A Golden Age of Jewish Media
June 20, 2012 11:28 by GuestPost
On the left, the Israeli site +972 offers penetrating and sometimes censorship-busting commentary that takes readers far beyond the kind of material available from mainstream Israeli and Jewish sites. It often breaks stories that are then picked up by the established press and provide important examples of “citizen journalism” in action that must be rattling the establishment.
Another totally new phenomenon is Peter Beinhart’s “Open Zion” Blog on the Daily Beast – an online forum in a mainstream digital publication devoted entirely to discussion of issues around Israel.
Amid this flood of exciting new, instantly accessible material, it has been interesting to work out where an old-fashioned print publication like The Jerusalem Report fits in. Gone are the days when we could claim to be the only English-language publication from Israel, let alone the Middle East. And why would someone wait to receive the print edition of The Report when the same stories are instantly accessible online from a dozen different sources?
We are launching a raft of social media access points from Twitter to Facebook, as well as a blog and a new website.
But we don’t intend to compete with the breaking news sites. Instead, we will set our own journalistic agenda rather than following the news. While other sites rush to post stories online and beat the competition, we take a step back and deploy experienced and talented writers to research issues and carefully collect exclusive information.
Readers of The Report in the past few months have enjoyed a series of exclusive interviews with major figures – from Amos Oz to Moshe Feiglin to Salam Fayyad to Lord Jacob Rothschild – that simply are not available anywhere else. Our coverage of Israeli business and high tech is unparalleled in both its depth and range. Allowing writers a week or two to work on a single story has allowed us to set the pace in reporting such diverse issues as the revival of the Kibbutz, the plight of the Falash Mura in Ethiopia, the launch of a new Palestinian women’s police unit, and the harassment of women reporters covering the Arab Spring. These are just some of the stories that have been covered in depth in recent months only in our pages.
Our strength is in our style: long-form, well-written, well-informed journalism accompanied by excellent photography and graphics that provides readers with an informative and entertaining experience that allows them to relax – far away from the insistent demands of the computer screen.
For more about The Jerusalem Report, see its blog site or Like the magazine’s Facebook page.
A Golden Age of Jewish Media | Blogs about Israel aggregation
11:32 am
Jun 20, 2012
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wayne
4:54 pm
Jun 20, 2012
Huh? 1990 was before cable television? Mr. Kalman must be a very young man. Here in the United States, cable has been ubiquitous since 1980. CNN (along with ESPN) drove the cable indsutry itself. While CNN’s Gulf War coverage bested their competitors because their Bagdad-based equipment was superior and survived U.S. bombing, as a commercial entity, CNN “took off” long before then.
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Mark
10:17 pm
Jun 20, 2012
Keeping Honest Reporting and Matthew Kalman honest: All of the publications save one is described in neutral to positive terms. The Times of Israel “points the way forward” (hey, who doesn’t want to go forward?). The Jerusalem Post “remains one of the most popular in the world” (popularity is great!). But Arutz 7, AKA Israel National News, is a “mouthpiece.” We all know that mouthpieces are baaad, don’t we? Is it sheer coincidence that Arutz 7 reflects, in the main, the voices of conservatives and patriots, you know, those nasty people to the right? And frequently publishes important news that the dominant left-oriented media (Time, Boston Globe, TJR) ignore? Nope, no bias here, Matthew.
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Reb Mordechai
6:19 pm
Jun 24, 2012
Golden Age? Not quite!
The Jerusalem Post’s site has so many intrusive and persistent popups it takes up to a minute to get to the page. That is if the page you want is not one of their “Premium” articles which you have to pay for! Once the page finally loads, reading is a challenge due to so much space being devoted to invasive ads. I’ve simply given up on the site.
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Reb Mordechai
6:22 pm
Jun 24, 2012
YNET is a good source for up to the minute Israel news and is the best one to go to if there is (chas ve shalom) a terrorist attack. However YNET has a clear agenda of incitement to hatred against all religious Jews. Not a week goes by without some hate filled article that had it been written by a gentile would be considered plain and simple anti-Semitic. The comments pages are highly censored allowing every crazy wacko to have his/her say for sensationalism and titillation, yet blocking the voice of reason and sanity.
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Reb Mordechai
6:23 pm
Jun 24, 2012
Arutz 7 has a clear agenda to tell the news from a national religious viewpoint and does a good job of it despite obviously acutely lacking in funds. Because of this, its news is not always up to date and it sometimes lacks professionalism in the quality of its articles.
The Times Of Israel seems promising although most of their articles are actually links to other sites which tends to take you away from the Times site. Not a good idea! One more thing. Their Comments button still does not work properly.
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Reb Mordechai
6:24 pm
Jun 24, 2012
As for The Jewish Chronicle. It is written by ignorant assimilated liberals who have no idea what they are talking about when it comes to either Israel or Judaism. Despite its claim, it does not represent the voice of Anglo Jewry. Where are the majority of Anglo Jewry consider themselves traditional and are members of an Orthodox synagogue, the JC pushes a Reform Judaism / assimilationist agenda. Likewise, its political slant is very much to the left of most Jews in Britain.
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Reb Mordechai
6:25 pm
Jun 24, 2012
A site not mentioned is the http://www.jewishtelegraph.com which better represents the views of the vast majority of Anglo Jewry, being traditional without being outright religious and taking a much more centrist and pro-Israel position.
From the States we have http://www.algemeiner.com/ which is a good read.
Last but not least, the American Chareidi site http://www.yated.com/ has an excellent weekly summary of Israel news and despite claiming to be anti-Zionist, actually takes a very pro-Israel position in its reports and opinion pieces. Worth checking out.
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