 He graduated from the City College of New York and attended the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University and the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University.His first jobs in journalism included writing and then editing at "The New Leader", a leftist but anti-communist magazine whose editor was his brother-in-law, Melvin J. Lasky, and associate editor at "Commentary".Next, he was an editor at "The New York Times", where he won a fellowship from the Institute of Current World Affairs, which allowed him to travel in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe.