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Now obviously, I'm flattered when I'm asked to be a guest on Chris Lydon's Radio Open Source.
Especially when it's a cool topic like "The End of the Foreign Correspondent?"
So what's the catch?
Because of the time difference and the fact that it's an evening show in the U.S., I have to be woken up at 2 AM to share my opinions with the radio audience.
Please feel free to tune in and listen on a local station -- or wait for the podcast. (I really hope I'm coherent...)
As I left the house this morning to drop off the kids, I grabbed the laptop, threw it in a bag and went for my morning coffee and work session to the closest wired cafe, Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf.
Not my usual routine, but I was driven to it. Why?
Because yesterday, I spent the day at home blogging for Pajamas Media and Israelity. In order to stay up-to-the-minute on breaking news for Pajamas, I have no choice but to leave on Fox News, because it's the only station on Israeli cable that truly keeps you updated on events in America as they happen -- CNN International is always reporting on a bus strike in Madagascar when something interesting is live in the US.
But yesterday, I swear that network ran the Kerry clip four times an hour. Left-wing, right-wing, no matter, there is really a limit to the number of times you can watch somebody being such an idiot. I know that if I'm home, I'll flip on the television, and there he'll be again....
The good news was that I've been discovered by the Huffington Post. I've followed Ariana's interesting career via serial Vanity Fair profiles, and I must say, I'm a little fascinated by this chameleon-like creature -- as I usually am by the rare women who aren't afraid to get in people's faces.
(Although I think her proposed "solution" for the current crisis puts her somewhere in La-La land...can anyone figure out from this column what exactly she would have Israel DO?)
I must also say that I was flattered by the resulting attention and the traffic. After all, having chugged along quietly in my little corner of the blogosphere for three years now, it was nice to be noticed.
The other side of the coin of this attention is that not all of my new readers are very fond of Israel, or, by extension, me. I've left nearly all of their comments intact, since I think it's important for everyone to know the kind of views that are out there. I've certainly gotten the message.
But now....a first.
I know it's par for the course in the world of blogs, but being the queen of the centrist position, poster-girl for being a CenterLeft Democrat-yet-Viewed-as-Right-Wing-Because-I'm-Israeli-and-would-like-to-exist, I am really unused to being part of the fray.
But it's wartime. Better toughen up.
I do think that this guy's position made no sense. If he thought that both I and Howard Kurtz were mindless propaganda tools, you would have thought that he would have felt a real obligation to go on the program and tell us how awful and wrong we were. It was an opportunity. If he had taken that opportunity, told it like he saw it, and been censured or cut off or something, I would have respected his outrage. But to not show up? I can't respect that decision.
UPDATE: I didn't "show up" either. They teased my appearance at the beginning of the show and then I got bumped for breaking news -- I think it was a live speech by the Lebanese Prime Minister. That's show biz, folks.
Check out my maiden voyage in podcasting over at Pajamas Media Politics Central.
My first victim -- I mean, my first interviewee -- is Dr. Reuven Hazan of Hebrew University, who was my favorite source for quotes when I wrote about politics for the Jerusalem Post. He's great -- I'm just the one asking the questions. If you've never listened to a podcast, it's basically a long in-depth audio interview like something you would hear on the radio. Listening is easy -- just click on Play and it's like listening to an MP3.
If you want to see the tables turned, watch CNN's Reliable Sources with Howard Kurtz on Sunday morning -- the roundtable is live, but the taped the interview with me yesterday.
So now you all will know what I look like....yikes.
(Crossposted on Israelity)
It's not so simple to answer when people say, "Oh, you don't work for the Jerusalem Post anymore? What do you do?"
Here's an article that does the work for me -- it explains what the organization I work for, Israel 21c, does.
“When it comes to Israel, 98 percent of what the media focuses on is the war with the Palestinians,” said Larry Weinberg, executive vice president of Israel 21c, “and 98 percent of pro-Israel advocacy is going to waste because it’s all about the crisis.”
Proving that Israel is right and the Palestinians are wrong may be emotionally satisfying for advocates, said the former New York public relations expert, but not necessarily effective in changing people’s way of thinking about Israel.
Weinberg said that by only discussing Israel in terms of its conflict with the Palestinians, “you have a narrow bandwidth, where Israel can only win some of the argument. We are trying to broaden the bandwidth to include Israel’s accomplishments.
“We’re not saying there should be no more discussion of political policy,” he said, “only that we have to change the mix. Let’s not spend almost all of our time on it. We need a strategy that includes more positive imaging.”
Weinberg’s group sends out information to mainstream media outlets about Israeli scientific and business successes, including Israeli-made pacemakers being used widely in America, medical research that is helping fight diabetes and computer advances like Instant Messaging.
Yup, that's us. Check us out.
Nobody's really noticed, but the Ma'ariv English edition died today.
I'd heard a rumor recently that this was in the offing, and by sheer cooincidence, decided to check it out today.
The editor sounds seriously bummed as he says goodbye:
Unfortunately, for reasons beyond our control Maariv has decided to suspend English language operations at this time. I can only express the hope that as the recently launched Hebrew NRG site continues to grow and mature, this decision will be reassessed, and we will be able to once again provide our international audience with the quality news and in depth coverage of Israel and the Middle East that our readers have come to expect.
Until then, all I can say is farewell, and hopefully au revoir. It has been a privilege serving you, and I hope that this will prove to be no more than a brief time out, and that we will, in due course resume operating.
If anyone knows the scoop, I'd be interested. It's probably a wise decision, given that the Ma'ariv site has been a rather token and pathetic effort from the start, while their arch-rival Yediot Aharonot is gearing up to step up with an impressive site (if we are to believe Alan Abbey's hype) to which they would be unfavorably compared.
The good news: my husband is quoted in this Ha'aretz piece.
The bad news: whoever translated the article over from Hebrew to English did not have a clue as to how his name was spelled.
I know there are some readers of this blog with connections to the English edition of "Ha'aretz." Can I please use the power of the blogosphere to correct this unfortunate situation?
Bret Stephens out....David Horovitz in....
I want it on the record.....this blog announced the news at 12:30 PM Israel time, and the Jerusalem Post employees were only told at 5 PM. So faithful readers of this blog knew before much of the staff did.
And the hot hot scoop from the Jerusalem Post grapevine is....
Editor in chief Bret Stephens is leaving to go back to the Wall Street Journal.
The current editor of the Jerusalem Report -- and author -- David Horovitz, has been named as his replacement.
None of this is confirmed yet. Details to follow as I hear more gossip.
UPDATE: The staff of the Post has been called to a special meeting in half an hour -- 5 PM Israel time -- to hear the news. Remember folks, you read it here first.
It's got to be interesting in the newsroom of the New York Post this morning.
Some reporter is going to get their ass kicked good this morning.
I tipped Michele to screen-capture for posterity the picture of the Post headline on the choice of Gephardt, next to the breaking news item on his choice of Edwards. I'm not technically advanced enough to do fancy stuff like that.
One person who must be happy that this announcement is timed for today -- Hillary Clinton. It will overshadow all of the stories on the "Hillary is a Total Bitch" book that is coming out today.
So I'm reading the New Yorker online and get to this article about the hellhole that is Fallujah, Iraq.
I do a double-take at the byline -- Nir Rosen.
"What kind of crazy Israeli is tooling around Fallujah?" I wonder. "He's even more of a nutty risk-taker than Jeff."
Thanks to the power of Google, I can find out. Apparently, he's been based in Baghdad and writing there for more than a year, after a stint as a freelancer in Washington, DC.
And this 2002 piece makes it clear that he's none-too-attached to his Israeli roots.
As my El Al plane landed in Tel Aviv, the intercom played an Israeli folk song of my childhood, "Its so good that you've come home." Despite my cynicism, the child in me wanted to cry. I stifled the nascent tears, which I rejected as a vestigial remnant of the nationalist propaganda they had inculcated me with in the summer camps of my coastal village. Just like every other time I came, I was entering a maelstrom, new and unique, yet a mere variation on the same theme of bloody nationalism, paranoid identity and violent religion that defined Israel.
In the article, he informs us rather proudly that
An Israeli foreign service officer had informed me of a file possessed by the Israeli government identifying me as pro-Palestinian, anti-Zionist and an "enemy of the state." Not bad for a 23-year-old.
What made me smile was seeing this at the bottom of the article:
This article originally appeared in Dissident Voice, a semi-regular newsletter dedicated to challenging the lies of the corporate press and the privileged classes it serves.
Only two years between writing a piece for a publication like that and getting a piece in the New Yorker, which is the very definition of the press of the "privileged classes." Now that's a journalistic career trajectory!
For those of you who read Hebrew, the newspaper Ma'ariv has just launched their spiffy and busy new site that will presumably compete head-to-head with Ynet, the web site of their arch enemy, the Yediot Aharonot newspaper.
Like Ynet, Ma'ariv decided to give their a name that promotes an image that is presumably younger and more modern than their newspaper, so they inexplicably went with NRG (get it? Energy?)
Its busy look and gossipy, celebrity-driven coverage makes the Hebrew edition an even sharper contrast to the dry as a bone, all-politics-all-the-time Ma'ariv Online in English.
It will be interesting to see whether, when Ynet launches in English, it will also have the ultraserious face that the other Israeli newspapers online choose to present to the English-speaking world, or whether it will more faithfully reflect the paper's basic tabloid spirit.....
UPDATE: Here's Ha'aretz's take on the new site (like they're going to be so objective and disinterested..)
I was commenting to my husband on all of the pre-packaged Reagan obituaries. He recalled that years ago, when he was in a delegation of Israeli journalists getting a tour of the major U.S. media, their visit to the New York Times included a tour of the Obituary department.
Their slogan? "When they're ready to go, we're ready to go."
A friendly anonymous source passed on the E-mail that the recently-departed- but-not-much-mourned Jerusalem Post publisher Tom Rose sent to the entire Post staff. He speaks of the many things he learned at the paper. One thing should be pretty clear -- he didn't learn to write.
The "Ziman" he refers to is the newspaper's interim publisher, Mark Ziman, formerly his right-hand man.
As you all know, my employment "came to an end" at about 7:00 on Tuesday night. I was fired precisely six years after I assumed the job. It was an extraordinarily eventful six years. Tumultuous, difficult, and at the same time rewarding years; for the paper, the country, not to mention for me. We went through lots of wrenching, and change together. We also experienced lots of positive growth together. No doubt there is plenty more of both in store for the future.
For me anyway, the rewards far outweighed the costs. I learned things hard to imagine before taking on a job like this and difficult even now to describe. I
developed tremendous relationships, and learned though experience, good and bad, about people, management, responsibility, and most importantly myself. What I do well, what I don?t do well. What I really knew, versus what I thought I knew. How to affect change, how not to affect change. Change was the one constant. Its presence, desired or not, never changed. It was always there. Positive change that was necessary and hard to achieve; negative change that was inevitable but hard to prevent.The last thing Ziman needs is too much praise from me. But there is one observation that even he will not get me to refrain from making. Ziman owes nothing to anyone. He got where he is using nothing but his own wits. He is the very embodiment of just how much opportunity there is here in Israel for anyone willing to roll up his sleeves, take on tough tasks, and stop at nothing to get a job done. Unlike me, Mark was not put where he was, he worked his way to where he is. He worked his way up from the bottom. The very bottom. He
got the one thing all of us have but few us recognize; opportunity.Ziman brought an American dream to Israel and used hard work to make it come true. There's no limit to where grit like that can take you all together.
That's the tune that the employees of the Jerusalem Post are singing after the newspaper's infamous publisher, Tom Rose, was reportedly unceremoniously fired and told not to enter the building on the eve of the Shavuot holiday on Tuesday.
I missed that scoop on my blogging break -- I even received E-mails and a phone call tipping me off, but I was relaxing on the beach at the time.
So I'll make up for tardiness with good juicy info. Here is the dramatically gleeful E-mail sent out by editor Bret Stephens to the staff.
Dear Colleagues,
As some of you may have heard already, Tom Rose was this Tuesday terminated
as Publisher and CEO of The Jerusalem Post. CFO Mark Ziman has taken his
place as publisher on an interim basis.For those of us who have seen up close the damage Tom did to this newspaper,
this is a happy event indeed. For those Tom damaged personally, with his
abusive behavior and bizarre management style, it is happier still. So good
riddance, Tom, good riddance. You will not be missed.So many of us have been waiting for this day, and fighting for it, that we
may be forgiven for thinking that Tom's departure brings our problems to an
end. It does not. It will be some time before we can undo the damage he
wrought: To our finances, to our reputation, to our business relationships,
to our morale, to the quality of our editorial product.What we can say is that, with Tom gone, we can begin to address our problems
in a rational and purposeful way. Improvements will not necessarily come
quickly. But I'm confident they will, in time, come.I hope each of you had a pleasant holiday. I look forward to seeing you next
week.Yours,
Bret
Here's the less interesting memo that Hollinger sent to JPost employees:
To: All Jerusalem Post and Jerusalem Report Employees From: Gordon A. Paris Re: Mark Ziman appointed Interim Publisher and CEO
I am pleased to inform you that Mark Ziman has agreed to take on the
additional roles of Interim Publisher and CEO of The Jerusalem Post
and Jerusalem Report, effective immediately.In addition to his new responsibilities, Mark will continue in his
roles as Chief Financial Officer and Chief Operating Officer. In taking on these new roles, Mark replaces Tom Rose, who has left our
Company.I know that all of you will provide Mark with your full support as you
continue to produce the highest quality publications and advance the
Strategic Process that is currently underway.
Here's the brief official version in the Post itself.
The unconfirmed gossip going around the Jerusalem Post diaspora regarding what happened is that for the umpteenth time, Tom Rose fired the only people who knew how to run something and then that something broke down and no one knew how to fix it. And he blamed everyone around him and sent out an angry psycho E-mail. Now, it wasn't the first time that Bret Stephens passed one of Tom's psycho E-mails to the upper echelons of Hollinger and told them that this guy was off his nut.
But for some reason, this time, they responded and ordered Tom Rose out of the building. Now, the timing can't be cooincidental. As those who are following the saga know, due to the Conrad Black scandal and the implosion of Hollinger, the Jerusalem Post, along with other Hollinger papers is on the auction block. The "strategic process" referred to in the memo from Hollinger to the employees is figuring out how much the paper is worth and trying to sell it for as high a price as possible.
Amid this, Tom Rose had been not-so-secretly trying to organize a group of businessmen to bid for the Post.
So, the speculation goes, either the new interim post-scandal CEO of Hollinger was more responsive to Stephen's anti-Rose campaign than his predecessors (everyone always suspected that Rose must have known about the skeletons in the Hollinger closet, otherwise no one could figure out how the company was allowing him to run the Post into the ground...) or there was some kind of campaign to foil Rose's attempts to buy the Post, or the company may have decided that an unstable publisher was driving down the newspaper's market value.
I take no sides in this quarrel -- neither Tom, Bret, nor the new publisher Mark Ziman are particular fans of mine.
But I do think that Bret deserves some credit for grit and determination. Three people preceded him in working as editor-in-chief of the Post, all of whom lasted a relatively short time, got out as quickly as they could, leaving the newspaper (and in all three cases, the country) exhausted, with psychic scars and unbelievable Tom Rose war stories.
Bret was the one who didn't retreat, who took Rose on full force, and won. I guess this officially means that in manly pissing match terms, Bret's was bigger than Tom's in the end. And ironically, he was the conservative Chicago boy editor that Rose had hand-picked and brought to the Post as "his man."
So Bret, even though it will always be difficult for me to fully appreciate you -- for obvious reasons -- congratulations.
UPDATE: Several people are asking what the "obvious reasons" are. It's pretty much one obvious reason -- Bret's very first act on his very first day on the job as editor-in-chief of the Post was firing me. Not very flattering, eh? The only saving grace is the knowledge that he fired me before he got to know me, not after....at least I can say that I've never been fired by a boss who has actually worked with me.
This Friedman parody is pretty amusing. Even those of us who generally like him, also enjoy making fun of him.
I would add that to the directions that when you write a Tom Friedman column you must always remember that the only two people who have insight into what Israelis are thinking are if Yaron Ezrahi and David Hartmann, so don't forget to quote them in every column you write about Israel.
Steven notes that the New York Observer is getting charged with ripping off the piece....
Someone working at the Ma'ariv International edition was watching CNN and then got a little overexcited (or drunk, or exhausted and punchy, or off their meds) and put up a story that claimed to be "international exclusive."
A smart new blogger Miriam Shaviv picked it up and saved it before someone got sane and modified it into this story.
Basically, the alarmist original version of the story claimed that CNN was "disseminating misleading information," that it was "distorting news to create a false impression detrimental to Israel" and that it "deliberately played fast and loose with UN figures."
The modified version merely charged CNN with "questionable reporting" and said that its story was "somewhat disingenuous."
What was the bottom line? CNN reported that according to the UN "13,000 Palestinians had lost their homes as a result of military activities since the outbreak of the Intifada" -- and apparently at one point, this fact was edited down to give the impression that the UN figures indicated that 13,000 had been made homeless over the LAST FEW DAYS during the current operation in Rafah.
Yeah, that was a boo-boo and it's nice that someone at Ma'ariv noticed, but an "international exclusive?"
I've been wondering from time to time who exactly has been doing the translating at Ma'ariv. Some of the word choices in English have been downright weird.
Hat Tip: the new Forward blog Fiddish (What's the deal with the name? Forward plus Yiddish?)
In the beginning, there was only the Jerusalem Post for Israel news junkies on the Internet. Then came Ha'aretz -- the first Hebrew newspaper to translate its offerings, and the financial daily Globes. Most recently, Ma'ariv has joined them -- the first mainstream tabloid newspaper to joing the mix.
Now, finally, Israel's highest-circulation daily is gearing up to hit the Internet in English: Yediot Aharonot -- or rather, its Internet version, called Ynet.
If it's done well, expect it to zoom ahead of its competitors in terms of exclusives. Since Yediot has such a high circulation and some really veteran reporters, politicians tend to leak their big stories there.
The guy putting it together is Alan Abbey, who launched the Jerusalem Post Internet Edition, and one of my former newspaper's most recent refugees. (UPDATE: I was quite justifiably corrected -- Alan did not launch the JPost Internet edition -- he took over from the excellent team that did launch it, after that team was "Hollingerized," i.e. fired or demoralized by Tom Rose till they quit. Of course, then the same thing happened to Alan....)
My source for this media news, you ask?
Why, the grapevine, of course.
Is there any better source?
In the beginning, there was only the Jerusalem Post for Israel news junkies on the Internet. Then came Ha'aretz -- the first Hebrew newspaper to translate its offerings, and the financial daily Globes. Most recently, Ma'ariv has joined them -- the first mainstream tabloid newspaper to joing the mix.
Now, finally, Israel's highest-circulation daily is gearing up to hit the Internet in English: Yediot Aharonot -- or rather, its Internet version, called Ynet.
If it's done well, expect it to zoom ahead of its competitors in terms of exclusives. Since Yediot has such a high circulation and some really veteran reporters, politicians tend to leak their big stories there.
The guy putting it together is Alan Abbey, who launched the Jerusalem Post Internet Edition, and one of my former newspaper's most recent refugees. (UPDATE: I was quite justifiably corrected -- Alan did not launch the JPost Internet edition -- he took over from the excellent team that did launch it, after that team was "Hollingerized," i.e. fired or demoralized by Tom Rose till they quit. Of course, then the same thing happened to Alan....)
My source for this media news, you ask?
Why, the grapevine, of course.
Is there any better source?
Huh.
Newsday has a big feature story on Israeli comedy and satire on current events, featuring comedian Eli Yatzpan.
I did the same story for Hadassah Magazine more than a year ago.
While I was working on it, the New York Times came out with a similar piece. Us journalists, we're so original.
Sharp eyes over at Protocols on a royal goof-up at the Jerusalem Post.
They put a story up on the Internet while it was still being edited, and left intact some nasty comments by a grumpy copy editor.
Here's the full post from Protocols
The Jerusalem Post has an apology above one of its stories this morning:
Due to a technical error, the following article was published online Monday night with copy editors' comments not meant for publication. The staff of the Jerusalem Post Internet Edition would like to apologize to Mr. Gutman and to his readers.
Thanks to reader David Druce, we have those copy-editor's comments.
"The Holocaust accompanied the establishment of the state; this is what is written in the Prophets and the Torah." SO WHAT? THIS IS SUCH A NON-SEQUITUR.[...]
This was the message hammered home to the elders in the community, including 76 year-old Ya'acov Frieman, and WHY MENTION SOMEONE, OR SOMETHING, FOR NO REASON?! the children at the settlement's Neot Katif elementary school. Their principal, Yossi Krackover, rocking back and forth as if in prayer, reminded them that "Israel is victorious through the strength of its children."
[...]
Suddenly all the chattering and the toasts of wine halted for a brief moment for the singing of the national anthem "Hatikva." A cement truck roiled in the background. THESE THINGS JUST DON'T FIT ANYWHERE; THEY DON'T SUPPORT ANY POINT. IN FACT, THEY DETRACT FROM THE POINTS YOU'RE TRYING TO MAKEGee, the JPost sounds like a really fun gig, with perfectly supportive editors. [SO WHAT? THIS IS SUCH A NON-SEQUITUR -- Ed.]
Yup, it sure is a fun place to work. How did I last there for 12 years, you ask? The answer is simple: first I was a foreign correspondent in Washington, DC. Then I was a long-distance correspondent in Tel Aviv. Never worked in the Jerusalem newsroom itself.
I do have to say that the majority of editors I worked with were just fine, though I had my share of charming personalities like the one who edited Matt Gutman's article.
Is it me, or is there just a little undertone of happiness in this New York Times story that they weren't the only major newspaper to be taken in by a lazy reporter?
Jack Kelley, a star foreign correspondent at USA Today before he resigned earlier this year, appears to have fabricated substantial portions of at least eight major articles in the last 10 years, including one that earned him a finalist nomination for a Pulitzer Prize in 2002, the newspaper reported yesterday.
USA Today, the nation's largest-circulation newspaper, said Mr. Kelley had engaged in his deceptions around the globe, apparently inventing such accounts as his face-to-face encounter with a suicide bomber in Jerusalem, his participation in a high-speed hunt in 2003 for Osama bin Laden and his witnessing the departure of six refugees from Cuba who, he claimed, later drowned.
Mr. Kelley, 43, is also accused of using at least two dozen passages from the work of other news organizations without attribution and trying to subvert USA Today's investigation by concocting scripts — complete with phony identities — for associates to follow if his editors tried to substantiate his work, the newspaper said.
Geez, he actually sounds more organized and methodical about his deception than Jayson Blair.
Shame, shame, shame on my profession.
I am proud to declare, that in 12 years of newspaper writing, when it came down to a choice between writing a more boring article and making stuff up, I went with boring.
There's huge surprising news rocking media circles in Israel, especially English-speaking ones.
David Landau, former editor of the Jerusalem Post, current editor of the English edition of Ha'aretz, has been named as overall editor of Ha'aretz -- the whole enchilada Hebrew edition. The guy who everyone thought was next in line for the editorship, Yoel Esteron, has resigned.
This is the first time I know of that a native English-speaker has been put in charge of a major Hebrew daily.
Born in London in 1947, Landau studied at the Hasmonean grammar school, and then arrived in Israel in 1965, where he studied for two years in a yeshiva. During the summer of 1967, he volunteered to work on the news desk of the Jerusalem Post.
He then returned to England, where he received a law degree from University College, London.
In 1970, he immigrated to Israel and immediately began working as a copy-editor at the Post. A short while later, he began his army service in the artillery corps.
In 1972, he became the diplomatic correspondent for the Jerusalem Post, serving in the position until his appointment as the newspaper's head of news in 1986.
In 1990, he led the mass resignation of some 30 senior journalists at the Post, following the sale of the newspaper to Hollinger International Inc., owned by Conrad Blackwhen the new owners changed the editorial line of the paper, making it distinctly right-wing.
From 1991 to 1992, Landau served as the diplomatic commentator for Maariv. For the last decade, he has been the Israel correspondent for The Economist.
Landau is the author of "Piety and Power: the World of Jewish Fundamentalism," which deals with the ultra-Orthodox world. He assisted Shimon Peres in the writing of the former prime minister's autobiography, titled "Battling for Peace."
David is an unusual creature in Israel -- very Orthodox and at the same time, very left-wing -- a rare, nearly non-existent combination. He has a notoriously prickly personality -- I've never managed to have an un-awkward conversation with him, but then again, he got to know me when I was an employee of the "evil" Jerusalem Post owned by Hollinger who was hired after his revolution: a representative of the Enemy.
I congratulate David and am proud of the Anglo accomplishment. But I feel badly for Yoel, who was the Ha'aretz correspondent in Washington, DC when I arrived as a newbie reporter for the Jerusalem Post there, and was really nice and helpful to me.
This is pretty cool.
We led Israel 21c this week with the story of the Israeli humanitarian organizations that are determined to send aid to the Iranian earthquake victims despite the Iranian governments rejection of aid from the Zionist entity.
Guess who picked up the story? National Iranian Television (though I doubt it was intentional)
Scroll down to the second-to-last story on the page. Since it's under "latest news," I'm not sure how long this link will stay up.
It's all in this Q&A section with Shachar Ilan, who covers the beat for Ha'aretz.
His openness regarding his personal opinions about the beat he covers also tells a great deal about Israeli journalism, which resembles mainstream European journalism in allowing reporters to be honest about their biases and their agenda, rather than mainstream U.S. journalism, in which reporters are directed to always try to appear objective (until they get promoted and become columnists.)
My pal Debra Nussbaum-Cohen had a story in the New York Times about the whole Kabbalah Center thing. I really like her lead paragraph:
It became official when Britney Spears appeared on the cover of Entertainment Weekly in November, wearing little but a white bustier, a pouty look and a red string around her wrist: Kabbalah has entered the realm of pop culture.
Jewsweek will probably be unhappy, and rightfully so, for not being mentioned by name in the following sentence:
The phenomenon has been derided on some Jewish Web sites as ``McMysticism.''
It's a good solid piece, though rather basic for those of us who have been reading articles ruminating on the fad for several years. One fun fact I hadn't known was the Kabbalah Center's attempt to patent red string.
The Kabbalah Centre tried this year to get a trademark for the red string, which it sells for $26 to $36, but the Patent and Trademark Office turned it down.
Nice job, Deb.
I can't help feeling proud of Debra -- our friendship is a study in Jewish geography and networking. We met as errant 20-year-olds in 1984 the dormitories of Tel Aviv University, having fun on our junior years abroad. We were friendly, but not extremely close -- both too busy sowing wild oats.
Five years later, I'm covering a big pro-choice rally in Washington, DC for the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, following around the groups from Hadassah and the National Council of Jewish Women....and I bump into Debra. We were both single 20-somethings living in New York City and working as journalists, so we reconnected and became friends. She was doing well writing for jewelery trade journals, but her heart wasn't in her work, and she envied me working in Jewish journalism, even though she was making more money. I told her that it shouldn't be too difficult for her to make the switch.
Jump ahead a year or two -- I leave JTA to go work for the Jerusalem Post in DC and give Debra a heads-up....and she gets a job at JTA. Since then, she's written for most of the Jewish press, with frequent forays into mainstream publications like New York Magazine and the venerable Times. And she's written a book!
Like many of the friends I met during junior year in Israel, she was always far more of a Zionist than I was, and so it is completely ironic that I am here and she is there....such is fate.
UPDATE: There's more details on the red string patent story from Steven Weiss in the Forward:
I run over to the stage to catch Tom Friedman for that question-and-answer he promised I'd get after his speech. Harvey Schwartz, a Manhattan lawyer, greets Friedman and with a smile on his face tells him he learned two things from Friedman that night: That the columnist, "Supports drilling in ANWR," and is, "willing to sacrifice Israel on the altar of Iraq."
Friedman yells "F**k you," hits the guy with his right hand, and then shoves him into a small crowd of people with their backs turned. Schwartz has a good foot and 100 pounds on the diminutive Friedman, but he went about three feet backwards from Friedman's push.
Friedman turns around and sees me with my notebook and tape recorder. Deer in the headlights. Schwartz goes, "Did you get a picture of that?"
Unfortunately, he didn't, so we've got to take his word for it. By "he," I mean Steven I. Weiss, prolific blogger, kosher bachelor, ambitious young journo, kosher bachelor, and author of this awesome piece of writing, Sippin' Geneva Juice
It's a great story, very well-written, though clearly in the gonzo Rolling Stone/Village Voice tradition of colorful non-objectivity, covering an event last week keynoted by NY Times columnist and alleged brawler Thomas Friedman, with analysts Steven Cohen and David Makovsky as his sidekicks and guest stars Yossi Beilin and Palestinian Yasser Abbed Rabbo, fresh from Geneva and Washington.
The idea that Beilin and Rabbo don't really represent anyone or anything is supposed to be....irrelevant. It's a reality that fluctuates over the course of the night: when credit needs to be given to the accomplishment, they're important leaders in the struggle for peace; when the obvious shortcomings of their effort are noted, well, take a chill pill, man, nobody ever said these guys were actual leaders.
And the Accord isn't an accord -- when it's being trumped up, it's an agreement; but when you get caught in the nitty-gritty, it's not an agreement, it's really an accord; and, at times when it's meant to be separated from its authors, it's a document. Since the reality is fluid, the words can be, too. Dig?
Yeah, I dig. Not that I thought a lot of Geneva to begin with. But the piece isn't really about Geneva; it's about another journalist. The one who really gets it in Weiss' story isn't Geneva -- but Friedman.
Finally, I have Friedman cornered. Can he answer some questions? "No, no." But I've got one question I think he'll have a cool answer to: What do you think your role is for the Geneva Accord? "I'm a journalist, I'm a columnist," he says and then runs away. Sure, he is those things, but only in the loosest sense: more, he's an actor, a trader, and a fighter.
The man who spent the past few hours pronouncing how we need to see past the present, the rhetoric, and the attacks to achieve peace has just gone violent on some random guy.
You couldn't ask for a more fitting ending.
Youch. Watch out Tom. A new generation of Jewish journalists aren't just nipping at your heels, they are biting you on the ass....
Well, we've finally got the Julie Burchill farewell to the Guardian, Part 2, called The Hate That Shames Us.
As you recall, last week, Burchill published Part 1, Good, Bad, and Ugly, in which she explained that part of the reason that she was leaving the Guardian, which she otherwise admired as a publication, was that her newspaper had developed a "quite striking bias against the State of Israel" and that "I find this hard to accept because, crucially, I don't swallow the modern liberal line that anti-Zionism is entirely different from anti-semitism; the first good, the other bad."
Like her first column, the second is so hard-hitting that it is difficult to excerpt, but here's a nice big chunk:
So emboldened by the filthy free-for-all, the danse macabre of resurgent Judeophobia - attacks on Jews in this country have risen by 75% this year; and since 2000, there has been a 400% increase in attacks on synagogues - are the ignorant armies of darkness that even Germans are opening their yaps on a subject that you'd have thought they'd have the sense, if not the decency, to keep away from. Just a few weeks ago, a German MP was forced to resign after claiming that the Jews were responsible for Soviet army "atrocities" against the defeated Nazi state (makes you want to go back and bomb Dresden all over again, only properly this time). And in a sort of Hate version of the Eurovision Song Contest, Greek composer Mikis Theodorakis weighed in with his carefully considered view that the Jews are at the root of all evil. So, presumably, he won't be wanting the royalties from one of his most notable works, which documents the tragic love story of two young Jewish inmates of a concentration camp. Or maybe he can rejig it, to show how evil this pair were, and how they deserved what they got.
To contemplate the thought processes of such individuals makes any decent person want to wash their hands until the slime of hypocritical hatred is swept away. But when whole sections of society peddle such lies, it's scarier still. And when carriers of the disease are shielded by those who govern us, you start to believe the lunatics have taken over the asylum: the EU's racism watchdog recently suppressed a report on the rise of anti-semitism because it concluded that Muslims were behind many incidents. What sort of world do we live in, when racism is "allowed" to be reported only if it comes from the white and the right? What about a stubborn, shimmering little thing called truth?
I don't care who's doing it - white, brown or pink-and-purple paisley-patterned - if they're picking on the Red Sea Pedestrians, they're wrong 'uns, like all racists. Make no mistake, the Jews are not hated because of Israel; they are hated for their very modernity, mobility, lust for life and love of knowledge. Their most basic toast, "L'chaim!" (To Life!), is a red rag to those who fetishise death because they have failed to take any joy from their life on earth.
Wow. Obviously, read the whole thing.
Jerusalem Post editor Bret Stephens gets all huffy over the piece that ran last week in Ha'aretz about the travails of Conrad Black and Hollinger, including how it impacts on the Jerusalem Post.
Bret thinks he's doing such a big-time "Gotcha" by pointing out that the author of the piece is guilty of *gasp" PLAGIARISM!
Horrors! -- the reporter, Sara Leibovich-Dar, uses information and anecdotes from stories published in Fortune Magazine and the New Yorker, while attributing where her information is coming from.
"At The Wall Street Journal, my former employer, she would have been fired for this," he intones.
Well, Brett, you'd better get busy firing your staff members. That is, the ones that haven't been fired already.
Every single item in the Jerusalem Post Internet edition updates that is bylined Jpost.com Staff is pulled off of Israeli radio or television, if not another source.
The more the staff has been culled down to a skeleton crew, the more your reporters are required to cover multiple beats, which means it would be physically impossible for them to actually interview every single source themselves in every case. They are forced to rely on -- guess what -- the Hebrew-speaking press!
Should you do a daily comparison of what is published in the Hebrew press and subsequently in the Jerusalem Post, you would know this - it would be as word-for-word "plagiarist" as Leibovich-Dar's. (But that would involve your being able to read Hebrew.)
Also, if you were able to read Hebrew, you would understand, that while it may not stand up to Columbia Journalism School ethics, nearly every single feature about goings-on abroad in the United States and Europe that appears in every Hebrew newspaper borrows heavily from published accounts in English. No, the Hebrew papers are not able to have their U.S. correspondents travel around the country so that every single word they publish on Arnold Schwartznegger's election, the Kobe Bryant trial, or the Michael Jackson scandal is first-hand reportage. It doesn't work that way.
Neither does it work the other way around....foreign correspondents here re-report information that appears in the mainstream Hebrew press without checking every fact and every quote again. Again, the ideal in journalistic ethics? No. Reality for publications that don't have Wall Street Journal-sized budgets? Yes.
The semantic argument that Bret dwells on regarding the article as to whether the Post is "extreme-right" or "center-right" is pretty irrelevant. Depends on where you stand. What is Sharon, extreme right or center right? True that the Post offers some alternative viewpoints. But you know...if you run a house editorial calling for Arafat's assassination, you run the risk that people are going to put you on the far right.
There is one point on which I agree with Bret -- in my 12 years as a journalist at the Post, all Hollinger years, nobody told me what to write or slanted my copy. The editorial interference is minimal. Unless you count ordering Post management to regularly fire members of the staff as editorial interference.
One more thing that is rather amusing -- Bret complains that he sent a letter of response to Ha'aretz, but refused to have it published there after they insisted on cutting it down into meaninglessness.
By cooincidence, a friend of mine sent a letter to the Post that was published today. It was totally cut. It was totally meaningless.
Finally, I was glad to see Bret Stephens admit the following out loud in the Ha'aretz piece.
I give priority to commentary and analysis. Our job isn't to report on the municipal elections in Ashdod. Most of our readers are not in Israel and they're interested in security and politics....We're a newspaper for the Diaspora. Our focuses are different. I don't need a reporter in Beersheba."
You hear that, folks? It's not for nothing that the Post has become a dull read, yakking away at how Israel is right, right, right, but not showing us anything that is particularly great about it.
For interesting, colorful features written in English on what is actually happening in the country, you've got to rely on Ha'aretz and various Internet outlets. And the English-speaking community living in Israel that once viewed the Post as its local paper and its voice is just out of luck.
I was going to link to this Julie Burchill farewell piece in the Guardian, and then saw that both Roger and Judith beat me to it.
But I figure: what the hell, I'll do it anyway. Who can resist lines like this?
Think of famous anti-Zionist windbags - Redgrave, Highsmith, Galloway - and what dreary, dysfunctional, po-faced vanity confronts us. When we consider famous Jew-lovers, on the other hand - Marilyn, Ava, Liz, Felicity Kendal, me - what a sumptuous banquet of radiant humanity we look upon!
Fabulously unpolitically correct in true Burchill style. I have friends who live around the corner from her in Hove, which is right next to Brighton on the sea. They say she's a lot of fun.
In the same post, Roger also takes note of an excellent Op-Ed in the Guardian by Emanuele Ottolenghi from Oxford University, which is very supportive of Israel. He wonders if the Guardian could be turning a corner....most people I know aren't holding their breath.
So the Hollinger Newspaper Empire is crumbling. And the Jerusalem Post diaspora of ex-employees all have their fingers crossed that there's a nice billionaire out there who might buy the paper and make something out of it ....
UPDATE: 24 hours after the news broke, the Post finally put something about it up on their site.
The BBC has hired a babysitter, er, ombudsman to monitor their Middle East coverage.
Via Jeff Jarvis
I wrote an opinion piece on what the Rabin anniversary is like in my house, for Israel Insider.
It's the first time I've published there. I'm a bit scared that in the "Talkback" section, the far-right wing crowd is going to eat me for lunch....
Meet my dear friend, Ayelet Waldman
"Israel was such a huge thing for my parents, and for me it's been this tussle of trying to deal with my very, very mixed emotions. At this point, I'm ready to call the whole Zionist experiment a failure and bring everybody home."
Shaking off her discouragement, she poses a facetious solution: "Green cards, green cards for all. The Palestinians and Israelis will open air- conditioning companies together in Los Angeles, and we will have an end to war. "
The thing is, she's not facetious. That's what she really wants to do. I'm the first one she'd bring home, after her immediate family members.
Ayelet is a wonderful, lovely generous warm person and a great friend I've known since college -- and profiled for our alumni magazine -- but we can't discuss Israel. In every conversation, this is what she proposes, I explain why it's ridiculous and the whole thing deteriorates into a big argument. For the sake of peace and friendship, we avoid the subject. I'm not mad at her. She lives in BERKELEY, for goodness sake. Can you really blame someone who lives in Berkeley for not maintaining the fighting Zionist spirit? I'm sure they put something in the water...
Despite her silly opinions on the Middle East, I still urge you to buy her new novel or one of her fabulous mysteries.
Or better yet, go to one of her readings at a bookstore near you -- she's on tour at the moment -- dates are available on her website. Tell her I sent you -- she'll treat you extra nice.
As I've noted previously, there seems to be quite the tempest in the top ranks of The Jerusalem Post.
First, the Post ran what may be the most bloodthirsty editorial ever published in a major international newspaper entitled "Enough."
The world will not help us; we must help ourselves. We must kill as many of the Hamas and Islamic Jihad leaders as possible, as quickly possible, while minimizing collateral damage, but not letting that damage stop us. And we must kill Yasser Arafat, because the world leaves us no alternative.
Shortly afterwards, rumors fly around the Jerusalem Post grapevine, comprised of present and former employees (at this point, those who have been fired or resigned in disgust vastly outnumber those still toiling in the trenches) that the long-simmering tension between the newspaper's publisher and editor-in-chief has come to a head, and that the publisher fired the editor-in-chief. And that THEN the editor-in-chief appealed to a higher authority in the Hollinger Corporation, owners of the paper, and he was told to continue on as usual -- that he was un-fired.
The reason for the rumored imbroglio remained unclear.
UNTIL....this appears in the Telegraph, also owned by Hollinger, which was founded and is headed by the infamous Lord Conrad Black. (UPDATE: Originally, I called him Sir Black, but was corrected by a vigilant reader.)
The piece is written by one Barbara Amiel, the wife of Black, Lord of the Media.
Last Thursday, The Jerusalem Post, of which I am a director, ran a leader that began as follows: "The world will not help us; we must help ourselves. We must kill as many of the Hamas and Islamic Jihad leaders as possible... And we must kill Yasser Arafat."
Yesterday, Israel's deputy prime minister, Ehud Olmert, announced that Arafat's assassination was an option. Why a government would announce such a move, so disastrous in PR terms, is a mystery, but then subtlety has never been a hallmark of Likud.
Amiel rather ambivalently continues that while Arafat is "a terrorist and a mass murderer" and elaborates on his long list of nasty deeds...and yet....says he should stay alive and stay put.
Scores of terrorists and war criminals have been executed for less. The question isn't whether the killing of Arafat would be a moral act - I believe it would - but whether it would be a helpful one. It has taken many Israelis a long time to face the fact that Arafat and most of the region are rejectionists, not in search of a genuine two-state solution but dedicated to the annihilation of Israel.
More of the nasty Arafat laundry list, and then...
We are at a point where neither his exile nor unnatural death would resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict. Once, you could exile a trouble-maker to some remote island and reduce his effectiveness as a leader, but those days are gone.
We do live in a global village. What would putting Arafat in the Sudan do? Osama bin Laden may or may not be alive in the mountains of Afghanistan, but his spirit still causes us to be body-searched if we want to get on a plane in Manchester or Des Moines.
One can never predict the consequences of an assassination, but I think it is too late to kill Arafat. Had Arafat been eliminated 20 years ago, the situation might be different. Now the conflict has a momentum of its own, whoever the Palestinian leader. What is so dreadful to face and was so comforting to deny is that the majority of Arabs and Muslims in the Middle East as well as in some other countries are by now rejectionists as well.
She concludes with the following proposal, which while it might be a nice thing to see, doesn't stand a chance in hell of really solving the conflict.
There is one solution. It costs nothing, not one penny, not one human life or bullet and would turn the tide. If all major powers - preferably through the UN or simply in concert - were to make a joint declaration guaranteeing Israel's existence as a Jewish State, it would be clear to the rejectionists that they could not reach their goal.
If the EU, Russia, China and the US reiterated that the UN declaration establishing a homeland for the Jews is as honourable today as it was in 1948; confirmed that Israel had the right to defend itself by all means and at the same time committed themselves to the establishment of a Palestinian state so long as it is not aimed at replacing the Jewish state but had a parallel existence, such a declaration would alter the ambience of the times.
But since an astigmatic world will not do that, Israel will probably have to fight. Israelis are already blamed for imposing a "military" solution without having the benefits of a genuine military offensive. Whatever the outcome, the cost to Palestinians and Israelis will be immense.
If the platoons of liberals now talking of peace and understanding would turn their energies to obtaining a joint proclamation of the genuine right to existence for two states, the sands of Arabia might yet avoid being soaked in blood.
Yeah, right, Barbara, that'll do it. One declaration by a bunch of big, powerful, countries -- and it'll all be solved. The Palestinians and Arab world will say, "Oh, OK, we can't win. We give up."
Come on.
The one thing that is clear about this Telegraph opinion piece is that there is definite backstepping from the position hammered out by the Post editorial, and may shed some light on the mystery of the firing/unfiring of the editor-in-chief, who, if my sources are correct, did not actually pen the offending editorial himself, but presumably, as editor-in-chief, gave it his stamp of approval.
Tune in tommorow.....
UPDATE: Earlier, I mused about who could have written this piece , with so much of the inside dirt on the Post. Just realized that it was pretty obvious, as the site it appeared on is hosted by a communications company whose chief executive was recently liberated from his position at the Post.
Ooooh boy, hot stuff. Inside baseball perhaps, but hot stuff.
Whoever wrote this piece really and truly knows what is going on in the back offices of Israel's English-language newspapers and websites.
And they're not pulling any punches.
Let's call one paper the Tel Aviv Times. This paper is traumatized from a publisher and an editor-in-chief who are at each other throats. No – I am not saying that they disagree on issues – they plainly loathe one another, there is no communication and they have divided the paper into two fragmented camps.
True or not, many say that the publisher is a very difficult person to work with and that since the papers' establishment decades go, morale and resources have never been lower. As for the editor-in-chief – he is young, very young. I would not mind that so much if he was an Israeli citizen. If he had served in the IDF. And if he was able to read and speak Hebrew! How can you represent Israel when you don't understand the Hebrew speaking evening news or what is being said in aisle 4 of the supermarket?
Amazing – no. This is Israel. The guy writes excellent editorials, but has no sense of hard, breaking news. Now, what happens when you lack as much as he does? You become insecure. How does insecurity manifest itself – you become arrogant. You literally, with pride, call yourself a "dictator" to those you work with. This man is a well-paid tourist steering Israel's right wing tabloid off the road.
According to my personal grapevine, a showdown is nigh between the warring publisher and editor-in-chief -- we may know within hours if one or the other of them will get expelled from the country before Arafat (or assassinated??)
Need I even bother to mention how GLAD I am that I don't work at the "Tel Aviv Times" anymore!!!!!!!!
In other Israel media gossip, Jerrold Kessel, CNN's long-time local hire correspondent is officially history. The bureau is helmless at the moment -- no bureau chief, no senior correspondent, no Jerrold. Maybe Christiane Amanpour and Jamie Rubin are headed to Jerusalem?
Dear Saddam,
Long time no see. I am writing to tell you how sorry I am over the untimely accidental death of your sons Uday and Qusay.
I know how close they were to you and how close you were to them. Despite all you had to do you always had time to spend with them.
Both sons wanted your approval and were jealous of each other.
Uday used to say, "Dad loves you more than he loves me." And Qusay would reply, "That's because I killed more people than you did."
I know you didn't want to get into the middle of it. Each son did what he knew best. Qusay specialized in eliminating Kurds, and Uday preferred to torture the Iraqi Olympic team.
I remember them as little boys. They were both mischievous. They used to kill dogs and cats and occasionally a playmate at school.
Art Buchwald's still got it. Read the whole touching condolence letter about Saddam's little angels.
Via Kesher Talk
On July 24, Google News began using stories from the website/organization that I work for, Israel21c.
Israel21c works to raise the profile of positive contributions that Israel makes in the world. We don't try to ignore or underplay the conflict with the Arabs, but we want to send a message that there is a lot more to the country.
We've been working hard to get our stories out there, and Google News is a huge step.
(If you want to help, please visit the site, blog on the stories that interest you, and subscribe to our free E-mail newsletter. End of public service announcement.)
You know, this is just an amazing story about the Israeli cab driver Eliyahu Gurel who was kidnapped by amateur Palestinian terrorists (they brought a four-year-old girl along on their kidnapping mission?) and was rescued unscathed by the Israeli army in a brilliant raid.
The drama has held the country riveted and everyone was celebrating the happy ending today. And in the international press...nada, nothing, zippo. If nobody dies, it's not news.
There's the old journalism expression, "If it bleeds, it leads," but for much of the U.S. press, it seems that in the Middle East, if it doesn't bleed, it's not worth a mention.
This is really an unprecedented move, as far as I know...
Israel cuts off ties with BBC
Israel declared over the weekend that it is cutting off ties with the BBC to protest a repeat broadcast on non-conventional weapons said to be in Israel.
The program was broadcast for the first time in March in Britain, and was rerun Saturday on a BBC channel that is aired all over the world.
The boycott decision was made by Israel's public relations forum, made up of representatives from the Prime Minister's Office, the Foreign Ministry and the Government Press Office.
It was decided that government offices won't assist BBC producers and reporters, that Israeli officials will not give interviews to the British network, and that the Government Press Office will make it difficult for BBC employees to get press cards and work visas in Israel.
OK, I understand the frustration of Israel on this one, but I still think this is a ham-handed and not a particularly wise strategy, particularly the public announcement of the "boycott." After all, we're the ones always pointing out how much more restrictive the other Middle Eastern regimes are to journalists and how open, free and democratic we are in comparison.
Also, as someone who has been treated like a third-class citizen, and been kicked out of press conferences by the Syrians in Washington, DC, when you distinguish between journalists, you get the whole press corps angry at you. The other reporters identify with your plight. I think this could backfire and Israel will get harsher treatment from all of the foreign press.
I wouldn't have any problem with the bureaucrats quietly and discreetly refusing to bend over backwards for the BBC, but I think this public hoo-hah is a stupid move.
Dave Barry has got the most accurate description of putting together a newspaper that I've ever seen. Actually, if you're talking about the Jerusalem Post, where I worked for 12 years, he's being generous.
Here's an excerpt:
Q. How come when I read a newspaper story on a topic I'm familiar with, it always contains errors?
A. This requires a complex team effort, which I will explain by putting key terms in capital letters: First, the REPORTER gathers information by interviewing PEOPLE and trying to write down what they say, getting approximately 35 percent of it right. The REPORTER then writes a STORY, which goes to an EDITOR, who bitterly resents the REPORTER because the REPORTER gets to go outside sometimes, whereas the EDITOR is stuck in the building eating NEWSPAPER CAFETERIA ''FOOD'' that was originally developed by construction-industry researchers as a substitute for PLYWOOD.
The EDITOR, following journalism tradition, decides that the REPORTER has put the real point of the story in the 14th paragraph, which the EDITOR then attempts to move using the ''cut and paste command,'' which results in the story disappearing into ANOTHER DIMENSION, partly because the EDITOR, like most journalists, has the mechanical aptitude of a RUTABAGA, but also because the NEW COMPUTER SYSTEM has a few ''bugs'' as a result of being installed by a low-bid VENDOR whose information-technology experience consists of servicing WHACK-A-MOLE GAMES.
So the REPORTER and the EDITOR, who now hate each other even more than they already did, hastily slap a story together from memory, then turn it over to a GRAPHIC DESIGN PERSON who cannot actually read but is a wizard on the APPLE MACINTOSH, and who will cut any remaining accurate sentences out of the story to make room on the page for a colorful, ''reader-friendly'' CHART, which was actually supposed to illustrate a story in an entirely different SECTION.
Tom Friedman is NOT going to be happy about having this picture taken at his Chabadnik nephew's wedding passed around the Internet when it's time for him to get ready for his next trip to Saudi Arabia. But really, who can resist? (Via Protocols)
Memo to Protocols: Get off the Enetation comments system soon, I just tried to post and it's down, I used it when I was on Blogspot and it was always down. In fact, you might as well get off Blogspot entirely now.)
Seriously, this is a clear, indisputable case in which the world of "real" journalism must stand up and acknowledge that a "mere" blogger has acheived what is known as a "scoop."
And Laurence thought he was just screwing around having some fun.
Congratulations, Mr. Simon. If anyone out there has a brain, you won't be unemployed for very much longer.
This has got to be the laziest method of doing journalistic research on earth, but here goes...
I'm working on an article about the Jewish sector of the Blogosphere for Hadassah Magazine (yes, everyone's aunt and grandma needs to know what a blog is, don't they?)
For the article, I'd love to hear from bloggers on any aspect of the subject. Some of my questions: What moves you personally to blog about Jewish topics? Do you think that blogs are an effective tool for deepening dialogue among Jews, between Diaspora Jews and Israelis, and between Jews and non-Jews? Or is it just partisan sniping?
I'm curious as to whether the people involved in the Jewish blogosphere the type of people who join synagogues and organizations anyway -- and visiting Jewish websites -- or is it working as an outreach tool to Jews who otherwise aren't involved in the community?
Is your blog more involved with Judaism than you thought it would be when you started it? Less?
Are you surprised by the number of blogs that are very aware and involved in pro-Israel advocacy and fighting anti-Semitism that aren't written by Jews? (I am...)
And of course, what your favorite Jewish blogs are.
I'm interested in hearing from bloggers of all stripes, left, right, Orthodox, non-Orthodox, etc.
You can respond by E-mailing me, or here in the comments section. If you'd rather do a phone interview than write, E-mail me your phone number and availability. Don't participate unless you are willing to give me your full name and the area you live in. I've got to be able to prove you exist (this being the post-Jayson Blair era and all.)
Hilarious spoof on Andrew Sullivan right here.
I hope he maintains his sense of humor when he reads it.
I actually thought my blog would be more Sullivan-like when I started it. I left "The Jerusalem Post" on a pretty unpleasant note and thought that I would spend more time bitterly beating my former newspaper into the ground.
Don't know if I'm a better person than Andrew, but I can't really bring myself to do it. I had 12 good years there, it's no secret they treat their employees like crap, it's no secret that the quality of the publication is terrible. There are some very nice people who still work there -- nearly all of whom are overworked, underpaid, and not very happy -- and would grab any other employment opportunity should it present itself. Why should I kick them when they are down?
Plus, spending my time picking apart the Jerusalem Post reportage isn't very interesting.
Finally, the truth is that any regularly scheduled insults and jibes against the paper on my blog Sullivan-style wouldn't hurt the owners (Hollinger) and its incompetent and idiotic local management team anyway. All they understand is money. So they are suffering more from the fact that they are losing money hand over fist than over anything I could possibly say.
And they are going to suffer some more when I win the lawsuit I have pending against them and they have to hand me a big fat check.
When they do, I'll laugh and buy the blogosphere a round of drinks.
