Two weeks ago the news service JTA (Jewish Telegraphic Agency) announced that its publisher, Mark Joffe, was stepping down suddenly after 17 years in that position, and that his successor had already been named. The board chair acknowledged only Joffe’s “vision and his many years of loyal service,” not any of his accomplishments, and there was no transition period. To an outside observer this gives the unmistakable appearance of an abrupt break rather than a planned, orderly progression.
A report this week in The Jerusalem Post does little to alter that impression. Early comments by incoming publisher Ami Eden, JTA’s editor-in-chief since 2007, suggest that he is making a fresh start, with definite new ideas about content and collaboration. He observed to the Post, for example, that American Jewish media need to be “different from Haaretz, JPost, Ynet” by concentrating more on stories from the United States.
The Post also reported that the one of Eden’s “top priorities” would be greater cooperation with other Jewish media outlets, and that ideas for collaboration would materialize in 12 to 18 months. “Why should we not try to create a unified Web presence having one big Web site with a team that’s constantly keeping it fresh?” proposed Eden. “We clearly could be pooling our technological resources and sharing the Web traffic. If we’re all investing in the same Web traffic, it becomes a great idea.”
That’s partly true. It’s a great idea if there’s enough income from the unified site to meet the combined revenue needs of the partners. With three partners, for instance, they won’t come out ahead unless their joint site produces at least three times the income – presumably resulting from three times the traffic – that they averaged separately. And that’s a big ‘if,’ especially when the largest news-gathering organizations in the world are still trying to figure out how to make money online.
According to the Post there have already been talks between the Forward and JTA, as well as past discussions with the New York Jewish Week and Haaretz. Conspicuously absent from this list, however, are all the other newspapers that subscribe to JTA’s news service. Yet if the intention is to offer greater depth in covering Jewish news from an American perspective, those papers could be the most important partners because they are closest to Jewish communities across the continent.
JTA has referred to itself as a “Jewish Associated Press,” but that is really a misnomer. The Associated Press is a cooperative owned by its member newspapers that facilitates the exchange of news stories among them. By contrast JTA, like Reuters, is an independently owned service that sells news to its subscribers for a fee. As the media marketplace continues to move away from print, JTA could be much more viable if it were organized along the lines of the AP.
JTA claims its survival is crucial by asserting that “if JTA ended tomorrow, local papers would no longer have any national or world information to publish and disseminate to their readers.” Yet the newspapers are equally essential to JTA, which receives a million dollars a year in subscription fees from them. What’s more, JTA has been saying that it has “a role to help local Jewish newspapers convert more to on-line service.” In short, they need each other.
There’s a parallel with National Public Radio, which like JTA is a nonprofit enterprise. NPR stations across the country need high-quality programming they can’t produce themselves; the NPR network needs the individual stations as broadcast outlets for its programs. Like the AP, NPR is owned by its member outlets—and it may well be the most successful radio operation in America.
The “one big Website” that Eden envisions could similarly be a shared platform operated by a member-owned JTA that preserves the identities of participating local papers while enabling central coordination of content. JTA editors could select stories from member papers that are of national interest and include those in a National News feed on the platform. That would free local editors to focus on local news and lower JTA’s domestic news-gathering costs at the same time. Centralizing site maintenance and advertising sales, while enabling local ad sales and local content control, would reduce costs locally. It also would vastly simplify JTA’s national marketing to readers as well as to advertisers. And owning a stake in the shared platform can be a powerful incentive for newspapers to participate in it.
Despite all these advantages, it is no simple matter to accomplish this kind of change. Such a major restructuring requires a complex planning process that actively involves the newspapers, JTA’s leadership, and stakeholders such as the National Federation/Agency Alliance. It also depends upon the willingness of the current JTA board to allow member newspapers to have a share in the agency’s governance. With JTA making a fresh start, however, there’s no better time to think about it than now. And the outcome would be well worth the effort.
Bob Goldfarb, a media executive and consultant for 30 years, earned his MBA at Harvard Business School. A regular contributor to eJewishPhilanthropy, Bob is president of the Center for Jewish Culture and Creativity and lives in Jerusalem.
Timely post, Bob – am actually putting the finishing touches on my analysis of the JTA situation, and I’m also imagining a national newsfeed like the one you describe above. I’m still worried (naturally) about the impact on writers’ fees. But part of the beauty of this open system of analysis called blogging is that the resultant discussion will generate many additional ideas for JTA – essentially, even if it’s unintentional, they’re crowdsourcing their future.
Great piece Bob. I’ve been thinking of many of these issues myself. I’m a Detroit native and have been reading the Detroit Jewish News (DJN) since… well, probably since I could read. For decades it was how I fell asleep on Friday nights. Following a big Shabbat dinner at my parents’ home, my mother would read the DJN, and then I would take it to bed and fall asleep reading it cover-to-cover beginning with the back pages first (obituaries) as is the local tradition. The prevailing joke was that if you didn’t find your name in the back pages, you could continue reading the rest of the paper!
The paper contained the local, national and world (mostly Israel) news. It was how we found out about what was going on in the “Jewish world” around us. A few years ago, the paper switched to a Thursday delivery which actually upset many people. Even though we could get the DJN a day earlier, it seemed to upset the rhythm of the week – and the tradition. Now the DJN (laid out like the actual paper in its entirety) is available free to subscribers early Wednesday morning on the Web.
Even though I’m reading it almost a full three days earlier, the news is already stale. By the time the JTA feeds get to the DJN to place in their paper I’ve already gotten that news by e-mail (JTA News Alerts) or seen them on the Web at JTA.org or the Forward or NY Jewish Week or even the NY Times. Not to mention the immediate Google Alerts I receive with keywords like “Jewish” and “Israel.” When I come across these news stories in the DJN’s print paper there have already been updates, changes and resolutions.
The local coverage in the Jewish papers is much the same. Because of e-mail, Twitter, Facebook, and text messaging, the flow of information is so quick that the news is old by the time it gets in the paper. Funeral homes send out daily messages with death notices, and synagogues, schools, and organizations send out email alerts as soon as a death is reported. By the time the deaths are listed in the paper the funeral has already occurred. Life-cycle events like births, bar/bat mitzvahs, weddings, and anniversaries are announced for free on Facebook which makes the announcements in the paper less exciting to read.
But all of this shouldn’t be spoken about in negative terms. Maybe it is the demise of print media, especially for regional Jewish newspapers, but this should just force everyone involved to think outside-the-box. I think Ami Eden is on to something. The freshness he brings to JTA should be contagious around the country (and I hope it is). One of the first things Ami does should be convening a meeting (virtual or face-to-face) of all Jewish newspaper editors and publishers to collaborate on his idea of “one big website.” The advertising dollars will be there, I’m sure.
This is just another example of how the Internet has removed the borders in the Jewish community. I know I’m not the only Jew who’s already gotten his news by reading the JTA feed and visiting the websites of the Forward, NY Jewish Week, Haaretz, and Jerusalem Post before my local Jewish newspaper even hits my mailbox.
I have great respect for everyone in the Jewish newspaper business, but let’s focus on the future… because it’s here.
Great piece. There’s another issue about consolidation that I didn’t see mentioned, which is editorial voice. I cringe whenever I hear any organization speak for all Jews, and it unfortunately happens all the time. I think secular media consolidation has been a slow-motion train wreck; why would Jewish media outlets want to emulate that? Especially when the Internet continues to prove that new outlets can spring up almost effortlessly when people’s voices are not being represented.
I’m not sure I can articulate the editorial differences between JTA and the Forward, but to me, “less voices” is simply part of the definition of consolidation, and that would be a shame.
Agree with you, Scott. The presence of diverse voices of Jewish journalism (and extending into blogs and social media) is one of the things that makes today’s Jewish media so potentially exciting – it would be a shame to lose that.
More of my thoughts are here: http://is.gd/e0otO
The big question is, what’s best for individual Jewish newspapers? Will having one big web presence financially enable struggling papers to stay afloat and even thrive?
Will giving away more free content on the web help the newspapers or only JTA? If JTA becomes a cooperative owned jointly by the various papers — a big IF — everyone would share in the ad revenue, I assume, though how it would be enough for all the papers I don’t know.
Perhaps the answer is to limit web presence/access through pay walls so as not to give it all away for free and days before the papers reach people’s homes.
Jewish newspapers remain an important source of information and affiliation for many American Jews and I fear that centralizing and sharing content will dilute what’s so special about the local Jewish newspaper. If a model isn’t found to save these papers, many Jews won’t know about that fund-raising breakfast, the visiting Israeli artist performing at the local community, or the Jewish Mommy and Me program.
While articles are important, it’s the local news and listings that make Jewish newspapers unique. Any business model that weakens the papers, no matter how well-intentioned, would be a devastating blow to the Jewish community.
The LA Jewish Journal is making it work. I advise people to look at their model.