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A
Welcome to the New Books Network.
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B
Welcome to the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, Virtually. My name is Alex Weiser. I'm the Director of Public Programs of yivo. And we're so pleased to have you with us today for the Jewish Press. The Jewish Press Today, which we're doing in partnership with the Forward. And we're really pleased to have Jodi Verdorn from the Forward, Alana Neuhaus from Tablet magazine, and Felissa Kramer from jta. And joining us to moderate today's conversation, Gal Beckerman from the New York Times Book Review. For those that don't know, YIVO is a very special place for the celebration and contemplation of Jewish history and Jewish culture. We have an archive and a library of over 23 million documents, over 400,000 books, which we make available to researchers around the world. In addition to that material, we do a variety of public programs like this one, classes and exhibitions to bring to life the world of Jewish history and Jewish culture. So we're so pleased to have you joining us today. And without further ado, I'm going to hand it over to Gal to moderate today's conversation. Thank you so much.
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C
Thank you, Alex. There is something bittersweet about this because I see three very good friends and we're, like, separated by zoom. And it would be so much nicer, as always with these situations, to be sitting in a room together and also feeling the energy of the audience. But I am super excited to talk to the three of you again. Let me just repeat who you are, just for the people at home. Judy Ridoran is the editor in chief of the Forward. Alana Newhouse is the founder and editor of Tablet magazine, and Felissa Kramer, who's the editor in chief of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. And I pretty much want to just jump into it, but, you know, just to. To. To give people a sense of why I'm excited about this conversation. It's one that I sort of wanted to have for a while with three of the smartest people on this topic. The Jewish press, when we think about it, we usually think about it in these sort of historic legacy terms as this institution that sort of came up at a moment where American Jews were finding their place in American society. And there was a very distinct function to the paper, to the press back then. These were people who were assimilating into America, were finding their place, and the newspapers sort of gave them a pathway and provided a sort of linchpin for the community. Obviously, American Jews have evolved. The community has evolved in enormous ways over the last 150 years. And yet we still have a Jewish press, a Jewish press that's vibrant, that I love reading, that offers so much to people who feel themselves Jewishly affiliated and even people who don't. But I've come to wonder, and this is the sort of bigger question that I want to ask, is sort of, what is it for today? And so I guess just to start as sort of an exercise, I thought I would go have each of you sort of describe some piece of reporting or an opinion piece or some moment in the recent past where you felt that there is a kind of essential quality to what you do as being, as, you know, in terms of Jewish journalism. And, I mean, I know that I've had many moments where I found it essential where I want that angle, but I'm curious to hear kind of what stands out in your mind. And I think that will sort of lay the groundwork for the future conversation. So I'll just. I'll go in the order of that I see you guys on my screens. Jodi, do you want to kind of kick this off? You're muted, Jodi.
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D
It's like, how long will it take for us to master the mute button? I'm. I'm thrilled to be here. Thanks for. For moderating, and thanks, Eva, for hosting. And I had put in the chat that I'm sitting here in the Forward office with the portrait of A.V. kahan, the founding editor, over my shoulder. And, you know, I think about your question often. This is my first job in Jewish journalism. I've been editor for two years. Before that, I worked at the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times for my whole career. And, you know, I love the kind of essentialness and the. And the role of the Forward in the early part of its history was so clear. And we. We like to talk about how it trained this generation or generations of Jewish immigrants to be American. And literally, there's stuff in the archives. It's literally like how to vote, how to play baseball. Should you let your kid play baseball? And what is our, you know, what are we for now? And so I love that you're starting the question with that. I think it is we are, you know, in the midst of a. Of a transformation of this publication to. To meet the diverse needs of. Of our diverse communities. And I think, you know, you mentioned the word affiliated. I think one of the key roles of the Jewish press is for people for whom the kind of organized Jewish world doesn't speak to them directly or, you know, comfortably. And it's for people, all kind people who feel Jewish in all kinds of ways. So I know you asked for one thing. I'm going to tick off a few things because that is my nature. But I mean, the first is, you know, the beginning of the pandemic and throughout the pandemic and even before that when there was in the. In the fall of 2019 when there were several anti Semitic violent attacks in the New York area, we were really reporting intensively on how Covid and those violence that were playing out in the Orthodox communities of Brooklyn. And we were translating that coverage into Yiddish and really the only publication providing independent reporting in Yiddish anywhere, and I think also providing a lot of context to that coverage. In both cases, in the case of the Jersey City shooting, for example, and Covid locusts in some of those neighborhoods, it was a part of the story for the national mainstream media. But I think we were able to provide some essential context and deeper reporting. I also felt right after the pandemic started, this is a much softer version of that, but we published a lot of personal essays about the experience of. Of COVID and so did a lot of publications. But, you know, whether it was about people who are starting to be for the first time and what that was about, everything about doing Zoom Shiva or Zoom B Mitzvah. And I feel like those things, it was. It wasn't, you know, accountability reporting or investigations. It was really just opening up ways for people to express themselves and connect. And I thought that felt very essential. And then I'll give you two more from 2021. The first is on January 6th, where again, everybody covering the insurrection at the Capitol and everybody to some extent mentioning the antisemitic tropes there and the Camp Auschwitz T shirt. But we published a piece that day, the next day, that was a guide to the anti Semitic memes and symbols around the capital. Instruction that I think went deep, really explained it, and really helped to put that Jewish lens on a national story in a way that nobody else did. I'm reminded when I first took this job, I was talking to Ben Smith, now the New York Times media columnist, like you, a former Forward person. And I remember saying to him, you know, I want the. The forward to be the Jewish New York Times. And he said, but the New York Times is the Jewish New York Times. And that is often the challenge that, you know, Jews are radically overrepresented in the mainstream media. So there's lots of Jewish stories in lots of places. But that was an example of where that was like the seventh paragraph or the 17th paragraph somewhere else. And it was a whole story for us. And the last one I'll mention is this spring we published a story about Central Synagogue re investigating sexual misconduct by a very senior rabbi there who went on to lead the Reform movement seminary. And it was really about how the Reform movement had not done a deep enough investigation at the time. And I think that would not. That's not a story that would have been reported fully really any outside the Jewish press. And I think that was also essential to our communities to open up that those reckoning conversations that have now spread across to several movements.
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E
I guess one of the things that's. I went to Barnard and when I started at College it was 1993 and Columbia University which Barnard is women's college it's part of had gone co ed barely had six years before. So really, really recently and there was a lot of conversation on the Barnard campus about whether or not what the purpose of a woman's college was anymore. If we could now go to the larger university. And at Barnard's then new president gave a speech at one point. I think it was my second year but it might have been my third where she talked about how actually the need for a woman's college was even more important because there were no spaces anymore. I don't think she used the term safe spaces but there were no spaces for uncomfortable internal insular conversations that might that one wanted to have without men frankly. And that in fact now that we were allowed in all of these other spaces it laid down the need even more so for our own protected space. In a funny way I kind of apply that same idea to Jews and journalism especially when you see our publications in the history of Jewish journalism in America. Yeah, that's right. The New York Times is the Jewish paper of record. All the more reason for spaces that are not general interest that are simply covering us in drive bys. But actually. And that's fine. I actually don't. That's. That is the New York Times job contrary to what a lot of Jews believe and what they decide to obsess over every day. The New York Times. It's not the New York Times job to be a Jewish communal outlet or be a Jewish outlet for Jewish identity, culture and ideas. What that means though is that. And then each of us has the Internet flattens all differences between things. But in many ways the DNA of the forward is the DNA of a newspaper. The DNA of JTA is a DNA of wire surface and the DNA of Tablet is DNA of a magazine. And those are three very different genetic makeups. But what I would say that I feel we all have in common is. Well, we have a lot of things in common, but one of the things we have in common is that we see that particular corral as the one in which we want to be focused. And that means exploring the eccentricities, the sometimes the problematics and the wonder of that specific community in those, that specific universe. In terms of pieces, you know, it's very hard, I guess I, I have a hard time with that in part because of the Internet. I think the Internet is so. It's this gaping maw and I feel like it just eats things. And the next day you don't even remember what happened the day before and just you have to feed it again this. It's like, who even knows? I don't even remember what happened this morning. So with that in mind though, I will say that one of the pieces that I found taught me something about people, the Internet. The way that we read now was the series that we ran a few years ago by Mark Veitzman about what was then emerging anti Semitism in France. It was a multi part series that ran in the early fall. And the pieces not only sank like a stone, nobody read them. But I also got a bunch of calls from people at general interest outlets telling me that we were fomenting hysteria. There was no emerging anti Semitism in France and Tablet was being. Tablet and being. And wrong and the combination of those two, I just, I kind of paused. And then of course three months later you have the Hyper Cacher murders and a slew of anti Semitic incidents in France that start to be obviously anti Semitic. The day of the murders, we put up Mark's series and it became one of the best red series in tablets history because we, we published it too early or I don't even know if it's too early. I don't know how to think about it. But what I would say is, is our readers weren't quite ready to hear it for whatever reason. And so what I learned about that was a, that it's okay for our connection to readers and experts to not always be perfectly aligned in any given day. It's also okay for us to get things wrong for us to put out that. I mean, I'm not a, I'm a person who doesn't have a lot of anxiety about putting out things that we are playing with and we're not quite sure about. Um, but I also learned that you can, you can put something out and then it will come back to you as something that was worthy. And so judgment may be sometimes a little bit delayed, which is very, very hard when you're dealing with communal conversation because people are very, very hot in every giving moment, and that's very difficult. So, you know, I. Obviously we have more to say about lots of different specific topics, but I would say that the big difference, a lot of the differences now are just technological and platform, as far as I can feel it.
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C
I'm actually, I'm curious to come back on that question of the safe space question. I wish it wasn't such a pejorative
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A
concept in some quarters.
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D
We can use it for the purposes of this.
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E
Oh, he's speaking.
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D
Good thing.
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C
But I think we, we talked about this years ago. I remember once, you know, just because of the paradox of having, you know, trying to create that space, but also on the Internet, everybody being able to look in and the conflict that that creates in terms of when. What you think about. About your content. So like a piece that you mentioned might have, you know, work within a certain context, you know, for a certain audience, but then once other people are looking in, it becomes a whole other thing. A whole other thing. We can, we can come back to that. Felissa.
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A
Yeah, I've heard so much that I want to respond to. Hi, everybody. The purpose.
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D
Why. Why do we do what we do?
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A
What is the purpose of a Jewish press? I mean, I think you gal mentioned, you know, we had this press and then we assimilated and like, do we need it? And Alana, you're talking about. Well, we had, we, you know, we had gender segregation and then we were together and why did we need it? And there's a hypothesis that, well, we need, we still need that space to talk. I think in both of those cases, it's also clear with the passage of time that like, you're. We're. We're part of things, right?
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E
There's but.
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A
And that but is where our coverage is most needed and why. Why we need to tell our own stories. And so to me, to me, the, the reason for existing is very clear, which is that again, like Alana, I think there's a great value in parachuting in or picking the spot and, and having that one definitive story in the New York Times. But there's also so much along the way before and after that is of real importance to the people that we cover. And it matters that it's documented too. When I think, and to your point, Alana, about being Too early. That's the best thing that we can do, is identify a trend or document something so that when everybody else gets wise to it, we're there to say, yes, we see you. You're not crazy for thinking this. Here are some tools to understand this thing that's crossed your mind. That's an experience that I would love to give readers all the time. So if we publish a story and nobody sees it, and then nobody still sees it in the future, that kind of sucks. But if we publish a story and the moment arises again and we've created an asset that can be helpful, we're really fulfilling our purpose. In terms of a story that I think really speaks to the why and what I'm proud of. I'm gonna pick something that's very different, I think, than anything we've talked about here. That's a story we published earlier this summer about the sale by the Jewish Theological Seminary of a rare book which truly, who outside the Jewish press would ever tell that story? And our reporter, Asaf Shalev, really spun that into a tale that explains how we collectively accumulate knowledge and maintain libraries. And where are we allocating our resources? And who is the captain of what is our story going to be in the future? And a really important story about Jewish institutions and values that if we hadn't done it, you know, maybe one of you would have done it, but nobody else would have. And I'm really. I'm really proud that that's in the world. And I think that that's a real value. And readers responded to that, which it might seem super arcane and like, who wants to read about this one book? And people ate that up because it really does tell us something about who we are and. And how we tell our own stories.
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C
Right. Well, I want to ask sort of a fundamental question, because I'm just mostly. Cause I'm just curious about how you would answer this, but. And it goes to this issue of audience. So how do you conceive of your audience? And I guess that, I mean, that points to an even bigger question, which is, is there a we? Is there an us anymore? You know, and obviously there's been a lot of thinking about this over many years, but you have to deal with it at a very practical level, which is you're producing content and you're thinking about who it's for. And so at some level, I'm sure you're trying to figure out, like, who is the American Jew who's actually wanting to consume this? Who is consum this. You Know, and I'm using words like content and consume in a, you know, purposely, you know, crass way because, because it, you know, you are sort of trying to figure out what, what you're, what you're delivering and to who, to whom you're delivering what, what you're producing. And so, and so you do have to tackle these bigger questions so anybody can, any one of you can jump in. But, but is, is there an American Jewish entity anymore that you think about as a unique thing, you know, when you're, when you're, when you're working out what you're going to report on or what you're going to put in your publications.
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A
Can I offer the cop out answer, which is that, of course there is, because the American Jewish entity is a group of people and that's, that's who, like, we wouldn't be successful if we're not thinking about the full sweep of the people and we're not writing something for every single person in every single community every single day. But at least at jta, who are thinking about, you know, everyone should feel reflected in the aggregate by our coverage. No one should be feel alienated in the aggregate by our coverage. Everyone should learn something new in the aggregate from our coverage. And by taking that, you know, taking that approach means every story and every community and every niche in the whole range, no matter, you know, whatever metric you're looking at, range like that's all part of the story we're telling. And I don't, that's not necessarily a great answer when we're like having a staff meeting deciding what stories to write that day. But it is a galvanizing answer, I think, for feeling like we're doing something really important for the people we're serving.
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C
Let me see if I can just put like a slightly sharpened point on the, on the question, because I remember my days as an opinion editor at the Forward, and there was a moment, I feel like, where it was like we couldn't really do pieces about the death of various denominations in the American Jewish world because people didn't. It stopped feeling important to enough people, you know, and so there was a kind of, there was a sense. But then on the other, on the other end of it was like, do we just do pieces about like, Jewish celebrities? Because that feels like we've gone to the lowest common denominator, you know, and so between the sort of particularity of a Jewish world that, that, you know, maybe was structured around certain common institutions much more distinctly than it is today. And this sort of amorphous, kind of like a Jewish feeling of Jewish affinity, you know, that. That. That might be what a lot of Jews, American Jews sort of have today as their Jewish identity, sort of. Where do you find the balance and all of that?
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D
I'll jump into that. I mean, I started with that. I think, you know, I think to some extent what you're talking about is a much broader shift in journalism that's also much older because, you know, all of our beats. I remember when I first worked in the Washington Bureau of the LA Times in 1997, there was a discussion going on about the. Whether the historical beat structure, which was all about specific institutions, like what gaps that was leaving. And I think increasingly in the 20 years since then, or almost 20 years since then, a lot of journalism organizations and journalists have been rethinking how they think about what to cover and how to make more coverage that's ground up and more coverage that is maybe it's about power that is not lying in kind of obvious structures and institutions. And what are the gaps between those institutions and what are the cross currents around people who think about those things? And I mean, this. This comes up in lots of ways. I remember when we were at the New York Times was becoming more digital, and I'm thinking about this as we're redesigning our own website. Like, you know, the sections, the print sections of the New York Times are named in a certain way that's based on the print sections and on also the way the staff is organized, but it's not really how readers think. And we talked a lot about, like, does national mean anything for people versus, like education, religion, politics or whatever? And so I think that's related to what you're talking about is like, you know, to some extent, stories about whether a denomination is failing. It's just. That's like. It's boring. I mean, it's just like it's not really how Jewish life is. Is lived for most people. It might be important, but I think the challenge is to understand why. How would this matter outside of that building or outside of that payroll? Who does it matter to and why? And to kind of conceive stories that way. And I'll just add my own two cents about, like, you know, so look, we think of. First of all, I have taken to really thinking about our communities as a plural and not thinking about the Jewish community, but thinking about our kind of diverse Jewish communities, which are of course overlapping. And we similar to how Felissa described it. I mean, we really believe that the Forward is for every type and stripe of Jew who considers himself Jewish in any way and who's interested in connecting to their Jewish identity in any way. And we want to have on ramps in all the ways that people connect, which might include celebrities and food and books and religion and institutions, by the way. And I often talk about something similar to what Feliza said. I just. I think, yeah, we want everybody to see themselves reflected in our pages, but also challenged by them. You know, a lot of people to see something that doesn't reflect their experience and that opens themselves to a new experience, too. And I guess the key thing is to be really mindful and thoughtful about, like, who is this for? Who is it speaking to? About every. Every individual piece. And they're not going to all speak to everybody, and everybody's not going to see everything, because that's the way the Internet works. We don't package it up nicely and give it to a. A closed audience who have signed up for it. I also just want to mention that in the Pew study that came out earlier this year, um, I was struck by actually how. I mean, they. It said found that 17% of American Jews read Jewish news frequently, and another 25% read sometimes. Um, I think in these kinds of surveys, people often overstate such habits. But that's a lot of people. That's 47%, right? Math. 47% of. What is it, 6 million? 7 million people reading it sometimes. That's a lot. And, you know, I think, how do we serve that vast audience? Like, it's in overlapping chunks and pieces that. That connect them and that they can find what they're looking for. You know, we publish. We publish a series educational series called the Secret Jewish History of Whatever. And I get lots of email about people who hate that. They think this is a totally offensive framing. Why are we looking for Jewish things about non Jewish things, whatever. And then I also get tons of email, and I see on the audience trackers that people love this stuff, and they really want to know the secret history of the Foo Fighters, which is one of the more recent ones we've done. So, you know, there's a lot of different people, and there's a lot of different stuff to serve their needs. And it's a tricky puzzle, but it's kind of fun.
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C
First of all, let me remind people that you can ask questions. We're going to do a little Q and A at the end, but put it in the Q and A box that you see on the, I think, right hand of your zoom. Controls. Another thing I wanted to ask just in terms of sort of your day to day and how you think about coverage. You know, Alana mentioned, like you each have the sort of DNA of newspaper, wire service, a magazine, and there are a set of journalistic ethics and a kind of journalistic mission that comes along with each of those. But how do you balance that against sort of a Jewish, Jewish values or Jewish responsibility? Or do you feel that you need to balance that against like another set of values that you think about? Not just the journalistic values, I think. I mean, it's a unique, it's a unique question for Jewish journalism. Right. And then I wonder, and then I guess the next question is like, do those ever come into conflict? You know, like, are you, you know, I mean, I'm remembering days, you know, at the Ford, you know, where we would do like the hard, the hard hitting investigative stuff. And there was always like, you know, at what point are we tipping into just, you know, calling people out too much or, you know, just this thinking, you know, the Shonhara, you know, people, people. There's, there's, there is, there is, there is another layer here. You know, I, or at least I imagine there is. Maybe you'll tell me that there's not, you know, but, but, but I'm curious how you sort of negotiate that.
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E
I. Let me say two things that may both at least try to get at some of what you're asking. You know, I guess one question that I ask myself, I try to ask myself, particularly around reported pieces, pieces where you're reporting on an individual, especially if that individual is not a public figure or is not a well known figure, it's even inside of your community. And the question then, I think is always, what is your intention? If your intention is to expose or reveal something that you think is important to reveal about the world, I'm not so sure there's another value that comes in conflict with that when we're publishing. But I do think that it is important and I'm not so sure whether or not my feelings about this would be different outside of a Jewish outlet. Frankly, I think it's important to ask whether you're in that story for shaming or for prurience or for some like what. And again, you can be in a story or interested in a story for a bunch of reasons, but your primary reason kind of has to be the journal, like reporting on something. Right to that end though, I guess. And I don't want to keep sounding like a broken record, but I do really Feel like it's very, very hard to have any of these conversations up without talking about what the Internet did both to the Jewish community and to journalism, because it is so. It's almost like we're in a completely. We're doing. We're doing two completely different things. Both of those things are. Were affected, and I guess I would say in a couple of ways. Jodi talked about beats before, but beats were also geographical, which is actually the primary way in which people understood their. Their life. Right. And often their. And their affiliations more broadly. One could. One could say that our affiliations a hundred years ago were more rigid, meaning if you were a member of a union, you were a member of that union, and that was maybe even a big part of your identity. If you were a member of a town, you were a member of that town, you got the newspaper, you paid taxes there. There was a big, big part of your identity. One of the things that the Internet and changes in the economy has done is it's made our sense of our own identities and affiliations porous and very transient, and they can change day to day. And so you can actually be a member on Facebook of a community of atheists, knitters who live on streets that start with the letter D. And, like, that could be your identity today, even though it's small, or it may not be a big part of who you are, but. But today it is a big part of who you are. So then the conversation that you're trying to direct people into about Jewishness or Judaism or Jewish history or Jewish life is so strange, and it's. People are coming at it from such different angles. For some people, it is the minorist part of their identity that they're halfway looking at in a rearview mirror. For some people, it's the absolute wallpaper of their whole house. And what that means is that there's a challenge, I think, for each of us, and we each approach it differently, and we approach it differently with different stories, because the. Again, the corral that I talked about is it's not well defined in any way, and it used to be much better defined both in reality and for newspapers or the outlets that did it. So. And that's like a roundabout way of answering your question, but in a way, I feel like the Internet is the thing that we're talking around. It's simply both flattened, expanded, and also kind of like. Like, almost like a centrifuge just, like, split apart a community into tons of little pieces that make it very hard to wrap your arms or not.
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A
Can I respond to that? So I'm, I'm, I don't know that I would call myself a digital native, but I have not worked in journalism prior to the Internet. Um, and I think we have a really, like, a neat gift or, like, in Jewish media. Like, I think the phenomenon you're describing, Alana, brings media in line with how Jews are. Like, there was never, like a geographic, oh, I'm a New York Jew, I'm an Ohio Jew. Like, that's not a thing. Like Jews. Jews are part of a global community, and the Internet knits us back together. So I, I feel only promise. And I know obviously the Internet has some problems.
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C
Okay.
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A
Like, I, I'm on it, I see it, but I feel only promise for the storytelling that we're trying to do. Because the opportunity is so there for someone who is usually, you know, the atheist knitter on the streets and starts with D, but like, sometimes remembers this thing and like, here we are for you or for the person who, like, well, once a year they check into that Facebook group, but most of the time they're, you know, their main identity is their Jewish one. So I feel like this is the moment where we can be there for people, the way they're living. It really maps to the project that we're doing.
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C
I actually want to ask a related question, which is about. For the way the Internet shapes what you produce. And it's the notion that social media obviously has its bias towards a certain kind of provocative argument. Trolling is sort of the thing, the most maximal position that's going to get people angry and get them to respond. Um, and, you know, again, my days at the, at the opinion section at the forward, I remember in the best circumstances, it was a place where you could hash out complicated, intense, very personal, touchy issues within the Jewish community on, on an op ed page. That's when it worked well, I felt. But there was obviously a drift, and the Internet is not a small part of it towards pieces that just kind of throw flames. And that would seem to exacerbate the fault lines that already exist in the community. And I wonder how you negotiate that and how you think about sort of keeping that at bay or using it to your benefit. I mean, you can talk more broadly about social media too, and sort of how it works into your thinking.
- [33:34]
D
I can start. I mean, I think, you know, I, I, you know, we, we live in the world we live in and we have the tools we have, and they have flaws, but there's a lot of power in the, you know, the democratization and flattening of the Internet that the Internet created that Alana talked about, like, you know, has been so important for individual writers and frankly for, you know, Tablet as a publication to be able to, you know, find a place and to have, you know, quality rise. And it also obviously has, has helped a lot of trash rise, I guess. I guess for me, you know, I, I think it's really important to understand what readers want and need and to therefore pay attention to what they click on. And then I think the other thing is to remember who you are, which is journalists and, you know, not and that. So what are you giving them when they click on something? Is there a way to take a provocative headline? You know, there's something. Either you're going to make it provocative or the, the social media platforms are going to exploit it and make it its most provocative version, but that it actually has quality. I, I also, I mean, the other way I really try to think about this is, you know, there's, there's a kind of a, almost a drug notion of clicks and virality and reach. But most of what those kinds of stories produce are empty calories. They're kind of drive by clicks or readers that never come back, that often don't even know they're reading your publication. And I'm just much more interested in building up an audience of people who are really engaged in what we're doing and who are not just looking at a social media post, but actually reading a story and coming back multiple times or tuning in to an event like this one, who are signed up for our newsletter and who we can communicate with over and over again. We can be in conversation with. We're doing more and more call outs to get readers, you know, to react to issues or ideas. And so I guess I think it's like you can't. I think it would be. It's perilous to ignore the signals that you get from the Internet or from social media about what people are most interested in and what riles them up. But we should approach that responsibly to put into that space the best quality and the broadest range of things that we can that treat different perspectives respectfully, that engage substantively. I mean, I often, I don't do this that much anymore, but I've often, you know, there'll be like some flame thrown at me or my institution on Twitter and I'll kind of respond with a, you know, good point. Here was our thinking and people are totally shocked. Like what? Like, you're actually going to be thoughtful around this, this thing that is all about. And, but I think that's kind of always the answer is to bring substance and thoughtfulness and openness to the idea that you are wr to the conversation. Look, for us, I think the most important metric for a Jewish publication, for our publication is to be talked about, to be an essential, something that's essential in people's lives. They can build a relationship with them, they're sharing our content and they're talking about things they heard or read through the foreword. And that's hard to measure. There are some things we can measure on that, but that's the goal here, is to get more and more people talking about issues and ideas that matter and that they found in the forward. And social media is a key, a key part of that. But it can also send you real false signals about what people care about and are interested in. And, and you have to be careful not to like lean in too heavy to these empty calories.
- [37:09]
A
But isn't this, Can I just say
- [37:11]
E
what I, I want to say that I, I agree with Jodi. I also think that there's a difference between clickbait trolling and controversial pieces. And you know, we can talk for a long time about that. But one of the things that I, that came to mind for me was we ran a piece, we ran a series of pieces about the response to Covid in ultra orthodox communities in the, in the, in the actual spring of 2020. So not in retrospect, but on the ground, including, you know, what are now sort of the well known pictures of community activists cutting the chains on playgrounds and basically having a challenging or perpendicular response to communal officials messaging around Covid and what it would mean for their communal life. And one of the things that struck me was that people were angry about that point of view. They were angry that there were Jews who felt this way, which is fine. But that's different than saying that doesn't exist and you've made it up, it does exist. You can, this is actually a viewpoint. You can decide that you want to demonize that and say that nobody has that viewpoint. And you don't want to live with, you don't want, you want to imagine a world in which that viewpoint does not exist, that's fine, but it does. And that's different than saying we're going to put something out there that nobody actually believes just for the clips. I think that those two things, I think that that's a distinction that ultimately feeds into whether or not the piece is a piece that's valuable. Now, I also want to say in context, and I don't want to speak for Jody and Felissa, who are, who never make mistakes and they're perfect, but we do tons of time, like we make mistakes all the time. It's part of, we live in a, we live in a little minute by minute publication. There's no way that there aren't going to be things that you look at. Either you look at it the next day or you look at it the next year and you say, that's not what. I wish I didn't publish that, or I wish I didn't publish it that way. And then you learn from it. But I do think that the, the, the larger conversation is getting, has gotten very, very radioactive in part because social media highlights social media. There are platforms that run on hot emotions and it is hot emotions by nature are great. They're motivating, they're activating, but they're, they make cool and dispassionate engagement challenging. They're necessary, but they, they create challenge in some ways.
- [40:12]
A
The way I think about all of this is what, you know, we live in a world of limited resources. Even if we all quadrupled our budgets, we would still live in a world where we had to make choices about what we're doing. And so when I think about what are we doing right, what do people need from us? There's no shortage of hot takes. As Alana said, you walk into any room of Jews in Brilliant Life or in the Internet, like there are a
- [40:34]
D
lot of hot takes.
- [40:36]
A
I feel like we don't, if we don't add to that, if we don't necessarily reflect that, like, that's not the end of the world. What people need from us is reporting so that their hot takes can be more informed. And we need to take seriously the responsibility of getting our reporting in front of them and engaging them with it around it so that we're not, you know, sending our reporting into a vacuum. And the hot takes happen without being influenced. I also think there's a huge, I mean, Jodi mentioned this when we started first person essays. Like that's, that is again something that Jewish media is uniquely positioned to elevate that like we're telling these broad narratives, individual stories can offer texture that is really useful, that teaches, does those two things that we're talking about, that allows people to see their own experiences reflected and gives them a window into someone who has a lot in common with them, but is also really different. And hopefully that leads to kinder conversations or at least that's the idea and the dream. And that's kind of where our focus is.
- [41:41]
D
Can I piggyback on that for a second gal? Because I think it goes back to actually your earlier question about kind of what's our, where do we think about Lashan Hara or pissing people off. And I, I do think it's, it's really important to also always remember kind of who we are, which is journalists and journalism organizations. And I think, you know, one of the reasons that I left the New York Times to come here was because I really believe that quality independent journalism is a pillar of democracy and of a kind of functioning community and society. And that the Jews deserve that too. And the, you know, to have, you know, true, kind of civically oriented, independent, heavily reported, truth based, diverse, diverse voices and broad perspectives on the opinion section. Those kinds of things that I think really do lead to a healthier society. So, but in that, in that vein, there's a lot of Jewish advocacy groups out there and there's a lot of Jewish leaders working to build their version of a better Jewish world. And that is great, but that is not who we are. You know, we are really detached from that and trying to kind of independently assess and explain and explore all of that. And of course it's different to be at a community publication versus, you know, someplace like the New York Times. But, but it's, but if we become kind of part of that Jewish advocacy or Jewish service organization, nonprofit landscape, then the Jewish community has no independent reporting observers, accountability outlets. And, and they, we deserve it and we need it, but can you.
- [43:25]
C
And we'll move on from here in a second. But I am really curious to ask this, but is it like, what about traffic? Like, are you not. Because everything, all the good stuff that you all three are describing, wanting to do the stuff that comes from a good faith desire to provide the community with something that is a needed resource, has to sort of stand up to this drift towards paying attention to the numbers. And, and, and that's social media too. I mean, it's what, it's, that bias, you know, it pushes you in a certain direction. And you know, I asked, I think this is, I mean, this isn't unique to Jewish journalism, you know, but, but, you know, I see this at the New York Times. I mean, we have, there is the journalistic mission which always is supposed to be front and center, but then we get the numbers every day, you know, and it's, it would be foolish to think that individual reporters and editors aren't influenced by the sort of that feedback loop in that sense, that certain things do well and though. And you get rewarded for those things doing well. You know, either it's, you know, it's as an institution financially or just personally as a. As a reporter. So I. It sounds like everything you're describing involves pushing some of that away to some extent.
- [44:32]
D
So, you know, my last job at the New York Times was running the audience strategy, and so I was very focused on some of these questions. And broadly, we found something that I think Alana spoke to earlier, too. So we found essentially there were two categories of stuff that did the best. The one category was really quick, and they now call it live journalism, you know, news in the moment, which is essentially leaning into what the Internet is talking about right now, whether that's because something has happened or because people are galvanizing around some meme or something and really like coming quickly with something distinctive and of quality to a conversation that's already happening. But the other thing was the highest quality, longest developed projects, investigative narrative, visual video investigations that took the most time and that the newsroom itself was the most proud of those also drove huge audiences. And I think Alana's story about the French antisemitism is a good example of that. So maybe her timing was a little bit off, but certainly better to be too early than too late. And that thing is deep and long and important, and probably took a ton of commitment by the reporters and the editor to, like, follow up and da, da, da. And it paid off because it was. People want to read good, long, big, thoughtful things. Also. They really want both. You know, what they don't want. They don't want what was the bread and butter of metro dailies and frankly, the New York Times international desk for a lot of years, which is sort of stories that take a long time to produce and don't actually say much that's sort of surprising or new or like. So they're sort of like, blah. They're kind of in the middle. They're not what people are talking about right now, and they're not exciting or deep or new enough to get people talking about them. And those are the two things we have to focus on. We need to, you know, lean into the conversation people are already having and give them something to chew on in that conversation. As Felissa really smartly said about, you know, make something to base their hot takes, huh? And we also need to say, hey, you know what? Look over here that you are not talking about this. You're not thinking about this, but it's important. And we found some stuff that you need to know, and we're going to tell you about it in a way that's accessible, that's compelling, that probably has great art with it. And we're going to get your attention and we're going to change the conversation and help you see the value of this thing. But this other thing that's like three days late and kind of a little bit more information about the thing you were talking about, but now you've moved on from. So audiences don't want that. But, like, it wasn't that good in the first place.
- [47:11]
C
We just didn't know it because there were no metrics. It was just everyone.
- [47:15]
D
And our chastity wasn't one look, you know, the really exciting time about this moment in journalism is that the business interests are totally aligned with the audience interests and the journalism interests. We want to write things, create journalism, make things that people engage with and read, and that has impact. And that's what drives subscriptions or traffic, probably donations, because people are actually interested. It used to be that the business side was selling these advertisers on something they didn't even like news. They didn't want to be. They didn't want their advertisers to be near any stories that, like, might be upsetting. And then there are all these pages in between the ad pages that needed to be filled, and they were filled with a lot of those basic beat stories where nothing much was going on, but they needed some extra stories between the good stuff on the front page and some of the other stuff, like, you know, obits or whatever.
- [48:06]
C
Alana, would you. Did you want to jump in? Or you or.
- [48:10]
E
And I just wanted to say that also I think that there's the. Again, it's probably too early to talk about any of this because it's all stuff we're going to learn about in hindsight. But I also think that the Internet's in a constant state of flux and that what was true five years ago about clickbait and what was driving traffic is not true today. Certainly not true for us. Tablet. So, Tablet. Five, seven years ago or eight years ago, we published a piece on the fate of Hitler's toilet. We don't talk so much about it, but, like, it was a lovely.
- [48:46]
A
I mean, this is.
- [48:47]
E
Okay, I. I won't actually pass judgment on the piece, but I would just say that obviously we're not talking about, like, an in depth investigative piece. Of enormous length and reportage. Um, and it was like our top piece for two years maybe. I mean, like, it's something insane. The pieces now that are our most read pieces are not those quick hit pieces of drive by fun stuff anymore. And I think that reflects the moment that we're in more broadly in America and the moment that we're in the world. The people are not coming to our outlets, I don't think for. For clickbait. And I think that some of this is getting sussed out as we do it and as. Because the Internet was kind of the wild west, and people were like, I don't know, maybe you're a department store and I can get everything here. I can get my blenders and school stuff for my kids or whatever. And we were like, I guess we have to give you everything. And now I think we're re specializing in me becoming more of what we each may want to be or may. May have the capacity and the skills to be as the landscape shifts and changes. So I think that part of this is like, it's a little bit. The verdict's still kind of open on this. Right, Right.
- [50:05]
A
I would just add that we. Yes. To everything Jodi said about understanding our audience. I think the Jewish press, like, we have this gift of knowing a great deal. I mean, there's a big, long chat, if anybody's watching, about the Pew study, which, like, we know a lot about our audience or our potential audience, and that allows us to come to conclusions like, well, this story, you know, was read by 2,000 people, but we have a pretty good understanding it was the right 2000, and they're talking about it and there's going to be, you know, action inspired by it in the right community, right circles. And like, that's a. That's as exciting, maybe even more exciting to me as the editor than a story that goes crazy and seen 200,000 times. That's also a thrill. We love when that happens. Lots of new people subscribe to our newsletters. We are introduced to lots of people that we hope will become longtime readers. But the numbers are not. I don't know if there's anywhere at this time where the numbers are really actually the most important thing. They really do. People have a lot of feelings about them. I don't know if there's anywhere where they really matter that much, but we know enough to be able to make those, you know, distinctions, which I think is really helpful.
- [51:15]
C
I want to. I want to get to the Q and A, but I just want to Ask one question, which is actually not a very quick question, but I'm looking for, for a quick answer so we can, we can get to some of the things people want to talk about. But I'm, I'm curious about Israel and, and how you're thinking through covering Israel at the moment when there does seem to be. It's. It just seems silly to ignore the fact that there is some kind of generational divide happening in terms of people's just basic acceptance of Israel's existence, you
- [51:46]
D
know,
- [51:49]
C
and, you know, it's troubling to a lot of people, but you have to cover the conflict, you have to cover what's going on there. How do you think through how to do that in a way that sort of is consistent with your institution's values?
- [52:12]
E
I think that Tablets helped here by its identity as a magazine where, you know, we. Magazines traditionally and just to. To highlight the way that I see it, like a newspaper was a hot medium and a magazine was a cool medium. Newspapers, you were supposed to get your newspaper, read it, throw it down on your kitchen table and do something, go to a vote for somebody or vote somebody out, go to a school board meeting, go protest to get your traffic light fits fixed or something even more important magazines were more contemplative and they were certainly the monthlies and the more the thought leader magazines were cooler mediums and they were also eccentric. So if you can think back when there were thought leader magazines like the New Yorker, Harper's, the Atlantic, they all had their own specific collection of weirdos like their rehearsal. If you were a New Yorker reader, you weren't a Harper's reader. Those were two different kinds of weird people or interesting people, whatever way you want to put it. Now, of course, one of the things the Internet does is it flattens everything so everybody can read the New Yorker and Harpers and the Atlantic and pick and choose. And it's all. But what it also means is that things start to sound the same. I think that Tablet. Tablet sort of exists more in the universe of an eccentric magazine which has certain, certain ideas that it finds compelling that it wants to explore and other ideas that it's not interested in and, or the. The people who write and edit Tablet feel drawn to versus not drawn to. So Zionism in Israel ends up being put through that same distillery that we put everything through. Do we. Are we. Do we find that argument compelling or interesting to us? Do we think it's being made better elsewhere? And that's how we see it. We feel like Zionism and actually, I would say. But there are a lot of questions also about America and the American democracy and American civic life that the conversation around Zionism the last five years prepared us for. Like, can. How. How far are we willing to question things? How far are we willing to take them? What do you find interesting and not. And then chasing what you find interesting, compelling, and what you think you can do? Well, so that's how we. That's how we see it. But we also have some benefits of a specific posture that we're able to
- [54:54]
A
take and that I would say that we. Someone asked about, you know, how are we different? Here's the way we're different. We have a challenge posed by our. Our history as a wire service because we know there's great news by Israeli media about what's happening in Israel, and we know that our readers who are inclined or wanting to, you know, know that information are getting it. So we don't need to be providing, you know, a day. The brief about this rocket flu or, you know, this argument was had in Knesset. Like, that's something that we historically have done. And like, nobody is really served by that. Maybe, maybe Jody and the forwards and. And our client, and our client publications, but readers generally, like, we know that they're. We know that if. If someone is inclined toward knowing the granular details of what's happening in Israel, like, they have so many opportunities to get it, which is a wonderful thing for American Jews. So what do we do instead? We're looking toward explanatory content. Can we do more to cover what it's like to be a Jew in Israel rather than all these other things? Like, that seems pretty important. A lot of Jews in the world live in Israel, and that's a story that I think American readers benefit from understanding. I think this is a really challenging topic. And the best way through, as with all challenges, is through journalism. So reporting about the questions and debates and fights and pain and excitement and all of the things that are floating around here, rather than having a particular perspective. Because how. I mean, both as journalists but also as Jews, it's impossible to have particular perspective. Like, all of. There are so many. We know that I'm represented among our readership and among the people we cover. So good journalism. That's different from how we've historically done it. That's. That's a pretty big change that's happening right now.
- [56:45]
D
So I actually think I have a really simple answer to your complicated question, which is we cover the change. Like, change is the is and. And Honestly, I think, you know, when I was, I spent four years as the Jerusalem Bureau chief of New York Times from 2012 through 2015. And it wasn't as it was one of my biggest challenges was how cyclical and the same everything seemed. And one of the things we've found in general over the five years since then, but I think specifically around the last Gaza war, is the shift in discourse. And we wrote a lot of really important stories about the different ways you could trace the shift in discourse among politicians, among Jewish institutions, on social media. And those are really interesting stories. So our, our responsibility is to chronicle that change, to explain that change, understand that change. And look, there are two parts of your question.
- [57:33]
B
I thought I was gonna.
- [57:34]
D
Sorry. I thought my answer would be shorter as well as simple. Sorry. Look, I feel like there's one part of the generational change, and Pew has documented this, is less interest in Israel. So that's a particular kind of challenge. There's another part of the conversation of the, of what your question posed, which really is changed view of Israel that's generational. Many of the many young people who are anti Zionist are deeply interested in this conversation. So that's, you know, so that shift, that generational change, that generational gap, the inability or the struggles of people to talk to their grandchildren and children about this or to grapple with how they're to, to be. To re. Rethink their own views based on their generational, the younger generation's views is, is super interesting and both generations are really interested in it.
- [58:22]
E
Right.
- [58:24]
C
Thank you. It takes me back to the initial question of sort of what is essential for American Jews about what you produce. And when you said, Jodi, about writing about the change discourse, that was a moment for me in the Gaza war where I really wanted to read what all three of your publications were producing on that question, because it was a personally troubling moment for me where I felt the ground shifting and, and the New York Times wasn't going to really cover it besides, you know, maybe a cursory story. Let me take, I'm going to take one question from the Q and A because I think it's an important question. It's an interesting one to end on, and I'm sorry that I couldn't take more, but one of our viewers, Alan Dyback, wants to know about the economic viability of the Jewish press going forward. And I think it is an important place to, to end on. You know, all those, he's saying, all those on the panel rely to an extent on philanthropy, is this, is this sustainable in the long term? Sorry, not a, not an upper. But, but, but I think it, but it's important, you know, given that we've established over the last hour that how essential it is.
- [59:31]
E
The short answer is we don't know. Yeah, I don't know. And I mean, if, if Jodi and Felissa have may have more insight into this than I do, but I don't. We. We just don't know. This universe is. It moves too fast and shifts too much for any of us, I think, to be sure. Would I. Is there any universe in which we could say, oh, it's absolutely guaranteed. This is great. There's, there's. We're going to be fine for the rest of all of our careers? That would be, I think, really not smart for any of us to say. That said, I think beyond that, it's very, very, very hard to know. I do think that asking yourself that question, asking the question of also the other ancillary question, but one that I think is concerning to me is, you know, when readers were a big part of the economic model of an outlet, when subscriptions were a part of the economic model, the outlet, the emotional attachment that people had to your outlet was thicker and more involved. And that created some complications, but it also created sustainability in a way that, and sustainability did, not only financially but also emotionally. And you, you were in it with them. And that's. The challenge is even bigger. Even if somebody could say to us, you are all going to financially be supported philanthropically for the, for the next 50 years, then we have another problem, which is what is our reader connection to us and how do we actually make that strong again? And I think that's so. So they're, they're connected, but also in many ways, separate challenges that at least we, we think about, or I think about in the same breath.
- [61:25]
D
So I appreciate you asking the question because it gives us a chance to make our pitch. That's really important.
- [61:29]
E
And I think those.
- [61:30]
C
Not a century, but go ahead.
- [61:32]
D
So if anyone wants to come to the Ford's Virtual Gala on October 20th and support us, that would be great. But no, look, I, you know, I talked earlier about journalism as an essential part of functioning democracy and a civic life. And the model I really believe in for Jewish journalism now is a philanthropic model that is based both on grassroots donations and bigger investments by, by, by organized philanthropists or by wealthy individuals. That is very similar to the model you might see in a community around a library or a hospital or the Opera things that people believe a community needs. And the Jewish community needs independent journalism, and people need to fund it in the same way, because it won't be there if they don't. And I think, you know, the one thing I would quibble with what Alana said is the idea that our model is that our economics are not dependent on readers. Now, I think they're more dependent on readers than ever. Some of that is through for those who have subscriptions or individual donations, but also just in that the reader patterns the behavior of readers fuel all of our economics. They are our incentives and how we talk about things. And any journalism model right now is dependent on serving readers well. And I think that is good for the business and good for readers. And I'm excited, excited about the possibilities that open up. And one thing I'll say is last year, at a time of, you know, where I think everybody understood that news was really essential, and readership at the Forward and all of our publications and at every publication in America went way up. Our. The number of gifts to the Forward, the number of donations doubled from 2019, and many of those were, you know, $18 here or there. But that was readers saying, we need what you're doing. We believe in what you're doing. We're depending on you. We are developing an emotional conn. Connection and a relationship with you. And I just right before this call, I got, like, an auto email from someone who had made some donation in my honor. And the note was hilarious. It was this note that was like, in honor of the thing ways. Jody Jordan is changing the phone. River, I. I'm sorry for. For the criticism I had lodged, you know, months ago or something. I had to go back and look up. It was a very minor criticism, but that's about emotional resonance and emotional connection and dollars. And it's important. But, yes, we need the community, whether that's individual readers, whether that's a philanthropy that is small, whether it's, you know, Craig Newmark, who's supporting us and other journalism organizations at a very high level. But we need all of that to sustain ourselves. That is the model that is going to work going forward. And certainly Ilan is right that there's no guarantees here, but there's a lot of promise and a lot of hope.
- [64:19]
C
I think you want to chime in at all. Felissa, you don't.
- [64:22]
A
I. I do want to chime in. I agree with everything said, but I want to chime in anyway because I want to offer everyone here the opportunity to. To know that we have lots of ways that readers can engage with us, and that emotional resonance is. Is something I. I'm a little distracted because I just found out this very second that I have a new nephew this very second. So popped up on my screen. But, yes, I think our struggles in the sustainability space are not different from the rest of the media landscape. It's a very difficult time. There's a lot of exciting efforts underway to figure out a solution. I agree with Jodi totally that philanthropy is the most promising model. That doesn't mean it's born itself out yet. And. And that having, you know, the risks that. That may come from that of. Of drawing resources from the people you cover can be mitigated by drawing resources from lots of people you cover, including all of your readers, and giving up, creating opportunities and building that. Building that engagement is, you know, so important. And then I would just say that, like, the best thing to do is really great work, because nobody will want to support something other than that. And so the attraction to a hot take or whatever it is, that's, you know, the.
- [65:45]
E
The cheap.
- [65:45]
A
The cheap readership, you know, that's not our path to sustainability. And then I would just add, because I saw a comment in the chat that local Jewish media faces a dirt. You know, it's a little bit different. And something that. That we're thinking a lot about, and I know Jodi in the forward also are thinking about is how can we be part of the solution so that local communities can have the Jewish journalism that they need? Because we are all connected, but we also have individual, local, lived experiences. And those. Those. The disappearance of that would be a tragedy for the Jewish people. So this is work that we're very engaged into. Right.
- [66:23]
C
Well, I have, like, you know, 15 more questions, and I see the Q and A is, like, full of questions, but unfortunately, we have to. To stop there. But it's obviously a rich conversation that I think touches on so many. It's a lens through which we get to all the bigger issues in the Jewish community and all the things that we're thinking about sort of outside even the boundaries of journalism, because it does feel so important. So thank you, Alana, Jody, Felissa. It was great to see you guys, and. And I hope everyone has enjoyed this conversation.
- [66:59]
E
Thanks, Gol. Thanks to Evo.
- [67:02]
A
Thank you.