When hijacked airplanes hit the twin towers on Sept. 11, Mike Kelly jumped in a tugboat to cross the Hudson River and didn’t return home for three days.

This was the start of a five-year journey for Kelly, a columnist for The Bergen Record in New Jersey. Kelly (’75) has traveled to Southeast Asia, Israel, the Gaza Strip and Guantanamo Bay, and his time there inspired him to write a book about victims of terrorism and their families.

Kelly’s third and most recent nonfiction book, “The Bus on Jaffa Road,” explores pre-9/11 terrorism and how it affected — and still affects — the families of an American couple killed in a suicide bombing in Jerusalem. The book follows the families in their fight for justice in the U.S. court system.

Writing a book, Kelly discovered, is similar to traditional journalism.

“It all came down to basic reporting, like I learned at The Daily Orange,” he said.

The 62-year-old Teaneck, New Jersey, native has some ideas for future books, but he hasn’t settled on one just yet.

“The first thing you have to understand about writing a book is that it is a long-term relationship,” Kelly said. “It’s a marriage, not a summer romance — you gotta love the subject.”

The key to Kelly’s reporting is listening to sources, and not doing too much of the talking. This has helped him cover complicated stories such as Hurricane Katrina, President Bill Clinton’s impeachment trial, the sectarian fighting in Northern Ireland, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the Iraq war.

And he likes to tell these stories through everyday people. When covering 9/11, Kelly focused on the way the victims and their families were affected.

“Obviously as journalists, we have to talk to political movers and shakers, but my kind of M.O. is to see how events affect ordinary folks,” he said.

Kelly said The D.O. is where he learned how to be a journalist; it’s where he learned to write on deadline, respect editing and make mistakes.

“If I didn’t have The Daily Orange, I wouldn’t be much of a journalist at all,” said Kelly, who served as news editor and editorial page editor. “At The Daily Orange, I learned how to tell stories. And now, despite all of the technological differences, we are still telling stories.”

When Kelly thinks back to his time at The D.O., he recalls the late-night jokes and the fun he had, despite the hard work and tension that comes with trying to put out a paper. But the long hours and the bad coffee — which Kelly still remembers — paid off.

“I’ve been really lucky. I wanted to be a columnist and a book author, and I wanted to travel overseas,” Kelly said. “Now I’ve done all three. It’s been a real blessing.”

Published on September 10, 2015 at 3:02 pm

Contact Sara: smswann@syr.edu | @saramswann