Luke emails Rob Eshman: Jason Maoz, editor of the Press. Do you regard him as a peer?
It seems that few journalists for the mainstream Jewish weeklies accord The Jewish Press any respect?
He complained that The Jewish Press was not taken seriously for AJPA awards. He regards the AJPA as in the thrall of Gary Rosenblatt.
Would prefer an on-the-record response but will settle for anything.
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Rob Eshman, editor of the Jewish Journal, replies: I've read it all the way through maybe twice, so it wouldn't be fair for me to offer an opinion. (Now, here comes
my opinion): The times I have flipped through it, my impression was it seems to cater to a certain niche of American Jewry, and it seems to do that quite well. I have no idea what its verified circulation is out here. I'm just no authority.
I don't think anybody is in Gary's thrall, handsome and funny and brilliant as he is-- uh oh, maybe I AM in his thrall. Seriously, Gary's a very good editor and he puts out a very good paper. There are a lot worse role models out there for editors of any paper, but he's not the boss of anyone at AJPA.
The Jewish Week serves its audience, and certainly has taken on tough stories in a responsible way. No one editor or one community Jewish paper is going to please all the Jews all the time. Papers like The Jewish Week and The Jewish Journal have to appeal to a large and broad Jewish audience to fulfill their missions and stay solvent. We don't have big backers, endowment, niche Jewish markets or relatively Jewish populations. We try to serve the needs of hundreds of thousands of Jews in each issue: smart Jews, simple Jews, wise and ignorant, right, left, rich, poor, traditional, freaky. The result can be articles that are sometimes too safe and
predictable and middle of the road, but all of the good editors I know push
beyond that as much as possible.
