About

I often joke I’ve had a “checkered” career. I’ve gone from journalist to professor to public relations strategist to small business owner back to professor. Each stop along the way has brought unique opportunities – covering everything from local city council meetings to presidential campaigns; training and mentoring young journalists; handling routine media relations tasks to crisis communications challenges.

 

What connects the dots is my curiosity and the opportunity to channel my skills with words. 

 

At each juncture, it’s been the power of words that drives me forward. With the next challenge: writing a book that combines my years as a political journalist with my interest in how we went from “there” to “here.”

 

That will eventually take the form of “The Slow Motion-Coup: How the Legacy Media Lost the War on Truth.” Coming one of these days to a bookstore near you. Of course the final chapter is far from clear.

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Journalist

I knew what my career path would be based on my first job – newspaper delivery boy. Eventually, armed with a degree from the Columbia Journalism School and cutting my teeth reporting on the New York City fiscal crisis and 1976 presidential campaign, I began my career like other eager journalists – as a local reporter covering city councils and local legislators. I eventually advanced to become the Massachusetts Statehouse Bureau Chief for United Press International, reporting daily on governor and presidential candidate Michael Dukakis. I also reported on the Legislature, state agencies and the Supreme Judicial Court and shared the responsibility for a weekly “Under the Golden Dome” news analysis column.

 

Like all wire service reporters, I found myself covering a wide range of subjects, from transit strikes to medical advances and worked my fair share of night and overnight shifts polishing on-the-scene reports from other Unipressers into wire-ready copy designed to beat the Associated Press. I could not have had a better training ground.

 

These days, I write about local, state and national politics on “In Other Words…”, a Substack with more than 200 subscribers and over 400 followers. I have been published by The Boston Globe and CommonWealth Beacon Magazine analyzing the Massachusetts Legislature.

 

As any good journalist, I am active on  X (Twitter), where I have more than 2,100 followers, as well as Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, BlueSky and Threads, sharing my thoughts and my works.

 

Strategist

My work as a journalist prepared me well for a shift to strategy, directing communications for the Massachusetts Senate Ways and Means Committee and the Massachusetts Cultural Council. That work ranged from learning about government from the inside and handling routine media relations inquiries and working with a broad range of reporters.

 

I used my new expertise to jump to a new discipline at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, this time working in media relations with clinicians and researchers in promoting health and science advances.

 

The daily pace of a hospital environment also offered many lessons in crisis communications, especially in directing an all-hands response to the local, national and international interest in the deadly bombing at the 2013 Boston Marathon after the two bombers wound up at my hospital’s emergency department after a police shootout.

 

From there it was time to set out on my own. As principal of Jerry Berger Strategies I provided writing, editing and media relations services to a host of clients in non-profit and health care settings, including Partners Healthcare (now Mass General Brigham) and McLean Hospital.

 

Mentor

The pull of journalism has always been strong and I inevitably pivoted back to my first love – government and politics. But with a twist. I now direct the largest newsroom covering the Massachusetts government as Director of the Statehouse Reporting Program in the College of Communication at Boston University.

 

My students combine classroom learning with live reporting, providing coverage from the Berkshires to Boston for regional dailies to specialty publications to start-up “hyperlocal” outlets. These students have taken their talents to the Boston Globe, Boston Business Journal, the Associated Press, Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, Semafor and outlets as far away as Turkey and Sweden.

 

I also work with the Center for Community News at the University of Vermont, which focuses on highlighting and strengthening both local journalism and the coverage of state government across the United States.

 

The future of quality journalism, steeped in facts and context depends on a well-trained and enthusiastic group that is willing to represent the Fourth Estate. I’m honored to play a role in their development.