Saturday, July 17, 2004 7:58 PM
BY DIANA LJUNGAEUS
A few months ago Donna Barstow and Yael Swerdlow met at a Press Club book party and posed for a photo together. Now, these two Press Club club members have both achieved new milestones. Donna has a cartoon book of her own out, and Yael has launched a new career as director of media rela- tions for the Consulate General of Israel in Los Angeles.
The 8 Ball took a moment to catch up with these two busy women. Yael Swerdlow has been a freelance photojournalist here in Los Angeles for over twenty years. She’s worked for United Press International, the Associated Press, and the Los Angeles Times. And now she’s a diplomat. “I’ve been on their speakers bureau as a media specialist for a year, so the step is logical,” she says She hopes to “introduce the media to Israel beyond the headlines, highlighting its cutting edge technological, medical, scientific discoveries, as well as to promote Israel’s cultural, ethnic and religious diversity, among them, the Israeli Arabs, Bedouins and Druze populations.”
We asked about her planned press trip to Israel later this year. “I think media hypes conflicts. Israel is very misrepresented in the media. I want to do something about that.” As Yael explained, she wants to promote peace activities and projects that show the different population groups working together. Right now she is promoting the Arab-Israeli Orchestra from Nazareth, which is playing at Skirball Cultural Center on July 29. “I hope to see lots of my press club friends there.
Admission is free,” says Yael. What do women really want? Chocolate is the answer, according to Donna Barstow. Donna has been a cartoonist for the Los Angeles Times, Salt Lake Tribune, Chicago Sun Times, and San Francisco Bay Guardian and has drawn a regular weekly cartoon about cooking and dining out, called “Daily Special” for seven years. She’s also been published in The New Yorker, Wall Street Journal and Harvard Business Journal.
Now she has authored her first book, which is the first in a series of four on the subject of “what women really want.” She explains that “I was really pitching a calendar idea to Barnes & Noble, and it developed to a book project.” She was thinking of one book, but the publisher saw the possibility of four, and put Donna to work. The books will be released six to twelve months apart. Everywhere Donna promotes her book, she’ll be giving people a chance to sample and celebrate chocolate. At her first signing, at the Grove, guests not only had a chance to buy her book but got to enjoy free chocolate from Godiva. (Even a non-chocolate person like me started to feel an urge for dark chocolate).
