Joel Schalit

Investigative Journalism

By Saturday afternoon, Britain’s leading tabloids had already determined the identity of the terrorists that had raided Mumbai.

With the Evening Standard already having established the guerrillas’ nationality, The Daily Express narrows things down to their hometown.

All The Sun can do is recycle another paper’s already problematic headline – albeit with a more in-your-face layout. (Note the use of  ‘rampage’. It’s not as tough as ‘butchers’, but still provocative.)

Meanwhile, The Daily Telegraph chooses to indulge the same anxiety by returning to the nationality issue, this time sans the headlines. The understatement of the query’s still front-page positioning is important.

My colleagues here have not had the best things to say about the state of this periodical. Though it’s allegations might very well be accurate, you have to question the timing of this article’s publication.

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.

London Calling

On July 1st, I stepped down from my editorial position at Allvoices. With two months to pack up our home and move to the United Kingdom, I couldn’t have had a better reason to punch out. I’ll be spending the next eight weeks at home writing and editing a couple of terrific books while we get everything ready. To make the transition back to book editing, after being immersed in the world of blogs and online periodicals is interesting to note, (as a format exercise), given the direction that this kind of work now moves.

Leaving my office in San Francisco’s financial district (pictured above) for the very last time, I couldn’t resist capturing the signage of the cylinder shaped newsstand that sits at the building’s front entrance. Housing not only my ex-employer, but also a Reuters office, and the headquarters of the local Jewish weekly, The J, my former firm’s new abode hosts an above average number of news publishers for such a small, albeit significant, American city.

Just before I left, however, I received a call from the very first periodical I ever worked for, in between my freshman and sophomore years of high school, in 1982. Serving as a summer intern for the legendary Mother Jones (whose building, pictured above, is three blocks west of my former office) has earned me a semi-annual email or phone call from what sounds like another MoJo intern, keeping tabs on alumni. “You’re a writer, right?” asked the young man who called me. “Yes,” I told him. “And an editor, too.”

(De)Programming the Middle East

If you live in the US and need to follow events in the Middle East closely, Mosaic is absolutely indispensable. A thirty-minute long aggregation of regional television news programming broadcast on Link TV, the show is the brainchild of award-winning producer Jamal Dajani.

A Jerusalem native, and a resident of the San Francisco Bay Area, I spoke to Dajani about his work on Mosaic for the March issue of Zeek. What transpires is a fascinating conversation about the state of Middle Eastern media today, and its increasing importance for Americans.

If you enjoy this piece, check out Covering the Coverage, and Left of the Middle East. Short excerpts from my book, they cover much of the same topical ground as my conversation with Dajani, but focus on US and otherwise progressive Western news media instead.

Conscientious Objections

France24 has launched The Observers, a new, bilingual citizen journalism initiative. At the behest of staff writer Roi Ben-Yehuda, I became an Observer last week, and gave my thoughts on a new Israeli government drive to encourage teens to do their obligatory military duty.

As someone who, when they came of age in 1985, did not do their service, I explain why, as well as criticize a new state-produced video designed to prevent kids from doing the same. Check it out. The following response, by the anonymous Yael, is worth the price of admission alone.

Later on this week, Roi will be running a piece on the first Tel Aviv Sex Festival, which was held a little over a week ago. I’ll be reprising my Observer role as part of the proceedings.

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.

Long Live Independent Publishing

Have you ever read The New York Review of Magazines? In the new issue, there’s a great feature on the collapse of Indy Press Newsstand Services. Once the largest distributor of independent magazines in the US, ranging from Mother Jones, Harpers and ReadyMade to Punk Planet, Bitch and Tikkun, IPNS closed its doors at the end of 2006, leaving an enormous number of periodicals in serious financial crisis.

The article, Independent Publishing is Dead. Long Live Independent Publishing, covers an enormous amount of territory, talking to nearly all of the hardest-hit titles in the IPNS drama. My good friend, Punk Planet publisher Dan Sinker, is in brilliant form throughout, while former IPNS chief Richard Landry issues forth the expected. Tikkun’s former editors – Jo Ellen Green Kaiser & myself – are also included.

To read my initial reaction to the closure of IPNS, click here.

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

Covering Israel

From an essay in progress

Turn to any progressive periodical in the United States today, and in all likelihood, you’ll find at least one article about the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. From large circulation monthlies such as Z Magazine, and the American Prospect, to weeklies like The Nation and online dailies such as Counterpunch and Salon, reporting on the region tends to reflexively match events on the ground, either in the form of investigative articles or opinion editorials.

Coverage of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict by America’s left press has traditionally focused on the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, and the plight of Palestinians living under Israeli military rule. This emphasis was sharpened during the course of the two intifadas (1987-1991 and 2000-2005) and the peace process of the 1990s, when settlement building actually increased, and the Israel Defense Forces inaugurated its policy of geographical bisections and closures in the ‘territories.

Since the invasion of Iraq in March 2003, this area of coverage has expanded to include analyses of Israel’s relationship with the United States, with a specific emphasis on the role of the “Israel Lobby” in formulating US foreign policy towards the Islamic world. Reflecting ongoing concerns about Israel’s purported impact on the US decision to go to war with Iraq, in the eyes of many progressive magazine editors, Israel is no longer just an occupying power, but an inordinately influential, and frequently manipulative party to US efforts to dominate the Middle East.

When it comes to domestic Israeli politics, progressive periodicals pay little attention to it, except when it holds importance for the country’s peace prospects. Thus, when trade unionist Amir Peretz was elected head of Israel’s Labor Party in November 2005, progressive periodicals welcomed his appointment, hoping that, given Peretz’ leftwing background, he would reinvigorate the peace process. Similarly, when Israel Beitenu chief Avigdor Lieberman was appointed ‘Minister of Strategic Threats’ in 2006, given his ultra-nationalist politics, Lieberman’s appointment was heralded as a threat to peace.

[For my outgoing editor's take on how Tikkun covered Israel, click here.]