Sunday, August 01, 2004

The Forward - The Jewish Paper of Record

Judaica professor Alan Mittleman writes: The only Jewish paper I read--the only one I know of worth reading--is the Forward. If there is such a thing as a national, serious Jewish paper of record, the Forward is it. As you know, there are no longer intellectual journals that "everyone" must read. The general intellectual world is too divided and diffused for there to be central addresses for intellectual discourse. That's the case in the Jewish world too. The Forward is about the best we've got, as far as a newspaper is concerned. I also like the Jerusalem Report, but for current Israeli news I try to read to Haaretz online regularly.

One thing I've noted recently is the proliferation of online digests of news stories, commentaries, editorials, and analyses such as those produced by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs or the research center in Montreal. In these cases, editors look over dozens of publications and put together links to useful
articles on a daily basis. This is good for the news consumer and it also provides intellectual stimulation (e.g. you can contrast a Washington Times or NYPost op-ed with an NYTimes op-ed very quickly). I suppose that this sort of thing, as well as blogs, will increasingly displace traditional news sources for busy readers.