Jim Naureckas

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Biography

James Martin Naureckas was born at Condell Hospital in Libertyville, Illinois, on Sunday, November 8, 1964, at 12:08 am, the third child of Kathleen Kearney Naureckas and Edward Martin Naureckas. Jim (as he was called) was delivered by Dr. Richard Hawkins, who arrived at the hospital in a tuxedo.

Jim was the middle name of his grandfather, Christopher James Kearney, himself born on November 8, 72 years earlier--as well as that of his uncle, Christopher James Kearney Jr., known as Jim. Uncle Jim and his wife, Dorothy Farrell Kearney, served as Jim's godparents when he was baptized a few days later at St. Joseph's Roman Catholic Church in Libertyville. Martin was the middle name of his father and the first name of his paternal grandfather, Martin Naureckas.

Jim grew up on O'Plaine Road on the outskirts of Libertyville Township. (His mailing address was Gurnee, Illinois, until a postal reorganization c. 1980.) He attended kindergarten at Oak Grove School, then went to Catholic school--St. Joe's in Libertyville, for first through third grades. In third grade he won the science fair with a dinosaur diorama.

Jim transferred back to Oak Grove School for fourth grade, and graduated from Oak Grove Junior High in 1978. He wrote for the school paper, Oak Leaves, and was elected student council vice president on the Student Reformist Party ticket. He played clarinet in the school band.

Around seventh grade, Jim started using Kearney--his mother's family name--as his middle name. Later, when he was confirmed at St. Joe's, he readopted Martin as his confirmation name. Aside from his birth certificate, most official documents list his name as James Kearney Naureckas.

From 1979 through 1982, Jim was a student at Libertyville High School. There he was active in Drama Club, sang in the chorus and wrote for the school paper, Drops of Ink. In 1982, following a censorship dispute, he and three other DOI editors quit and started an independent paper, The Student Pulse. He played Dungeons & Dragons with his friends; in the summers of 1981-83, he worked at Marriott's Great America, an amusement park in Gurnee.

On January 26, 1982, Jim's younger sister Barbara died from an asthma attack while he was taking her to Condell Hospital.

For college, Jim went to Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, where he majored in political science. From 1983 through 1985, he wrote a column for the Stanford Daily. He graduated after three years, in 1985.

Following graduation, Jim worked at his father's business, Coex Engineering, and at Kroch's & Brentano's, a bookstore at Hawthorn Mall. He interned at the socialist newspaper In These Times, eventually being hired as a staff writer to cover the Iran/Contra scandal. He lived for a time in the Lakeview neighborhood of Chicago.

Jim left ITT in 1988 and lived briefly in Los Angeles, living with high school friends. He then moved in 1989 to Washington, DC, where he worked as a freelance writer and as the managing editor of the Washington Report on the Hemisphere, the newsletter of the Council on Hemispheric Affairs.

At the beginning of 1990, Jim moved to New York City to take a job as editor of Extra!, the magazine of the media watch group Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting. First living in Washington Heights, he soon relocated to the East Village, first to an apartment on East 5th Street, and then moving into an apartment on East 11th Street near Avenue A where he would spend most of his adult life.

Janine Jackson joined the staff of FAIR in 1992, as research director; she and Jim began dating in 1993, and she moved into his apartment in 1994. The two married on May 24, 1997, in Cold Spring, New York. The couple co-edited The FAIR Reader, a compilation of Extra! articles published in 1996. Jim also co-wrote The Way Things Aren't: Rush Limbaugh's Reign of Error, with his colleagues Jeff Cohen and Steve Rendall.

Jim started the website New York Songlines, a street-by-street guide to Manhattan, in 2001. On February 24, 2004, he and Janine became parents of a daughter, Eden Jean Jackson Naureckas.

Sources

• First-hand information. Entered by James Naureckas at registration.