When Murray Dubin didn’t feel the clock ticking anymore, he knew it was time to get out.
After 34 years at the Philadelphia Inquirer, which included stints covering City Hall, housing, family and children, radical groups, neighborhoods, ethnicity and race, Dubin left the paper in 2005 to devote his energy full-time to writing a book.
During his extended stay at the Inquirer, this veteran reporter also served as its Los Angeles Bureau chief from 1983-86, which meant, in essence, he was a one-man operation covering the western states from Alaska to Hawaii. He also served a brief tour of duty on the editorial board.; and as editor, he managed news of family, fashion, real estate, design, society and gossip.
Looking back on such a productive newspaper career, while working at one of the most celebrated dailies in the country,( at least during its heyday), Dubin, a product of South Philadelphia, tells me he was fortunate to come to the Inquirer just as Knight -- and then Knight-Ridder -- Newspapers was taking over. ``I was a tiny cog in the transformation of a bad newspaper into a very good one.’’
And what exactly drew Dubin to journalism? It was Bob Williams, a teacher of his at Temple University, who was working as a night editor for the Philadelphia Daily News who shared with this young impressionable student all the magnificent adventures that went into newspaper reporting, his eyes lighting up like a Christmas tree the longer he talked. It was this type of stimulation that hooked Dubin on pursuing journalism as a life-long career.
After graduating from Temple University with a degree in journalism in 1969, Dubin landed at the Philadelphia Inquirer in 1971, after having worked about a year and a half at the Arlington Heights Herald in the northern suburbs of Chicago.
And what chased Dubin away from the Inquirer?
``I left in 2005’’ Dubin said, `` because the work at the paper wasn't as much fun, my friends were leaving and I didn’t feel the clock ticking anymore. I wanted to work full time on a book I had started.’’
What now consumed the bulk of his interest was a book about a little-known 19th-century black civil rights activist named Octavius Catto. The subject so fascinated Dubin that he and Inquirer staffer Dan Biddle, both knew they needed to get out of the office in order to drill down and do some hard digging if they hoped to get smarter about their subject.
As it turned out, researching and writing the book was a heavy lift, but it was well worth the effort. After five years, the book, ``Tasting Freedom: Octavius Catto and the Battle for Equality in Civil War America,” was published in September 2010. In addition to the book being well receivied, Murray and Biddle were booked for 60 speaking appearances in five states, including an appearance on NPR's ``All Things Considered.’’ And as ringing endorsement to its historical value, high schools and colleges are beginning to use it as an African American history text.
The authors of the book, meanwhile, launched a website for readers wanting to learn more about this obscure black educator, intellectual, and civil rights activist.
``Tasting Freedom’’ in fact wasn’t Dubin’s first book. While still working at the Inquirer, he wrote two books, ``The Official Book of Wallyball’’ , a sports instructional book and ``South Philadelphia Mummers, Memories, and the Melrose Diner’’ a book about the neighborhood he grew up in, one of the oldest residential mixed-race big city communities in the nation.
Despite keeping busy since departing the Inquirer, Dubin does admit to falling victim to pangs of longing for general newspapering every now and then. `` For that first year’’, Dubin says, ``I missed writing stories, and had to write some free lance pieces. After that first year, I didn’t have to write stories anymore. I saw them on the street, I thought about how I’d do them, but I no longer had to write them.’’
While his co-author, Dan Biddle, remains at the Inquirer, Dubin can’t seem to escape the 19th century. He’s planning on writing another book, this time under a new genre, historical fiction, something he’s never tried before about one of the first times a defendant accused of murder uses partial insanity as a defense. ``It’s a great trial filled with sex and an extraordinary look at how mental illness is viewed in the 1840s’’ Dubin explains. Edgar Allan Poe, the American author, poet, editor and literary critic had a minor involment in the murder trial.
As for his former colleagues who have also left the newspaper industry, how are they doing? ``Some are doing fine and some are lost. Some are happier, some forever bitter. I try not to think about it.’’ Dubin reflects that he was lucky to have been in the right place at the right time when he was at the Philadelphia Inquirer, and just as fortunate since leaving. `` I salute serendipity and hope it continues.’’
Dubin lives in Philadelphia with his wife, Libby Rosof.
-Bill Lucey
WPLucey@gmail.com
July 11, 2012
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