Meet the Jewish Press

by Amy Schwartz Kimlat

You’ve seen them on TV predicting the weather, recapping games, and breaking news. They’re Emmy and AP award winners and a diverse and impressive bunch. But they all share a Jewish heritage – plus a happy-to-help willingness to broadcast on Christmas.

Eric Burris

For Eric Burris, meteorology has been a passion of his ever since he was a kid. Even as a student at Lake Howell High School, he interned in a local newsroom to pursue his interest, ultimately earning a degree in geosciences from Mississippi State University. While he was still a college student in 2004, Eric proudly recalls accurately forecasting Hurricane Charley.

“The storm made a bit of a wobble, heading right toward Central Florida,” he says. “I remember forecasting that, seeing the wobble, and sounding our alarms to warn people.”

His career briefly took him to West Palm Beach as an on-air meteorologist and then back to Orlando at WESH-2, where he has been ever since. It’s not particularly common for meteorologists to spend their entire career in-state, let alone establishing themselves at a hometown station.

What really sets Eric apart from his peers, though, is the deeply personal connection he forges with his viewers. Several years ago, Eric became one of the first TV broadcasters to utilize the then-new Facebook Live feature when he started a daily tradition called Coffee Talk. Every morning, viewers in Central Florida (and around the world) can tune in to watch Eric sip coffee, discuss the weather, and personally interact with the commenting viewers. Sometimes, you’ll see Eric chatting with viewers behind-the-scenes in the studio in his on-air tie and suit, while other times you’ll see him broadcasting from his Winter Park home in a T-shirt, with his dog Stella making a cameo in his lap.

“Coffee Talk has grown into something of a family,” Eric says. “Every day, we talk weather, but we also talk life. Folks share deep personal things, myself included. We’ve cried happy tears, mourned sad things, and about everything in between. I feel closer to this group than I ever thought I could, and it’s something I take such pride in.”

Eric enjoys sharing his love of weather, in particular, “telling what’s going to happen,” he says, “and most of all, taking complex situations and making them easy to understand.”

While Eric is beloved by his community, fans, and colleagues, being both a scientist and a member of the press occasionally earns him critics in today’s polarized media landscape.

“I’m a meteorologist – a student of science,” Eric explains. “Yet I’ve been spit at, called a liar, fake news, part of the problem, and everything in between.”

But Eric understands the weight of his message.

“When I’m giving a forecast, or trying to share when weather could be dangerous, I feel the responsibility of my job,” he says. “It’s one I don’t take lightly.”

And sometimes, just when the weather is getting dangerous, responsibilities can collide.

This August, after a morning Coffee Talk and a day spent focused on the incoming Hurricane Isaias, Eric was awoken in the middle of the night by his pregnant wife Jeannie. It was time to head to the hospital, she said – five weeks ahead of her due date. Just four hours later, on August 2, the couple welcomed a healthy son, Alexander, into the world, making their older son, Eric, a big brother.

Eric signs off every Coffee Talk with a reminder to “Be the sunshine in someone else’s day,” though it’s safe to say that Eric is the sunshine in the days of many Central Floridians.

Hadas Brown

When Hadas Brown starts her days at 2:00 a.m., she knows she has an important and rewarding day ahead. As a reporter for WESH-2, Hadas takes seriously her role in bringing critical information to the public and shining a light on what needs to be exposed.

“I truly believe in the notion that journalism gives a voice to the voiceless, and I try my very best to advocate for those who deserve to have their stories told,” Hadas says.

That drive has brought her from her hometown of New Rochelle, New York, to the University of Michigan to Westchester, New York, to start her career behind-the-scenes, and then to her first on-air job in Jackson, Mississippi, before settling in Orlando to appear on WESH.

Storytelling has always been a passion for Hadas, and writing and presenting have always come naturally to her.

“When I joined the student news station in college – after some encouragement from my parents and 11th-grade AP English teacher – it felt meant to be,”says Hadas.

In her career, Hadas has told many important stories. One story about which she’s particularly proud is her coverage of Hurricane Irma, a Category 5 storm that hit the U.S. in 2017.

“We were in the Orlovista area in the thick of the storm as National Guardsmen rescued dozens of people from their flooded homes,” Hadas recalls. “To say it was an emotional scene would be such an understatement. On our end, the task was balancing the devastation we were witnessing and being as sensitive to the loss as one possibly can, with getting the facts and keeping ourselves safe. It was a tremendously exhausting but important assignment. We spent about 12 hours straight in that neighborhood before we went home for the day.”

Hadas also notably presented breaking news coverage during the search for Markeith Loyd, a suspect accused of shooting an Orlando Police officer in 2016. She and her team won an Emmy for that reporting.

Another change-making story in Hadas’s career focused on grade inflation in a local school district while she was reporting in Mississippi – for which she won an Associated Press award.

“The award meant so much to me because the stories led to some degree of accountability from the district leaders and allowed the frustrated, disheartened teachers involved to have their voices heard,” Hadas says.

While the awards are memorable, the less-tangible rewards are frequent and come to Hadas every single day.

“The light bulb that goes off when you find that final piece of information that makes your story whole, the thank-you message from someone who appreciated the details you helped bring to the public eye, and even the moment when you finish typing out your story and see how it all came together,” Hadas describes. “This business allows you to see your hard work pay off almost daily. I am very grateful for that.”

You might recognize Hadas not only from her on-air appearances but from moderating a Think Pink breast cancer panel discussion last fall. The event was cosponsored by the Jewish Federation of Greater Orlando and SPARK in partnership with the national Jewish breast cancer support organization Sharsheret.

Being Jewish and a journalist are two ingrained parts of Hadas’s identity. As a journalist, she explains that she can’t unplug for long.

“It is critical for us to stay on top of what’s going on,” Hadas says, noting how it can feel like journalists are just going from crisis to crisis in 2020. “That can wear on you, but it’s so important. We have to stay informed, so everyone else can stay informed.”

And as a Jewish woman in broadcasting, Hadas does her best to discover and report on stories that may not catch the eye of her non-Jewish colleagues.

“Our community is rich with traditions and faces some unique challenges,” she says, “and it means the world to me when I get to be the one sharing those stories.”

Asher Wildman

Asher Wildman was one of those kids who actually knew what he wanted to do when he grew up – and turned out to be right. He was only in the fourth grade when his teachers plucked him out of class to anchor the morning announcements on the school’s TV station, a gig he continued for two years.

He has been reporting ever since, anchoring the school news from middle school to high school in Oviedo. After graduating from UCF, Asher spent six years with Golfweek and then got back on the air with his first post-college TV reporting job as sports director at a station in El Paso, Texas. A predominantly Catholic and Mexican community, El Paso had a small Jewish population, so getting time off for the Jewish High Holidays was a tricky endeavor.

“I told my general manager well ahead of time, ‘Look, there are two days a year I can’t work. It was how I was brought up,’” Asher says. “I tried explaining to him the importance of it, in spite of it being a weekend during football season. There was a lot of pushback.”

That first Friday evening as the holiday was beginning, Asher received a call from his manager, asking if he was planning to come in to work. When Asher answered that he was not, the manager replied, “You better hope your job is here when you come back.” And off Asher and his wife Beth went to the local temple’s services.

Not wanting to make a scene in the small community, the TV personality sat in the back row of services. One by one, the congregants came up to Asher to shake his hand and thank him for being a part of the services and not on TV  that evening.

“You would have thought I was Sandy Koufax!”  Asher laughs.

He still had a job on Monday.

From El Paso, Asher went on to Tallahassee, where he became the sports director for another TV station.

One day, Asher received a phone call from an athletic director who had just signed a local teenager named  BJ Johnson to his college baseball team.

“He shared with me that BJ had been homeless for three months after the death of his grandmother, who he had been living with,” Asher recalls. “The bank had taken his grandmother’s house, so the kid had been living out of a car and couch-surfing.”

Asher was determined to use his platform to do something, so he got to know BJ. He quickly learned BJ also wanted to become a sportscaster, so one night, Asher invited BJ to join him on air to give a sports report.

While broadcasting live with BJ, Asher began showing BJ clip after clip of people and organizations donating gifts – everything he needed for college from clothes to linens to electronics, sports equipment, and an invitation by then-Atlanta Braves center-fielder Mallex Smith to attend a game.

“It was the first time someone impacted me the way he did,” Asher says. “To see a kid who was doing as much as he was doing and never asking for a handout, it made me want to help him even more. We still keep in contact.”

While in Tallahassee, Asher was recognized as the 2017 Florida Sportscaster of the Year by the Associated Press. Remarkably, Asher also received the Florida College Sportscaster of the Year Award by the Associated Press in 2006, when he was graduating from UCF.

In 2018, Asher returned to his hometown as a reporter for Spectrum News 13, covering non-sports stories throughout Central Florida. He recognizes the importance of general reporting now more than ever.

“People are looking at reporters again to get the answers for them,” Asher says of a shift he has seen in 2020. “We’ve gone through a period of time where we doubted what was being said. But with COVID, people are putting their trust in news stations again. It’s really important to answer questions people don’t know the answers to. I think this year has showcased how local news and reporters can help people.”

It’s a big year for the Longwood-based Wildmans, too. At press time, Asher and Beth were expecting their first child, a little girl, in late August.

Sarahbeth Ackerman

When Sarahbeth Ackerman was a teenager, she knew  she wanted to be a journalist. However, she never envisioned herself on TV.

“I was terrified of public speaking, like shaking-in-my-boots scared,” Sarahbeth says. “But my passion to ask questions and hold people accountable outweighed those fears. Instead of the flight method, I used that fear as motivation, and I faced it.”

Today, Sarahbeth is an Emmy award-winning, on-air reporter for WFTV-9, where she considers herself a voice for the Central Florida community.

“The vital information we gather every day matters, and it directly impacts how families make their daily decisions, and I take that to heart,” she says. “I always have. That’s why I chose this career.”

Her career began as a multimedia journalist in Minot, North Dakota, after she graduated with a degree in broadcast journalism from Hofstra University. Minot was a far cry from her upbringing in the heavily Jewish community of Rockland County, New York.

“It was the first time I had trouble finding kosher food,” Sarahbeth recalls. “Actually, you couldn’t find it. I vividly remember the grocery worker looking at me like I had three heads when I asked if they had a kosher section.”

When Sarahbeth’s parents, brother, and now-husband flew out to see her for her first Thanksgiving out west, she “pulled out all the extra stops,” she says and ordered a kosher turkey online.

“That was one expensive turkey,” says Sarahbeth, “especially on a starter-reporter’s salary.”

After just a year on the job, Sarahbeth was promoted to news director and helped transition the station to high-definition. After her stint in North Dakota, Sarahbeth began working at a station in Syracuse, New York.

“Between the cold days in Minot and Syracuse, I spent plenty of time covered head-to-toe in snow gear with a camera and tripod in tow,” Sarahbeth says with a laugh.

While in Syracuse, Sarahbeth covered a high-profile murder trial in Central New York. This was a crucial case in Syracuse because it involved a well-known family doctor within the community.

“All eyes were on this trial,” says Sarahbeth. “No cameras were allowed inside the courtroom. Journalists were not even allowed to use their phones. It was hardcore pen-to-paper, and I went live after sitting in the courtroom for hours every day for well over a week.”

Her reporting was noticed. Dateline NBC picked it up, and Sarahbeth was incorporated into their coverage of the trial. She earned an Emmy Award for her reporting.

Once her contract ended in Syracuse, Sarahbeth began her search for warmer weather and sunshine. She was newly married to her high-school sweetheart, Eric Weiner (who’s now a local veterinarian), and they were both ready to hit The Sunshine State in 2016. Sarahbeth learned quickly how to adapt to Florida life when Hurricane Matthew taught her not only how to handle a hurricane, but how to weather one as a journalist.

“Pro tip for journalists: Always pack a lot of Ziploc bags out in the field,” Sarahbeth says. “You never know how many wet socks you will have until you are faced with a storm.”

While Sarahbeth has become adept at storm preparation, she doesn’t think anyone could have been fully prepared for the year that is 2020.

“Even if we were given advanced notice, I don’t think we could have fully understood the magnitude of what we were all going to have to do and endure both in our personal and professional lives,” she says.

Early on in the COVID-19 pandemic, Sarahbeth began reporting from home, rethinking her methods and diving directly into change. She began going live on TV from her house, which she shares with Eric and their “sassy, spunky,” almost-two-year-old daughter, Ava, who together are active members at Congregation Ohev Shalom.

“It was a silver-lining moment when I discovered I was able to work and be with my daughter in one fell swoop,” Sarahbeth says with gratitude. “Yes, there were plenty of times her voice made it on our morning show, but I think there’s something utterly hilarious and beautiful about that. It shows we are all human, just trying to make it work in the middle of a pandemic.”

Lara Greenberg

Growing up, Lara Greenberg had dreams of making it as a singer. A natural performer with a beautiful voice, Lara thought she had her career chosen, but then her parents made a fruitful suggestion.

“My parents told me I had to major in something else as a backup,” Lara explains. “I landed on broadcast journalism because I always had a passion for writing and documenting. I was a chatterbox and it still seemed to have an element of performance.”

A chatterbox? Perhaps, but the words that this Syracuse University graduate speaks on-air as a reporter for      FOX 35 carry weight and important information to Central Floridians. With recent reports on airport safety, imminent evictions, hurricane prep, domestic violence, and virtual schooling, Lara’s work informing the public is timely, critical, and influential.

As evidenced by the nature of her recent reporting, this year has been unlike any other in Lara’s career, but she chooses to focus on the positives in her life.

“The silver lining of 2020 has been working from home and being able to spend more time with my husband and dog,” Lara says. “I know working from home has been a struggle for many people, but I am so grateful to still be employed and to have more quality time with my family compared to my normally long days out in the field.”

Family has always been a priority for the East Brunswick, New Jersey native, and for one memorable story, family and career mixed beautifully. In 2016, when Lara was living and reporting in Pennsylvania, she did a story about a researcher at Penn State who was working to create a new treatment for Alzheimer’s disease. At the time, her father was suffering from end-stage Alzheimer’s after being diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s at the age of 59.

Lara wanted to make her father, who lived in New Jersey, the subject of the story, so she received special permission from her news director to do just that. After interviewing the Penn State researcher, Lara got to make an overnight trip to New Jersey to spend the day with her dad to film the story.

“It was a beautiful, moving piece that perfectly encapsulated the relationship between my dad and me, and it was also informative and educational,” says Lara. “Those who have no experience with Alzheimer’s often confuse the disease for an illness that simply causes memory loss. Our story showed that it affects much more than that and opened people’s eyes to the importance of finding a cure.”

For her work on the story, Lara won an Edward R. Murrow Award, an Emmy, and a national Society of Professional Journalists award.

“I didn’t need the awards to feel proud and deeply grateful for the story I did on my father,” she says, “but the awards helped me realize how much the story meant to others.”

Lara has continued to honor her father’s memory by running the New York City Marathon in 2017, raising money for the Alzheimer’s Association, and attending Yizkor (remembrance) services at Congregation Ohev Shalom.

“It’s nice to know I have a place where I can go and freely remember my dad every Yom Kippur,” she says.

For Lara, being Jewish is also about connection and community, including while she’s on the job.

“I love teaching my coworkers Yiddish words, and they’re always fascinated by it,” Lara says. “There are four people in my current newsroom who are Jewish or partly Jewish, and I love it because there’s an automatic connection and understanding of where we came from. Our meteorologist Jayme King likes to call me shayna, Yiddish for pretty. It’s our little inside joke.”