The ‘Inside’ Scoop

Veteran journalist and Oak Park native starts pandemic publication.

BARBARA LEWIS CONTRIBUTING WRITER

Andrea Sachs tried, but started in March 2020. The name she just couldn’t stop is a pun of sorts; it’s an inside being a journalist. view of pandemic life for people

Sachs, who grew up in Oak stuck inside. Its motto, printed Park and received B.A. and on the masthead is “Hands on people who survived COVID J.D. degrees at University of the heart, six feet apart.” and run obituaries on those who Michigan, tried Sachs aimed her magazine at didn’t. Three writers chronicled to go back to her friends and family, but thanks their own battles with the virus. first love, English to word-of-mouth and social After graduating from college literature, when she media, readership ballooned. In in the mid-1970s, Sachs prepared retired from Time February, The Insider grew 42 for a law career. She’d considered magazine in 2014. percent to reach 10,000 unique getting a graduate degree in Andrea Sachs She was working on her Ph.D. thesis viewers. The Insider — view it at theinEnglish, but colleges weren’t hiring English teachers at the time, (on the works of Ralph Ellison sider1.com — is produced by a so it seemed like a dead end. and Richard Wright) at Hunter band of writers and editors who The legal profession was adding College in New York when work communally but remotely. women, and law schools were COVID hit. Sachs estimates more than looking for promising female

“From the beginning of the a dozen Jews who live in or students. Her father, the late Ted pandemic, I was drawn to write formerly lived in Metro Detroit Sachs, was a successful Detroit about that,” said Sachs, found- have written for the magazine. attorney who loved his work. So, er and editor of The Insider, a They include former Detroit News she enrolled in U-M’s law school. weekly online magazine she columnist Laura Berman; well- Sachs says she knew it was a known Detroit attorney David mistake almost from Day 1 but Fink; Merrill Lynn Hansen, a stuck with it, graduating and paralegal from West Bloomfield; taking a job as a government industrial psychologist Alan attorney in Washington, D.C. Resnick of Farmington Hills; Her epiphany came, after three Tobye S. Stein, a retired human unhappy years as a lawyer, on resources officer from Northville; March 30, 1981, the day Ronald Joel Dzodin, formerly of Oak Reagan was shot. Park, who now lives in Israel; “I ran down to the hospital Bonnie Fishman, well-known where he was taken because it chef who recently moved to was history in the making,” she California and Jessie Siegel, said. “I watched the print reportformerly of Oak Park, who now ers do person-on-the-street lives in Washington, D.C. interviews and was interviewed “It really surprised me that by three female journalists about people were coming to me who my own age. I was AWOL from wanted to write,” Sachs said. “I work all day; I never went back think people have a lot on their to my office. When I left the hosmind right now because of the pital grounds, all I could think pandemic, and I think people was, ‘This is what I want to do!’” want to talk about it.” She knew that day she was The Insider has written about meant to be a journalist.

DOUG DWORKIN

Andrea Sachs celebrates receiving her COVID vaccination in the detergent aisle at a New York pharmacy. CAREER AT TIME

She moved to New York shortly afterward and got a master’s degree from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism in 1983. After “a nanosecond” working at Glamour and Good Housekeeping, she joined Time magazine in 1984 and stayed for 29 years, covering the legal and book publishing beats.

She left in 2014 after a corporate reorganization. “I got out when the going was good!” she said, adding, “There were other things I wanted to do.”

Sachs has borne the startup costs and ongoing expenses of The Insider, whose contributors are unpaid. “No one’s getting rich working for The Insider, least of all me,” she said. “It’s a labor of love for all of us.”

She is starting to look for ways to bring in paid advertising and plans to pass along any income to her contributors. “As someone who’s made her living as a journalist, the last thing I want to do is exploit writers!” she said.

Sachs says she expects The Insider to continue past the pandemic because the problems and opportunities raised by the disease will last. “I think we’re all in for a change of lifestyles for a while,” she said.

Contact Andrea Sachs at editor@ theinsider1.com.