From Obits to Editor   

When David Levine was first hired by the North Jersey Herald & News as a college student in 1970, he worked as a part-time obituary writer for $3 an hour.

Twenty-two years later, Levine returns to the newspaper as editor. He replaces Ian Shearn , now at the Houston Post .
It's the job, Levine says, that he's always wanted. "I'm sitting in the office that I was hired in twenty years ago by some old guy," says the 42-year-old editor. "Now I'm the old guy."

As an obit writer, Levine says he got to know people in the Passaic-Clifton area well. "Unfortunately, it was those on the way out," he says.
Levine went on to become an editorial writer at the Philadelphia Bulletin and later worked as a reporter and editor at the Trenton Times and the Washington Times . Most recently he was editor of the Elizabeth Daily Journal , now defunct, and the Hudson Dispatch in Union City, now merged with the nearby Jersey Journal .

Overseeing two newspapers in their last days was "gut-wrenching," he says. "Having two newspapers pulled out from under you," he says, "makes you acutely sensitive."

A self-described "news junkie" who collects old newspapers, Levine says he's especially proud of his latest purchase, a 1932 issue of the Newark News with the headline "Lindbergh Baby Found Dead." But he says the growing number of last editions saddens him: Even the News, the newspaper his parents made him read every day when he was growing up, eventually closed its doors.