Ori Lewis: A storied career with a ‘love’ for news, and tennis

It all began with tennis.

Ori Lewis cut his teeth at The Jerusalem Post and made the most of his post-Post career at Haaretz and Reuters before 2019, when he came back to where it all began.

His career, which has taken him all over the world, started on a tennis court – and fittingly, it was in tennis that he saw some of his career highlights.

In Jerusalem sat down with him to hear about all of it.

This is “Behind the Bylines,” where we bring you a look at the people behind the articles that keep our paper running.

Ori’s byline does not appear too often at the moment, as he devotes most of his efforts to behind-the-scenes work, but that doesn’t mean you don’t get to read what he writes, as he’s responsible for creating and fine-tuning most of the headlines in the news section. He’s also a relief night editor, ensuring that the news ends up on the printed page every morning.

What brought you to Israel?

It was my parents, and it was not a voluntary move on my part. I was too young for that.

My father, Ray, hated the gloom that prevailed over London in the late 1950s and early ‘60s due to the air pollution from coal fires that people used to heat their homes. Conversely, he loved the sunshine and the fresh open air of Israel.

I was born in London in 1959 and first visited Israel when I was nine months old, but I obviously don’t remember that trip. My first clear recollection of Israel was waking up in the early morning in December 1962 at my grandparents’ home in Jerusalem. It was a huge shock when I found myself in a completely alien environment, and I immediately began to cry.

We later moved to the Tel Aviv area closer to my father’s work. Seeing family in Jerusalem was not a common occurrence, as the journey usually took three hours by road. We had no telephone at home, and when my mother wanted to contact family, she would send handwritten letters to them. Calling meant a 10-minute walk to our nearest neighborhood grocery store to use their phone (for a fee).

The differences in lifestyle between what I experienced in England and the fairly ‘spartan’ existence in Israel were stark, and those differences made me long to return to the country of my birth.

That wish materialized in 1967, when a recession, combined with my father receiving a lucrative job offer in London, made it a no-brainer, so he went for the job. I was beaming with excitement and couldn’t wait to go back to where I could watch TV and enjoy what, as a nine-year-old, I considered to be a far more advanced society.

My dad said our move to London was temporary – and he meant it. We returned to Israel exactly five years later.

I was 14 when we returned at the end of 1972 – supplanted from a society where I felt so comfortable with a love of the sports that I played and watched – into a strange existence that was years behind in so many ways. I only became fully immersed in Israeli society as a soldier.

My life in Israel now is comfortable, and I have my close family, wonderful and loyal friends, and a partner who is supportive and caring.

What got you into journalism?

I came to journalism through being at the right place at the right time and meeting the right people.

For me, that meant being on the tennis court and meeting my first and most important mentor, Philip Gillon, who wrote this newspaper’s television reviews for many years until 1990. He was probably old enough to be my grandfather, but his generosity and kindness – and a grand sense of humor that jumped out of the pages of his articles – was even more apparent in person.

When he offered me, a 16-year-old, a chance to write for The Jerusalem Post’s new youth supplement in the mid-1970s, I jumped at the opportunity. When I presented a beautifully typed manuscript for my first article, he took one look at it and in a booming voice exclaimed: “Wonderful story, my lad…”

I was sure that I knew it all, but within seconds he proceeded to cross out with his pencil the entire text that I had written and re-wrote it in the correct newspaper style. He soon made me realize that writing as a journalist was completely different from writing school essays. It was a lesson I have never forgotten.

Writing is such a small part of newspaper production when you also have to consider the technical aspects of putting together a coherent printed publication.

During my years of working at Reuters, I worked alongside many experts in their field but for me it was my direct boss, Jeffrey Heller, now happily retired and formerly the editor-in-charge at the global news organization’s bureau in Jerusalem, who helped me raise my writing skills and critical thinking to a completely higher level. He demanded excellence that was required in a cut-throat world of international journalism, and always did so with the utmost good grace and a wonderful sense of humor.

We shared many laughs when sitting at our desks immersed in the news that was constantly flooding us. In an instant, when something important broke, we would shift into “attack mode” to try to make sense of what was happening and articulate it into a coherent report, gathering relevant information from sources and reporters in the field, and from civilian and military officials to corroborate the details, and then to add relevant background.

Which news outlets have you worked for?

I spent years as the Post’s sports editor throughout the 1990s and devoted lots of time working on the news desk. Next, I worked as sports editor of the Haaretz English edition from 2000 to 2003. After that, I worked at Reuters until 2019, before returning to the Post.

My career has taken me far and wide to many countries, from the US to China and many places in between. I covered many sports events, including two Olympic Games, international soccer matches, and many tennis events from the US and Asia and lots of countries in Europe. Wimbledon was a frequent venue that I used to visit yearly; I wrote reports from there for 25 years. Much of the tennis reporting was also done at the behest of the International Tennis Federation; I reported for its website on the top events that it organized.

I have traveled in the motorcade of the US secretary-of-state and on the prime ministerial plane. I have interviewed presidents, prime ministers, ministers, and senior diplomats from many countries. I once attended an opulent banquet hosted by a notorious gangster at his palace on the Uzbek steppe, where the liquor flowed like water and the mounds of caviar were as high as a multi-tiered wedding cake.

When it was time to get back to the hard graft, I made sure to always listen carefully to my interviewees and not allow myself to be drawn in by the PR or propaganda message they might be trying to impart. Listen carefully to every word and, when necessary, cut them short and interject.

What is a memorable anecdote from your career?

In 1987, I was reporting from Communist Czechoslovakia at a time when the Iron Curtain regime there was particularly unwelcoming to Israelis. It was for the Davis Cup tennis event between Israel and the heavily favored host team.

That trip had its hair-raising moments, as some of us journalists traveled among a group of Israeli ‘supporters’ whom the CSSR [Czechoslovak Socialist Republic] had grudgingly allowed in. The ‘supporters’ were mostly a group of tourists who had been allowed back into the country of their ancestry.

The Czechoslovakians said no journalists would be allowed in, so we had to pretend to be tourists. At 27, I was the youngest person among the busload of visitors. When we reached Prague, I called the office from my quite obviously bugged hotel room to tell my colleagues that I had arrived safely. A voice at the other end of the phone then asked with brisk enthusiasm: ‘Hey, Ori, do they know yet that you are a journalist, or do they still think that you are just a tourist?’

I was suddenly thrown into a cold sweat and was certain that within seconds, stern-faced agents from the Czechoslovak secret service would barge through my hotel room door and drag me away to a dark dungeon, never to be seen again. Thankfully, however, the Czechoslovakians were warm and accommodating hosts in the minus-20-degree temperatures, and it was a memorable trip with a pretty unbelievable result – an Israeli tennis victory.

Do you have any advice for aspiring journalists out there?

Know and research your subject matter. Journalists need to coherently articulate information from others who should have much greater in-depth knowledge of the subject matter. That’s why you are there, to convey their expertise to your readers. Ask questions that help make sense of what they are imparting. And if you don’t fully understand, ask again and write it up in simple, easy to understand language.

Above all, show the reader that you not only know what the hell you are talking about, but that you are enjoying telling them about it – because if you are not loving the thrill and challenge of a news story, you should probably be doing something else.■