'Beyond Race' magazine breaks down barriers

By LAURA SILVER

Monday, April 28th 2008, 10:40 PM. Roca/News

Big Town Big Dreams

Stories about immigrant New Yorkers who make this town the great place it is

Emanuel Jalonschi may look like a laptop-addicted hipster. But the Romanian-born, Ridgewood-raised writer has a global consciousness that surpasses most of his peers.

As senior editor at Beyond Race, a magazine dedicated to "groundbreaking music and culture," breaking down barriers is the status quo, says Jalonschi.

"Anybody who has engaged with somebody different from themselves, they're in my community," he says.

Two years ago, he found a way to meld his journalistic skills and world view. Back in New York after a brief stint living "on top of a strip club" in Denver, Jalonschi stumbled across a Craigslist posting for editorial staff at a startup Brooklyn zine.

His résumé included stints as a porter, middle-school math teacher and sports editor at a local newspaper. Jalonschi remembers thinking the gig at Beyond Race sounded "just ridiculously idealist enough for me to be down with it."

He hit it off with the editor, Dave Terra, at their first meeting. Now Jalonschi, who goes by "Manny," is second-in-command of the glossy quarterly.

In the Winter 2008 issue, he interviewed Cincinnati music producer Hi-Tek about the state of hip hop and penned an article that explored the relationship between New York's upstate penitentiaries and their displaced inner-city inmates.

The magazine notched a national presence with a print run of 50,000, including distribution at Barnes & Noble. Its site, beyondracemagazine.com, has drawn comments from the suburbs of Paris and European distribution is slated for this year.

"It's really dope to see it grow like that," says Jalonschi. "Beyond race - the new multicultural, international community - is the new reality," he says, citing neighborhoods in New York City, California and overseas.

The 28-year-old ("I'm ancient, man") came to New York at age 6 with his family, attended public schools and graduated from Brooklyn Technical High School.

He earned a bachelor's in political science from John Jay College, where he served as editor of the school's newspaper.

Michael Blitz, chairman of interdisciplinary studies at the college and advisor for the student newspaper, says Jalonschi was also a peer educator.

"He has a sense of a world beyond ours and how important it is to keep a perspective on it," says Blitz.

A master's degree from CUNY's Graduate School of Journalism hasn't dulled Jalonschi's flair for criticizing the media. His main complaint? Entertainment and news programs don't reflect multicultural environments like the one in which he grew up.