Jeffrey H. Brodsky oral history collection, 1991-2021, bulk 2000-2012

Jeffrey Brodsky (1974-2023) was an American journalist and oral historian. The collection includes photographs, video, news clippings, audio recordings, transcripts, notes, news clippings, and digital ephemera documenting his education and career.

The collection contains materials relating to his personal life and early career, including news clippings about his time as co-editor of his high school newspaper in New Hampshire, reference letters for internships, and personal photographs. Also included is text from an unpublished interview conducted by Brodsky's father, Howard Brodsky, with Jeff about his career, his life, and his desires for his legacy.

Also included in this collection are audio files of 11 full episodes of a WGIR radio show called Spotlight , hosted by Brodsky and Misbah Tahrir, his frequent collaborator in high school. They were both co-editors of the high school newspaper, The Little Green.

The collection contains materials relating to his career as a journalist, including photographs and video clips from red carpets at a variety of events, including movie premieres, White House Correspondents' Association events, Clinton Global Initiative events, Gridiron Dinners, movie premieres, and more. Public figures such as Madonna, John Legend, Michael Moore, Howard Stern, Les Mooves, Donald Trump, Colin Powell, Nancy Pelosi, Condoleezza Rice, Bill Clinton, Chris Christie, Anthony Weiner, and more are represented in this collection.

This collection includes photographs and video clips from various events centered around business executives, including events for Chief Executive magazine and the CEO Breakfast Series at Saint Anselm College in Manchester, New Hampshire.

The collection includes a wealth of materials relating to his time as a student at Columbia University in the first cohort of the Oral History Master's program (OHMA), including materials related to his thesis project titled "My First Campaign," where he interviewed politicians about their very first political campaign. These materials include unedited transcripts, drafts of questions for narrators, notes on interviews, feedback from professors, edited and unedited video and audio files from interviews, and more. Brodsky later published excerpts from his thesis in a variety of publications, including The Washington Post and NPR; the collection contains materials relating to these publications, including edited audio and video as well as PDFs of the publications.

More than 2500 photographs were originally accessioned, which included several duplicated photographs. All duplicates have been weeded. The photographs were not organized, most were untitled, and there is little to no indication of who is represented in the photographs. The original metadata for the materials is not available, therefore there are no dates available. While many connections between photographs and events have already been established and are reflected in the arrangement, some photographs may be found to be from the same event or the same interview upon further examination by researchers.

This collection differs from other more traditional oral history collections held in the Oral History Archive at Columbia in several ways. The biggest difference is that this is truly a "work-in-progress" collection rather than a completed traditional collection. Most interviews do not have full transcripts, some transcripts just have the narrator's answer without the question listed. Some interviews have edited audio and video, some have neither. There will be no further processing of this collection, and no transcripts or other formats will be added.