Mayer Fertig is chief communications officer of the Orthodox Union.
He is a journalist, broadcaster and news executive who has been heard on the air and worked behind the scenes in radio, television and print in the New York-New Jersey area since 1989, when he became a regular substitute on JM in the AM at age 19. Mayer is the only member of the JM in the AM staff besides Nachum to ever work full-time in radio.
Until January 2013 he was senior director of media relations and public affairs at Yeshiva University. Before that he was publisher and editor-in-chief of The Jewish Star, a weekly newspaper on Long Island that strived to produce high-quality journalism covering the Orthodox community. Earlier that year another Jewish publication called Mayer a “courageous editor” for the Star’s groundbreaking coverage of child sexual abuse and other sensitive topics in the Orthodox community. He has been the managing editor at WCBS 880 AM in New York City where for a number of years he also produced the now-defunct monthly call-in programs “Ask the Governor” and “Ask the Mayor”; an editor at ABC News Radio; and a writer for Channel 9 News, in part, just to prove that he could.
In the early 1990s Mayer was a morning news anchor for Garden State Radio News, based in Newark, N.J., and was heard on half-a-dozen small radio stations across New Jersey and the New York City suburbs. A favorite was a gospel station in Trenton, N.J. where, at the end of each newscast, the disk jockey would say, “God bless you, Brother!” During that time Mayer also anchored newscasts twice each afternoon on “The Nachum Segal Show,” but was disappointed anew at the conclusion of each report, when Nachum invariably failed to say, “God bless you, Brother!”
Mayer began at WCBS-AM as a per-diem desk assistant. Within a few years he was offered a staff position and promoted directly to afternoon producer. This feat, he was told, had not been seen at the station since the Nixon administration, which he missed covering as he did not yet know how to read. Afternoon Drive went well and, after a year or two, he was promoted again to produce the morning news. This afforded the remarkable opportunity to begin work at 12:30 AM, which considerably shortened his commute.
After attending MTA and Yeshivat Neveh Zion in Telshe-Stone, Israel, he earned a degree in Broadcast Journalism at Brooklyn College. While attending the Core 3 course, ‘People, Power and Politics’ there, Mayer met Chani Bergman. Today, neither recalls any of the material taught in that course, nor much of anything from the Greek Classics course they subsequently attended together. They married in 1992. Both grew up in Flatbush and now live in Elizabeth, N.J., with their children, Leora, Dovid and Naftali.
Mayer and two friends founded Hatzalah of Union County to serve the Elizabeth-Hillside community, an experience that taught them that no good deed goes unpunished.
