- Reader response 1: Representative Leadership
- Reader Response 2: Incompetence, Negligence, and Legitimacy
- Reader Response 3: Media and Anti-Semitism
There have been a number of exceptional comments posted over the last 24 hours.
Firstly, the observation has been made on more than one occasion that there are genuine anti-Semites (some of whom are Jewish) active in the media. The Sensible Jew believes that this point is moot. Apart from the impossibility of determining exactly which journalists and editors are indeed anti-Semitic, we must acknowledge that certain people with various ideological agendas will always abuse their positions in the media. Such people cannot be “rooted out.”
The question then becomes, how best to deal with such people. Our post regarding good media strategy answers some of the issues. Ultimately, a community that is adequately, accurately, and legitimately represented has a better chance of winning PR battles. But good leadership is not enough. Our leaders are not necessarily the best people to represent us to media, even if they had in any way legitimately attained their positions. Expertise in media and public relations is very different from the skills required to run the various communal institutions. A good administrator, however, will have the skills to identify a good media handler, and employ him/her in a professional capacity.
Yoram mentions that all media (not just Australian) seeks the simple dichotomies and is uninterested in the subtleties of any debate. While we agree with this point, we would also contend that the competent PR person understands this as well, and would therefore be able to provide interesting angles, soundbites and other media-friendly modes of communication. Yoram mentions Barack Obama as a counter-example of his concern. Indeed, Obama, while certainly no lightweight, did not talk of policy minutiae during his campaign. He and his media team understood exactly how to capture media attention, and how to position him as an agent of change without ever getting too mired in detail.
Similarly, the Jewish PR rep would avoid getting bogged down in the detail of issues, but would remain, “on message” – emphasising the Jewish commitment to Australian values, human rights, and the good that civil society can do (eg the NCJW does wonderful charity work with non-Jews, the large Jewish contribution to Aboriginal welfare). If we are determined to present such a face to the world, we force our opponents on to the defensive, something that would make for rather a refreshing reversal of the current situation. Individual anti-Semites in various media organisations cannot match a media-wide narrative that presents the Jews as forward-thinking, valuable contributors to the betterment of Australian society.
This narrative would certainly take time to establish. We have done ourselves so much damage recently; however, the task is far from insurmountable. In fact, the PR is the easy part. It’s changing the nature of our current leadership that provides us with our greatest challenge. We will tacle this in the following post.
Related posts:
Nice one SJ.
I think you might be right. If there was someone, or even a group of spokespeople who had genuine media training, with some kind of team behind them to start re-imagining and articulating the alternative Jewish narrative along the lines that you and others here have suggested then that may go a long way to rectifying the problems that you and other contributors here have identified and feel so passionately about.
The drawback is, of course, that putting this together is no easy task, and ensuring that this group became the go-to people for the general media is no easy task either. However, it is achievable and I don’t think it requires large amounts of cash to make it so.
As you are now witnessing, the internet can provide even a single person armed with a Wordpress, the power to essentially create their own mini-newspaper. With a tiny bit more sophistication the concept can be turned into video presence and the establishment of a genuine web media strategy and online presence that can and will eventually spill into the old-world media.
One of the great things about old leadership is that they are lumberingly slow to get on the newer bandwagons, and even a cursory glance at the current online presence of Melbourne’s official Jewish organs demonstrates that they have not yet understood or grasped the potential of the internet.
In the world of the media, content is king. This means that if you create the content then you become the source of the media itself. If you create good, compelling and (moderately) well produced content, then your content will eventually be picked up by more and more news outlets.
So literally hijacking the media face of the Jewish community is entirely possible and achievable on a small budget, provided there are willing hands on deck who will devote their time and skills to make it happen. And I use the word hijacking intentionally. Although creating some kind of democratic process that seeks to ask the community’s permission to be their spokesperson is nice in theory, in practice the voice that is heard is the one that speaks up.
Again SJ, you yourself have demonstrated this. You didn’t run a survey to see if people would be interested in a blog of this nature. You didn’t hold a vote. You just went and did it. And it worked. If you can’t get published in the Jewish News, well then you start your own Jewish News. Jews are starting new shules all the time for just this reason.
Will this voice be the “legitimate” voice? Is sensiblejew.wordpress.com the “legitimate” voice? It doesn’t matter, its the voice that is here.
(And before everyone accuses me of Fascism I’m using this kind of extreme language to make a point. It can all be done alot nicer and more subtly and with more tact than just barging on in and screaming the loudest.)
Support this comment
0
Wow! That was an inspirational comment, Yoram. Our heads are spinning with the possibilities (actually, there’s only one head on deck at the moment – it’s late). Give us 24 hours, and we’ll try to rustle up a decent Reader Response post to what you’ve said. Also, tomorrow is Jewish News day, so there will be even more incentive to compose a response to some of your suggestions. In fact, I wonder if this comment you just made renders some of my statements in Reader Response 4 a bit obsolete. Hopefully you’ll comment there and let me know what you think.
Support this comment
0
I had a quick read and I don’t think it renders anything obsolete, these are all different suggestions at tackling the same problem. Any one, or even a combination of them all might be the best approach. Also some suggestions might be more achievable in the short term, some the mid term and so on.
In response to Reader Post 4 I’m just trying to track down some stats on how many readers to commenters there are on blogs in general. I’m pretty sure that what you are experiencing is common but I’d like to see if someone has some hard stats on it.
If my instinct is correct then the task is really how you go about encouraging greater response. I myself have always thought the linear nature of blog posts, itself inherited from forums, was a pretty lousy way of conducting a discussion, but for now its all we have.
There are definitely some widgets you can add in to the blog for free that make distributing posts on social media networks a lot easier. I’ll try and look in to this for you as well.
Support this comment
0
Thanks so much, Yoram! That would be greatly appreciated. We, at The SJ, are great lovers of the internet, but that doesn’t mean we know all that much about it.
Support this comment
0
Here is a widget that will add sharing buttons to a wordpress blog:
http://sharethis.com/publishers/getbutton/wordpress/
This is a site that has a good collection of wordpress widgets you might find interesting, especially under the discussion heading
http://widgets.wordpress.com/category/widgets/stats/
and this one too
http://codex.wordpress.org/Plugins/WordPress_Widgets
I dont know how tech proficient you guys are but these are not hard to install, and if you have difficulty I’m sure you can find a friendly tech person to give you a hand.
Here is a tutorial for adding standard wordpress widgets. A
http://www.slideshare.net/msincome/how-to-use-wordpress-widgets
dding new ones is trickier and since you are hosted at Wordpress it might not be possible, im not sure.
Good luck.
Support this comment
0
Thanks for that Yoram! It’s greatly appreciated. The thing is, we’re not really tech proficient at all. Let’s see if we can boost comments the old fashioned way, and if not, we might call in some help.
Support this comment
0