Joel Schalit

Never Heard of Them

For those familiar with the history of American Jewish magazines, my former employer, Tikkun, was not the first periodical of its kind to break with community publishing conventions. Starting in the 1970s, there were numerous such attempts, of which, until the early 00s, Tikkun was the most visible.

One such upstart periodical was  New York’s New Jewish Times, which ceased publication in 1981, five years before the launch of Tikkun. Remembered by journalist Samuel G. Freedman in Friday’s New York Times, my present editorial abode, Zeek, gets the descendents’ high five, together with our friends at Heeb.

Somebody ought to shine a similar spotlight on the late Davka.

Unidentified Public Sphere

Working as the editor of an international news aggregator, I had my worst fears confirmed. In the US, as newspaper and magazine circulation continues to constrict, most foreign news is now imported. Subscribing to hundreds of Middle Eastern and South Asian periodicals and blogs as part of my job, even though I’d mastered receiving my news via RSS years before, the longer I did this work, the more I longed to go to an old fashioned newsstand and walk home with three or four periodicals. Friday evening, I did just that.

I was particularly taken with the idea of reading through The National. Published in Abu Dhabi, in the weeks leading up to its launch last summer, it was subject to much hype in the US. In between hiring former editors from newspapers such as The New York Times, and starting up in a publishing environment like that which presently exists in the United States, Americans were indeed curious about it. The fact that English-language Arab periodicals are experiencing a spike in US readership due to the war definitely helped.

Changing Channels

Speaking of Al Jazeera English, if you get the chance, check out  Roger Cohen‘s excellent op-ed on the Qatari broadcaster in today’s New York Times.

Discussing the difficulties that the service has had trying to find national distribution from America’s cable and satellite providers, the Times‘ International-Writer-at-Large extols the network’s virtues, noting, in reference to the same polarized context invoked in Friday‘s posting, that Al Jazeera is carried (by Yes) in Israel, where it replaced the BBC last winter.

Incidentally (and much discussed as of late) Al Jazeera English was also slated to replace CNN on Israel’s largest cable service, Hot, but was outbid at the last minute by Fox News.

Covering the Coverage

His curiosity piqued by a recent article in Haaretz discussing the relative merits of the New York Times‘ coverage of Israel, a colleague asked me if I could point him to what I think are the best studies of Western media reporting on the Arab-Israeli conflict. For those who understand the subtext of such inquiries,  the editor couldn’t have asked a more loaded question. To make such a request in today’s environment means that you first have to ask why the question is important, and second, for whom.

Since September 11th, domestic coverage of the Middle East has obviously become more significant. Not just because the attacks on New York and Washington signaled the beginning of a conflict  between America and West Asian Islamists. But, also because of how it placed far more editorial requirements on a news media already struggling – and, in the US, largely failing – to meet the complex cultural demands already required of Mideast coverage by the country’s Jewish and Muslim Diaspora communities.

US news agencies haven’t done the best job of striking this balance yet either. However, there is more English-language, Mideast-based media to rely on than ever before to make up for it. Take for example, Israeli publications like the English edition of Haaretz on the one hand, and Al Jazeera‘s English broadcasting service on the other, not to mention all of the translated editions of regional sources in between. Americans now have every opportunity to read news that’s potentially more informative.

Though "local" is not always a synonym for "better", irrespective of partisanship and the limitations international media inevitably find themselves subject to, in comparison, few domestic sources, including the ethnic press, deliver the same quality goods.  Does that mean that American periodicals should hang up their hats? No. Because of this country’s obvious ties to the region – economic, cultural, and military, to name a few – US news outlets are morally obligated to continue reporting on the Mideast.

The question is how. Obviously, one answer would be to create content that was complementary with a foreign reporting that is better privileged for information. Another angle would be to concentrate on commissioning work on the numerous ways in which Americans deliberate about their involvement in a particular country’s affairs. Thus, you emphasize domestic political discussions at, say the State Department, or, amongst Americans with cultural ties to said state, instead of the other way around.

As many editors at American news periodicals will tell you, the two biggest complaints about Mideast coverage are always that its either anti-Semitic, or similarly compromised by a desire to satisfy special interest groups. The problem with such criticisms is that they’re not only frequently incorrect. But, most importantly, that they help divert editorial attention away from very real ethical problems, like learning how to properly tailor international news for a cosmopolitan, multicultural readership – during wartime.   

- From my notebook, Nov 1.

This is the Modern World

For anyone who watches BBC America with any degree of regularity, I’m sure you’ve seen the New York Times ad that runs towards the end of every week. A pitch for The Weekender, a Friday-Sunday discount subscription package, the presentation is truly seductive. Featuring a multiethnic array of attractive, hip adults (ages 27-40, I’d wager), even though the background music is annoying, the commercial makes an excellent case for buying a three day subscription to the ‘Times.  Despite the fact that I’ve seen it over a hundred times, it still leaves me feeling positively predisposed towards the newspaper.

That is, until I read the Saturday edition. As Jennifer has noted time and time again, its always a little too thin. Nine times out of ten, compared to the rest of the week,  there’s rarely a feature story that holds our interest. Looking over today’s paper, I had to agree with her. Even though there was one or two pieces that briefly caught my eye, nothing quite grabbed my attention as compared to the Sunday edition, which while like any news periodical, can be inconsistent, is always a bit more compelling.

Part of this I chalk up to the fact that there’s only so many days in a week that a daily newspaper can be half-way reasonable. And, part of this I attribute to the fact that American news media tends to focus on Sunday as its “big” day, when, as someone who has lived a fair amount of their life abroad, I am used to Friday and Saturday newspapers being the Sunday-equivalent for said periodical mass. Thus, for example, if I could buy the print edition of Friday’s Haaretz here in the US, I probably would. I’d read that well into Saturday, and likewise follow it up with Saturday’s edition of The Guardian. Sunday would be ‘Times day.

Though I could seek my fix out online every Saturday morning, my solution to this problem is to mix things up. Drinking my first cup of coffee, I watch a half-hour’s broadcast of the BBC news, followed by another thirty minutes of Mosaic, the daily aggregation of Middle Eastern television news offered by Link TV. Then, I follow it up with an initial perusal of the new issue of The Economist, which we receive in the mail every Friday afternoon. Between these media, I get the equivalent of a foreign weekend paper, and, for all intents and purposes, a respectable alternative to Saturday’s New York Times.

This is why, when fellow editors bemoan the falling circulation rates of established periodicals like the ‘Times, (“They’re all fleeing for the web!” or so the refrain goes) I tend to bristle. People aren’t necessarily fleeing any specific medium. For one reason or another (think of my rather exaggerated example here), they’re simply diversifying how they get their news and culture. With so many new choices, online, on TV, and in print (like the  increasing US availability of UK periodicals), can you blame them?

I Heart Ms. Dynamite: Illa State Records Presents A Little Darker