Jewish Bloggers Are Not the Enemies of Jewish Storytelling

This morning, I opened my email to find a solicitation letter from the Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA) that I found extremely surprising. Since the economy dipped, I'd been getting more solicitations from everyone. But this particular email, headed "The Future of Jewish Storytelling," seemed to be using bloggers (and Twitterers) as a scare tactic designed to elicit donations, the way other organizations use terms like “aging Holocaust population,” “Jewish singles crisis,” and “rise in anti-Semitism.” Unless you act now, the message seemed to say, “bloggers, Twitterers, and nonprofessionals” will take over Jewish journalism entirely and (the ultimate implied leap from any scare tactic used in Jewish fundraising) cause the demise of the Jewish people.

But that couldn’t be what they were saying, could it? I used to blog for the JTA. I've watched with delight as the site revamped its look and content, including blogging and Twitter as two additional tools in the arsenal of Jewish journalism. So I parsed it line-by-line, the way my Talmudic ancestors might have; indeed, the way certain rabbinic discussions in the Haggadah unfold.

“Storytelling is fundamental to the Jewish experience," the letter began. I could not agree more. Storytelling is what Passover is all about, it’s about legacy, family, interpretation, and history. "And, storytelling is what JTA does every day,” the email continues, noting coverage from Mumbai to Gaza, from Obama to Madoff. Now, I wouldn’t have used the word “storytelling,” which for me connotes more of an inventive, imaginative lens on events than say, “journalism,” "news," or “reporting.” But mostly, agreed – JTA’s where I go for my Jewish news, rendered objectively in news pieces and hopefully wielded to larger, more inspiring points by features writers, op-ed columnists and some of their blogging staff members. When JTA made its appearance on Twitter, I couldn’t have been more thrilled: finally, a way to make sure that the stories reached me in “realer” time than a once-daily JTA bulletin could achieve. I’d learn about the news stories as they happened, which is of great help to me as a blogger and Jewish writer, enabling me to stay abreast of news at the speed of technology.That's a media service for the 21st century.

The next paragraph contained the prerequisite nod to the economy, or in this case, the bolded "JTA's ability to tell these stories is threatened by the realities of the economic downturn. And, in the chaos of the information age in which we live, it is even harder to find the trusted voices on which we rely for independence and accuracy.”

This is true, of course – this is a burgeoning problem throughout the journalistic field that has editors and publishers scrambling. Even before the economy tanked, journalists and publishers were trying to figure out what kind of model works in an age when news is increasingly not just for the people, but by the people; when those people expect information as soon as is technologically possible; and when they expect access to it without paying for it. What kind of business model does that present for established old-school bastions of journalism trying to score advertisers and (when we’re lucky) pay their writers? What does this mean for the education of today’s students who will be practicing tomorrow’s version of whatever this field will morph into? These are hard questions, and that’s even before you add the narrowed lens of “Jewish” and sometimes “community-supported” to the field of journalism. People are struggling. I get that. Heck, I live that.

But then comes the central message of the letter. I know this is the central message because they bolded and underlined it, lest I become possessed of the idea that there is a more serious scourge to be dealt with than the one described in the words that followed.

"Without a strong JTA, the storytelling will be left to bloggers, twitterers, and non-professionals.  Is this the best way for our future Jewish stories to be told and recorded?"

I’m used to journalism as a field downplaying the contributions of bloggers. Fine. For every blogger who becomes a trusted journalistic talking head on CNN, there are myriad more whose daily meanderings don’t remotely resemble polished writing. Not every blogger is a journalist and not every journalist with a blog is a blogger. Most days, I’m ok being somewhere in the middle. But in a world fraught with so many “us vs. thems” that labels and denominations are losing their meanings entirely, why set up additional “thems” to rail against? Why does there have to be a bad guy? And why is it a group of people collected solely by the technology they use, no matter how they wield it as a tool? What’s so threatening about a blog or a Twitter update? With blogs and Twitter accounts as an integral – and I would argue, perhaps the most interesting - part of today’s JTA, does this letter mean to say that only blogs and Twitter accounts run by the JTA are worth anything to Jewish journalism?

Reading on, there’s the actual pitch, then cue the nods to Passover, including the obligatory noting that this year is “different from all other years” and then this.

During the seder, one of the four children asks, "What does this service mean to you?" I am asking you to ponder that same question and join us by becoming a member.

"What does this service mean to you?" is the question of the second child, known to Haggadah readers as "the Wicked Child." Ahem. Did they just call the readers who might not donate "wicked children"?

I am not denying their claim that "news has a real cost"-- as a writer who makes some of her livelihood in the Jewish press, I am part of that cost (when a publication's budget allows for paying writers, which is another post entirely). I am certain that JTA needs the funding in order to survive (and am therefore leaving in the above link to their fundraising page). However, just as with blogging and Twitter (and Facebook and any yet-unnamed social medium), it's not about condemning the medium - it's about making sure that whatever medium you use to communicate, you're using it effectively.

In speaking with a friend and fellow blogger about this email, it became clear that JTA sent at least two versions of their solicitation letter today. I got the one that must have been designated for Jewish education professionals, while hers seemed to have a business edge, invoking the "instant journalism" and fast-changing "news business," as well as a mention of Bloomberg News and the noticeable absence of both Passover imagery and blogger/Twitter denigration. The email's title: "The Info You Need, When You Need It."

"The Info You Need, When You Need It" - why not stick with that as a service motto, instead of resorting to threats or scare tactics? Demonizing a group of people who are united only in one characteristic - the technology they use to ensure that their stories are heard - constructs unnecessary barriers between mainstream media and the communications wave of the present. 

If you ask me, the news, personal reflections or opinions that resonate with people who blog or Tweet or Digg or Facebook message are becoming - as much as any piece of current news or element of our written history - a vital part of our Jewish storytelling, for the present and future.  Jewish bloggers are not the enemies of Jewish storytelling: if anything, as bickering, economic collapse and technological confusion compete for communal attention, they just might be its salvation.

But what do I know? I'm just a blogger.

Comments

[RHF]

Great post, Esther. Well said.

[Maya Norton]

Right on the mark, Esther. Thanks for this.

~ Maya

The New Jew: Blogging Jewish Philanthropy

[Dan]

"I'm just a blogger"

A well informed, tuned in and media savy one, too.

Shavuah tov,
Dan

eJewishPhilanthropy.com

[Dan Sieradski]

Official JTA response http://is.gd/qRBJ

[Jo Ellen at Zeek]

Yes, that fundraising letter was truly misguided. Bloggers are tne new columnists of today's media.

[Jacob Shwirtz]

Very well said!

[Susanne]

Can't wait to write about this!

[Dan]

Dan,

I appreciate your response to what has been said over the past few days on the blog-o-sphere. But, I am also quite disappointed that it came from you (regardless of your position in the JTA). The feelings that Elisa's solicitation email brought forth deserve a formal response from her, as both the author of the email and President of JTA.

On a related note, and lost in all the various comments is that the solicitation email asks us "to join JTA by becoming a member of our online community. For just $50..."

Membership implies certain benefits not available to non-members. What exactly are the benefits of JTA membership?

[Bungalow Babe]

As the extremely close relative of a certain Columbia prof and former Times writer recently quoted as saying F#(% New Media in the pages of New York Magazine, I see this drama as:

F#(% New Media -- The Kosher Edition.

My ECR took a LOT of heat for his comments, was the subject of many blog entries and was called such kindly things as a Luddite and a Dinosaur. He even got an email to his personal Inbox describing a certain method of death involving heavy ropes.

As the ECR of the aforementioned reporter/professor, I was the first to jump to his support...after I finished laughing hysterically at his predicament, blogging about it and sending out links to the New York Magazine article.

Because we live in extremely close proximity, I knew that, problematic though his statement was, it wasn't delivered in a vaccum, though it was reported as such.

In fact, ECR's comments were totally decontextualized (he was talking about not neglecting the basic skills of writing and reporting within the fast-paced, instant-gratification world of cyberjournalism).

But as Esther the Kvetcher ably points out, the JTA situation warrants a different response. In her characteristically intelligent blog post, our Woman in the Blogosphere positively NAILED the Wrongheaded Weirdness of this particular pitch letter, which was to equate the brave writers of New Media with, say, Ahmadinejad.

So...it's a lot worse than saying F#(% New Media.

Indeed, it's kinda saying LOOK OUT! NEW MEDIA IS COMING TO KILL YOU!

And even an Extremely Close Relative of the author of that solicitation letter (easily one of the WORST in fundraising history)would have a hard time supporting that sentiment.

[Dan Sieradski]

JTA President Elisa Spungen Bildner responds: http://is.gd/qWxw

[Schelly Talalay Dardashti]

Well said, Esther.
As the very first blogger (back in 2006) on JTA with Tracing the Tribe - The Jewish Genealogy Blog, I was really dismayed that Elisa Spungen Bildner would write in those terms. And, BTW, Tracing the Tribe was just named to the top 25 most popular genealogy blogs for 2009 (the only Jewish one on the list!), ranking at #10.