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Our little village never will be mistaken for a first-rate newspaper town. Hasn’t been since the ‘50s.
You could learn more from the supposedly unsophisticated media in Elko or Tucson.
The incuriosity of the armies of insouciant editors and reporters who work here is stunning.
Living reporters dig for news. They don’t spend their lives at the telephone praying it will ring. Editors are supposed to be aggressive and imaginative.
Am I the only Jew in Los Angeles who wants to know the impact of the clever Bernie Madoff’s scheme on the two largest Jewish charities in Los Angeles?
Isn’t the Loss Big Enough?
This is not complicated, but it surely is elusive for a persistent purveyor of news.
Both the Jewish Community Foundation and the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles lost millions to Mr. Madoff. So tell me the story.
I have dealt in the past with Marvin Schotland of the Foundation and John Fishel of the Federation.
Neither is forthcoming. Each may admit his name, and possibly whether he is married. But don’t push. Then their minds will snap shut. Neither will ever email his closest neighborhood journalist and sing out, “Pal, drop by sometime and I will share a doozy of an embarrassing yarn with you.”
They are allergic to media. Neither one is any more media savvy than your Aunt Tillie. They regard interviews the way you and I think about going to the dentist.
Are There Any Sentinels?
Mr. Schotland and Mr. Fishel, however, are not the problem.
The three newspapers that serve the Jewish community, the Los Angeles Times, the Daily News and the Jewish Journal, have treated this as routinely as a Girl Scout meeting in Oshkosh.
For all the newspapers know, there could have been a second Exodus yesterday. Who would have noticed? The boobs at these floundering newspapers would have rolled over, rubbed their eyes and mumbled, “Call me back tomorrow.”
Unlike New York, Chicago and Philadelphia, where readers demand and the newspapers respond, the lights went out more than 50 years ago in this town.
The Times reported last Monday that the Jewish Community Foundation and the Jewish Federation lost a few million to Mr. Madoff, but the leaders don’t want to talk, and now let’s change the subject back to tiddlywinks, the story said.
The Newspaper That Is a Punchline
The Jewish Journal is to Jews what Caroline Kennedy is to adult politics, a nightmare.
The only Jewish newspaper in the second largest Jewish community in America, the Journal is the company newspaper, beholden to the Jewish Federation for its oxygen, which means the boss is never to be criticized. The Journal is a favorite tool for anti-Semites to spread their mockery, and Jewish reporters gleefully cooperate.
Only in Los Angeles: Reading the Journal is like watching a man with two heads walking down the street. You can’t resist looking. Journal reporters boast about how irreligious they are. But then so did the newspaper’s first editor in the 1980s. Do Catholics behave that way? Do Methodists?
With Mr. Madoff, the burgeoning crook, having just ridden through town at 200 miles an hour, and on the eve of Chanukah, the editor, who brays about his own irreligiosity, thought up his most insulting cover yet for last Friday’s edition:
A full-length shot of an unknown comedian, dressed in and surrounded by Christmas regalia, above the legend “True Confessions of a Real Jew. Don’t Feel Bad! I Love This Season, Too!”
Religious Jews scorn the malodorous Journal as if it were contagious.
The editor wrote the lead essay in the newspaper, about Mr. Madoff, without ever mentioning the Jewish Community Foundation or the Jewish Federation.
Since the Foundation was socked for $25.5 million and the Federation lost $6.4 million, the editor must be a magician, making numbers that large disappear.
This means one building, 6505 Wilshire Blvd., Jewish headquarters, lost $32 million a week and a half ago when the old boy was arrested.
One would think that would be treated as arresting news, but the newspaper yawned.
Far back in last Friday’s edition, buried at the very bottom of a welter of outdated Madoff stories, was a poorly crafted, rambling, often incoherent account of the impact on Los Angeles.
Who’s worried? The next time Los Angeles Jewish charities blow $32 million, the Jewish Journal may take it seriously.
