JustASC

NJJN received four awards at the 27th annual American Jewish Press Association Awards ceremony held in Washington D.C. Tuesday.”Zero to Sixty,” our supplement celebrating the paper’s 60th anniversary, won first place in the category of Excellence in Special Sections or Supplements. “Blush,” our women’s lifestyles supplement, won the second place award.

My column, “Shalom, Columbus,” won second place in the “Arts and Criticism News and Features” category.

Staff writer Robert Weiner won a second place award for Excellence in Photography for a photo he took at a rally for Darfur.

This year there were more than 870 submissions for Rockower Awards in 16 categories that included news reporting, investigative journalism, cartooning, feature writing, and commentary.

A full list of winners is here.

It’s happy clappy vs. “Avinu Malkheinu”: NJJN’s Johanna Ginsberg reports on pressures on cantors to follow the latest (circa 1974, anyway) synagogue musical trends.

And check out the great illustration by NJJN staff artist Dayna Nadel (above).

Here’s a clip of this amazing brass band that plays in Washington’s Dupont Circle. I saw them Tuesday night, when they kept a vamp like this going for ten minutes or more. Great stuff.

The McCain and Obama camps sent surrogates to the American Jewish Press Association conference in DC yesterday — Rep. Robert Wexler (D-Fl.) for Obama, former AIPAC director (and self-described “Scoop Jackson Democrat”) Morris Amitay for McCain. Their remarks sketched out the campaigns’ Jewish outreach strategies at this stage of the game.

It boils down to this: the Dems will stress that Obama is deeply committed to Israel and, unlike McCain, not repeating the foreign policy blunders of the Bush administration while standing for a domestic policy most Jews agree with; the McCain camp will insist Obama has a thin resume and is an “unknown” at a time of peril for Mideast, Israel and America. You probably won’t hear from the GOP what specific policies or achievements make McCain the better candidate for the Jews (as opposed to why Obama is the worse one). (more…)

I read Alex Witchell’s profile of “Mad Men” creator Matthew Weiner in the NYT Magazine and then wrote this in response:

As far as I can tell, there are families like the Weiners, and then there’s the rest of us.

One family gathers around its artfully distressed oak dining table and banters knowingly and wittily about great films, classic books, and favorite operas.

The rest of us huddle at our Ikea specials and say things like, “What did we say about fart jokes at the table?”

Read the whole thing, and tell me if I come off as too hard on my kids.

I emceed the American Jewish Press Assocation awards banquet and reception Tuesday night at the Russell Senate Caucus Room on Capitol Hill. Emcee, right? So I had a whole monologue written, but then the timing went kaflooey, and by the time the Israeli ambassador spoke and the chicken came out of the kitchen, we ran out of time.

So here’s my monologue, minus some of the inside jokes.

I’m so proud there’s an American Jewish Press Association. It’s so impotant to give Jews the opportunity to work in the media.

And I love how forward-thinking the organizationation is, embracing new technologies and new media. Which you can see by the AJPA logo — which features a quill pen.

Apparently this is a step up from the previous logo, which had a stylus and lump of clay.

Of course, this is an industry whose single biggest news provider is called the “Jewish Telegraphic Agency.” They recently dropped “Telegraphic” from the name, which was a relief to members who never got used to that newfangled telegraph contraption.

I don’t mean to pick on the JTA, but you gotta love a news organization that features actual headlines like “Iowa Jews minimally affected by flooding.” The Midwest is under water, but the Jews are okay! Coming tomorrow: Why God is angry at the goyim!

That reminds me of the classic JTA headline: “Two Jews die in Turkish earthquake.” 15 THOUSAND people died in the quake, and JTA found the two dead Jews. What would they have written if they hadn’t? “Big quake narrowly misses Israel.”

Blogging from the American Jewish Press Association conference in Washington DC. Editors and publishers representing many of the 100 or so Jewish weeklies and other specialty publications in the country.

The theme, to be perfectly blunt, is “A Dying Medium for a Shrinking Community.” Everyone is trying to figure out how to keep the lights on, if not this year, then 10 years down the road. Where are the young readers? How can we, and should we, migrate people to the Net? Is there a bizness model for what we do? What is it we do, exactly?

There was a brainstorming session last night with Danny Krifcher, the former AOL exec. vice president and president of JTA, the Jewish news service. I decided the biggest question we (my newspaper, and perhaps the Jewish community) can answer in the next decade is, “What do ‘they’ want, and why would they need it from us?’”  — they being an increasingly dispersed Jewish community, divided among the ever-more engaged minority and the ever-more divergent majority.

Great JTA headline:

FSU elderly hit hard by falling dollar

(Hat tip to NJJN world editor Josh Putterman)

My public service announcement of the week: Do NOT take your road bicycle on the ten-mile Norwottuck Rail Trail that connects Northampton and Amherst, Mass. My wife and I found out last Sunday, the annoying way.

The trail has trestle bridges, lovely vistas, blah-blah-blah. What they don’t tell you is that the paving is shot through with SHARDS OF GLASS – ten minutes into the ride my tire was shredded. The guy who runs the bike shop located oh so conveniently on the trail says he orders dozens of tires a week, and urged me to contact the town fathers to register my complaint about a situation that has persisted for 15 years.

Moral of story: Don’t bike on the Norwuttuck Rail Trail unless you’re sure your tires are rugged or nubby enough to handle it.

A friend sent me a link to this new product for the Shabbat-observant: Kosher Innovations Shabbos Bathroom Tissue, “pre-cut 2-ply toilet paper in a unique box.”

The manufacturer explains:

The Shabbos Bathroom Tissue from Kosher Innovations avoids the prohibited melacha of Mechatech on Shabbos.*  It does not tear because each sheet is individually pre-cut and folded. And since each sheet is the size of two toilet paper squares, you only take what you need, reducing wasted paper and saving you money. Most importantly, when you replace the regular toilet paper roll with Kosher Innovations Shabbos Bathroom Tissue your are preventing other people from accidentally tearing on Shabbos. This is true especially for children and any guests you may have who are unaware of the prohibition.

* For an explanation of the relevant Jewish law, go here, and scroll down to “Toilet Paper.” — ASC

I come not to bury Kosher Innovations Shabbos Bathroom Tissue, nor to praise it. But I think it is worth noting how products like this serve as a Rorschach test among Jews. For  some such products are a blessing; others simply admire the ingenuity of the manufacturers — or are disinterestedly fascinated about the sociological implications. (I think that’s me.)

And then there are those who mock such innovations — secular Jews who find them at best quaint and at worst primitive; frum, or formerly frum, Jews who think they reflect increasingly stringent or decadent tendencies within Orthodoxy; Jews who disdain the laws in the first place (”Can you tell me how ripping a piece of toilet paper can be considered ’work’?”); Jews who are offended by innovations that seem to salvage convenience from prohibitions (”Doesn’t a Shabbos elevator violate the spirit of the law?”); Jews who are embarrassed that their fellow Jews spend time thinking about such things in the first place.

Did I miss anybody?