Jack Szwergold

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Born in 1968, Yakov Itzhak Szwergold (Jack Szwergold) was raised by his Polish/Jewish immigrant parents (Miriam and Hersz) in the modest Brooklyn seaside neighborhood of Brighton Beach. Unlike Neil Simon's idyllic vision of Brooklyn life—or the current "Odessa by the Sea"/Russian enclave it has become—Brighton Beach in the 1970s and 1980s was a distinctly New York City working class neighborhood of mixed race brought together by lower-middle class economics. It wasn't great, but it wasn't bad either.

While trained as a journalist, his skills as a computer enthusiast often combined with his journalistic ambitions to allow him to work on the cutting edge of new media development. This combination proved fruitful in 1995 when he landed a position for the Madison, Wisconsin based humor publication The Onion as a print ad designer and writer. A few months after landing this position he was approached by then editor and publisher Scott Dikkers with the offer to create a website for The Onion. The publication was small, but had a cult following. And in the early years of the Internet, fans of The Onion would often hand type selected stories and share them with fellow Internet users. Most famously, the piece entitled "Clinton Deploys Vowels to Bosnia" was circulated to such an extent that it even ended up being read on the public radio show, Car Talk.

In light of this strong Internet following, Dikkers and Szwergold believed the new site would serve two purposes. One was to provide a central repository for Onion-based material so The Onion could claim authorship and copyright ownership over the material. And it would also provide a relatively quick and affordable way to expand The Onion's reach beyond the small audience the print publication had at the time in the Wisconsin college towns of Madison and Milwaukee.

In May 1996 The Onion's site was launched and provided the springboard to bring The Onion to new heights in recognition and respect. The site has gone on to win multiple Webby Awards and other industry and media accolades.

In January 2001 Jack Szwergold left The Onion and returned to Brooklyn, NY, where he currently resides and juggles a career working as a web developer and as a writer. In addition to his work for The Onion, Jack has written for Nickelodeon (TV channel), National Public Radio, Modern Humorist, Suck.com, Wired magazine, Mother Jones magazine, Green Magazine, and others.

[edit] External links

• Award-Winning Local Journalists Reflect Own Self-Hatred Back on Nightmarish World Detailed profile of "The Onion" from 1999
• Digital Darlings Bask at Webbys Webby Awards coverage from 1999 which includes quotes from Jack Szwergold
• Webbies Show Direction Of New Media More Webby Awards coverage from 1999 which includes quotes from Jack Szwergold