Five Towns News Controversy

The NYJW covers a recent controversy in the Five Towns of whether a newspaper can target Orthodox Jews as readers:

Now, another part of the community has fallen to the Orthodox — the local Jewish weekly newspaper, the Jewish Star.

When it was first started about five years ago, the Jewish Star served the entire Jewish community, but recently began providing news exclusively for “the Orthodox communities of the south shore,” as it says on its cover. The sudden change late last year prompted charges that it is being divisive.

“The overarching principle of public policy decisions should be klal yisrael [one people],” said Rabbi Sholom Stern, spiritual leader of Temple Beth El, a Conservative congregation in Cedarhurst. “When you don’t begin with that premise, the one who withdraws is waiting for self-destruction and eventually will end up with nothing. That is the tragedy of all this. It’s lamentable.”
Such a decision, Rabbi Stern said, causes isolation, which is “not good when we have such a small Jewish community to start with. … An isolationist policy will result in more division and that results in self-destruction.”

But Mayer Fertig, the paper’s publisher and editor-in-chief, said the paper’ s change in coverage was done for “economic reasons” only. “We don’t think we are being divisive,” he said. “We are reflecting a division that is already occurring” in the community.

“The Orthodox are now the majority [in areas of the Five Towns],” Fertig added. “We are not limiting our reading. We are making it appeal to the largest segment of the community, which is Orthodox. We are not looking to disenfranchise anybody or hurt anybody’s business. The paper was not as appealing when it was broadly appealing and we have caught up to the market. Circulation has certainly increased” since the change.

...The paper’s owner, Clifford Richner, said he decided to change the paper’s focus in response to “input I received from those who are the core of our readers — and it’s not the Reform or Conservative Jews but Orthodox families. They want a newspaper in their home that deals with Jewish life from an Orthodox perspective.”

He pointed out that his family has owned another area weekly, the Nassau Herald, since 1964 and that it provides coverage “across the religious spectrum.”

The paper just won the first place prize in education coverage from Suburban Newspapers of America, Richner noted. “I have never felt there was a market for a paper geared for any particular group other than the Orthodox, who have their own institutions and schools,” he said. “If a person is a Reform or Conservative Jew here, chances are his children are attending public schools. If you are Orthodox, your kids are going to yeshiva and we need to cover it.”

My opinion? This is a bit amusing. No one takes issue with the fact that Hamodia or the Jewish Press are clearly marketed to Orthodox Jews, nor is there any suggestion that the paper is unfair to the non-Orthodox, so why the uproar? Because the paper used to be non-denominational, and now it's Orthodox? So what? Clearly, the publisher made a financial decision that a paper that was floundering under its former status might benefit from a a revamp. This would be like complaining when the owner of Toddy's, the famed Five Towns bagel store, decided to go Shomer Shabbat because he felt the store couldn't survive without the patronage of the community's changing demographic. Were there people annoyed at the fact that they could no longer get a bagel and lox on a Saturday morning? Probably. Enough of them to keep the store in business with their Saturday patronage? Obviously not. Were the non-Shomer Shabbat customers' rights violated in some way? I think we can all agree that they were not. So the question remains, why would the Jewish Week find this in any way newsworthy? To my eyes, this article does nothing but give the Star some free publicity, while proving itself to be just another in a long line of articles that document, ad nauseum, the history of a neighborhood's demographic change.

The answer might lie in this e-mail, widely sent out to local residents and elected officials by a community member last week:

Religious and Secular Sanity to Restore Essential Civility
Just a few hours ago, I had a most distasteful terse conversation with publisher Clifford Richner, one of the heirs of a distinguished family whose legacy of public service to the whole of our diverse community seems to be receding.
This controversy centers on the operations of The Jewish Star, a local sectarian offshoot in the Herald constellation, self-promoting itself on the masthead Serving the Orthodox communities of the South Shore.
Increasingly, and vehemently, people who become aware of such intentionally-inflicted wounds on Jewish unity, distance themselves in embarrassment, while feeling ashamed that such a "business model" is pursued for profit!
Other vital concerns revolving on the long-running saga of the Vaad of the 5T & Rockaway, and the perennial issues surrounding the public Lawrence School District are treated innocuously (the former), or intentionally focusing on the negative (the latter), stressing perceived neglect of maintenance, overlooking comprehensive coverage of the considerable, sustaining, widely-distributed to the general press,
news of our students'achievements: on the field, in the laboratory, in the classrooms!
Such non-reportage has become scandalous, for it being both obvious and insulting to our sophisticated population. But it was during our heated exchange that the newspaper executive blurted that it was while at a sit-down with Orthodox rabbis, several years ago, that a commercial commitment was forged for precisely the weekly that The Jewish Star has become --- explicitly receiving rabbinic assurances that no stories from Conservative sources shall appear within its pages.
Shaken, as I immediately became, I was further issued a fatwa that my name shall not again appear in any Richner publication --- instantly reminding myself of the discredited censorious Soviet system when one could become a non-person overnight --- warning me of legal action, were I to assert my First Amendment right of speech to encourage mass-rejection of his weeklies.
Already, one local rabbi who receives bulk shipment of The Jewish Star for his congregation will now cease and desist distributing the paper, after he became aware of corporate policy and the hurt that is being perpetrated to the collective Jewish heart and soul. Imagine!
Physically-imposing, this scion has been transformed and revealed to be nothing no more than a corner bully, possessed of similar intellectual acuity. (The New York Civil Liberties Union might want to hear the case.) This latest assault to our communal equilibrium is symptomatic of a series of misfortunes that have been visited on our fabled Five Towns. I beseech our Orthodox rabbis who participated in drafting the unholy agreement with the Richners to rethink their misguided initiative, repudiate it, and actively seek to bring all Jews together! Mea culpas are necessary and have been forthcoming recently, off the public stage: cornering me before a recent funeral, a prominent and most-respected spiritual leader, admitted, for example, that signing the Vaad letter was "stupid," and wishes the Talit-ban that holds stifling sway in some quarters be brought to account.
We have many miles to traverse to make our corner of the world a more welcoming, attractive, tolerant, open-hearted place to live. As in the unfortunate rabbinic call to avoid shopping at Gourmet Glatt, let there spiritual leadership to lift the miasma that engulfs us, joining together to demand fair treatment in reporting all the news from all of us. We, People of the Book, deserve no less!
Sincerely, and with fraternal affection,
Asher
Prof. Asher J. Matathias

Just to take issue with some of the points Mr. Matathias makes in his letter:

Increasingly, and vehemently, people who become aware of such intentionally-inflicted wounds on Jewish unity, distance themselves in embarrassment, while feeling ashamed that such a "business model" is pursued for profit!
Um, Mr. Matathias, should a newspaper that is run as a family business follow a business model of not operating for profit?

joining together to demand fair treatment in reporting all the news from all of us
Last I checked, Mr. Matathias, I didn't see the right to equal coverage in a local newspaper mentioned in the constitution or any of its amendments. Should we expect Catholics to demand equal coverage in the Jewish Star next? Perhaps Muslims should get a fair shake?

The bottom line is that the premise here, that a for-profit newspaper should somehow have a responsibility to cover news that is of interest to every member of a community is just wrong. A newspaper, like any other business, has a right to make business decisions that keep it from going under. Are the residents of the community who feel themselves to be in the ignored minority unhappy with that? Perhaps. They can choose to read or not read the Jewish Star as they see fit. Or perhaps Mr, Matathias should start his own newspaper, under the business model of covering every story that might be of interest to every single member of a neighborhood. I wish him much luck with that business model.