather, I'm a storyteller, too. Though my stories focused on the playing fields—from muddy high school soccer pitches to the hardwood of the NBA Finals—I always kept people at the forefront. People, my grandfather taught me, care about people, and they want to hear stories about other people. So, that's what I wrote.

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While I once dreamed of playing big league baseball, in high school it became apparent that a future on the field wasn't exactly in the cards for a 5-foot-6, 170-pound catcher with a balky back. My love of the game, though, and of the people in it, led me down a different path. The second week of my freshman year at Adolfo Camarillo High School, I was named the sports editor of a high school paper with national award-winning pedigree. With little experience laying out a paper, zero experience creating graphics and no experience writing on any kind of deadline, I not only wanted to learn everything about being a news man; I had to. I taught myself about photography, graphic design and publication design on the fly. I spent fall Fridays on the football sideline with a note pad and a hand-me-down camera, hearing play calls as clearly as snapping ankle tendons. Having faced the harsh reality of my own sports future and seeing the twisted anguish on the faces of seniors who may never play another down, I wrote from the heart. I earned awards in local writing competitions and national acclaim from the JEA-NSPA. Mentored by Pulitzer winner Tim Gallagher, the publisher of The Ventura County Star, my best stories—stories on a motley crew of underdog club ice hockey players, a redemption story 20 years in the making and of the future No. 1 draft pick who helped realize it—were always about people. 

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My first week at Berkeley, I was brought on as the do-everything editor of the Berkeley Jewish Journal, serving as designer, copy editor and graphic artist for a publication that ultimately received recognition from the Student Media Center as the best undergraduate publication. In four years at The Daily Californian, I served as sports editor, columnist and beat writer, covering football, baseball, softball, women's volleyball and field hockey. I broke a story about offseason hazing, wrote and designed an enterprise centerpiece on an injured senior infielder who got an unexpected second chance at a dream, penned an ode to the trusty bullpen catcher who finally got an at-bat, and profiled the foul-mouthed, hard-headed, hard-shooting Argentinian field hockey star who had Hollywood dreams and so much more. I always found the people.

As the Scribe of the XA Chapter of Alpha Epsilon Pi, I revived our newsletter, the Chi Alpha Quarterly. I used my knowledge of graphic design to create dynamic rush shirts and slogans.

In the classroom, I majored in English Literature, and turned my childhood fasciation with comic book superhero stories and Arthurian myth into a 200-page senior honors thesis that established a literary lineage linking Hercules and Samson to King Arthur to Superman and Captain America. I turned that thesis in the same week as "Iron Man" opened in theaters. Knowing that I would likely go into sports journalism, but still hoping there may be a way into the brightly-colored world of comics, I sought out one of the authors of a book central to my thesis, Peter Coogan. He dissuaded me from pursuing a career in comic scholarship: "You can write yourself out of a job," he said. So, I stuck to my plan to join the great scribes of my youth—Bill Plaschke, Rick Reilly and Jim Murray—as a sports writer. Graduating at a time when the entire world of journalism was in upheaval, I took to stringing with my local newspapers.

With a not inconsiderable amount of hubris, I eschewed traditional entry-level full-time writing jobs. I convinced myself that, having written a centerpiece feature on a record-breaking high school running back for the Orange County Register, and having broken national news on Cal's top-10 football team (the true nature of quarterback Nate Longshore's ankle injury), I was above covering high school soccer or Little League baseball. Grappling with depression, anxiety, and an identity crisis, I managed to find a job in Minor League Baseball. Working for the Tacoma Rainiers for a season, my ability to write on deadline lent itself well to the job of Publication Coordinator, where I served as the team's in-house beat writer, photographer, corporate partner liaison, blogger, social media manager and graphic designer.

To turn our daily game program, The Dirt, into a must-read during the club's 50th season, I wrote long-form features, dove into our archives and designed throwback covers with features on past players and moments in team history. I grew my writing, designing and photography skills as we won the division title.

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I returned to my alma mater to cover Golden Bears athletics as a digital publisher, taking over and re-branding BearTerritory.net for Rivals.com (Yahoo! Sports), covering football, basketball and baseball. Three years later, after multiple attempts, Joel Cox of Scout.com (FOX Sports) lured me away to cover the Bears and Major League Baseball. I interviewed Sandy Koufax and wrote a front-page profile for FOX Sports, covered bowl games, the NCAA Tournament and, the highlight of my career, the 2011 Cal baseball team. That season saw the 118-year-old program not only save itself from elimination, but make an improbable run to the College World Series, with me in tow.

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After eight years as a digital publisher, I became the sports editor at the San Francisco Examiner, winning multiple writing awards and both expanding and deepening the section's coverage of local sports, all the while prioritizing human interest enterprise from both myself and my staff of freelancers. We grew sports traffic 10-fold during my tenure, which took me to Cleveland, Houston, Sacramento and Toronto following the dynastic Golden State Warriors. I told the stories of athletes whose homes were destroyed by wildfires, of a prep star who wasn't expected to survive infancy, of a third-culture basketball star finally finding a home and of the humanity in baseball's most hated villain.

And suddenly, it was over. Failing finances forced the Examiner to contract, and I moved home to Southern California in January of 2020. Six weeks before COVID-19 stay-at-home orders came down, I met my wife. As sports journalism faced another crisis and journalism as an industry reckoned with another downturn, I reinvented myself. I worked for a Beverly Hills auction house cataloguing pop culture and sports memorabilia and stretched myself as a writer, uncovering untold stories of communities hit disproportionately hard by the pandemic. I transitioned into the world of communications as the Director of Communications at Stephen Wise Temple & Schools, where I attended elementary school through third grade. By expanding the in-house style guide and running comms like an editor, I ignited a culture of content. Working with new digital tools, I drove the creation of more engaging multimedia content, crafting much of the organization's graphics myself.

Now, I'm looking for my next challenge. I am currently in the process of turning my thesis into a manuscript, with hopes of publishing in the next year. I'm open to anything, but I want to be able to make a difference. I know one thing for certain: I'm not done telling stories. I still have a lighter just like my grandfather's that I carry with me every day.