Alfred Balk, the second editor of the Columbia Journalism Review, died in November at the age of eighty. Al, like me a native of Iowa, was my successor as editor, serving from 1969 to 1973. He arrived with strong credentials as a magazine editor and reporter, most notably for a Saturday Evening Post article, “Confessions of a Block-Buster,” on the practice of using racial fears to move real estate; it led to a court case on anonymity of his sources, which he won.
As an editor, he worked with determination, often stubbornness, turning the Review into a reporters’ magazine, tougher and grittier. A tough article by Richard Reeves on the collapse of the Newark Evening News led to a libel suit in which CJR was ultimately found blameless. As other journalism reviews burst forth, in a period of ferment, Al befriended them, reprinting many of their best stories, treating them as allies rather than competitors.
He was also a key figure in the creation of the experimental National News Council, and set up CJR to print the council’s decisions, which it did for several years. On his watch came an anthology drawn from the first ten years of CJR, titled Our Troubled Press (1971), which we edited together.
Most of all, Al wanted to make the Review bigger and better. He increased its frequency from quarterly to six a year, sought to enlarge its circulation and financial resources, and eventually, feeling hampered, proposed to sever the magazine’s ties with the Columbia altogether. That, as you can see, did not happen. Later, he created World Press Review, and wrote or edited a number of books, the last being The Rise of Radio—from Marconi through the Golden Age (2006), which Mike Wallace praised for its “stunning research.”
A memorial service will be held at 11 a.m. December 3 at the First Congregational Church of Huntley, Illinois. Contributions can be sent to Hospice of Northeastern Illinois, in Barrington, or The Newberry Library, Al Balk Memorial, in Chicago.
Al Balk will be remembered by me, and other friends who participated, for the way he reacted to the Society of Professional Journalists’ total lack of interest in the importance to journalists and the rest of the nation of the assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
At its convention in King’s hometown, Atlanta, in the fall of 1968, a few months after his death, SDX/SPJ found time for neither speeches nor discussions about King or the outlook for race relations in the wake of the riots his killing had set off.
Al couldn’t change that, but he could organize an impromptu visit to the King family to express condolences, promise to look into the neglected plans for a King memorial, and apologize for the SPJ’s flawed judgment. The Rev. Martin Luther King Sr. graciously received us and sat us down for a long talk over coffee. It was only a short walk from the convention center to the Ebenezer Baptist Church. I’m glad Al led the way.
#1 Posted by Donald Shanor, CJR on Mon 20 Dec 2010 at 02:10 PM
I think the best memorial to Al Balk would be to do a collection similar to his anthology of the first ten years of the Columbia Journalism Review in book form.
#2 Posted by David Reno, CJR on Wed 4 May 2011 at 01:53 PM