As many of you know, The Jewish Week launched its all-new Web site (still found at www.thejewishweek.com) a few days ago. If you’re a print-only reader, we hope you try out the new site, and be sure to tell us what you think.
If you’ve been a regular visitor to our old site, you are well aware that speed and advanced features were not among its virtues. We hope and expect our new site will offer the performance you have a right to expect, although it will take a few weeks of tweaking to reach maximum speed.
It’s an understatement to say these are difficult times for newspapers — from The New York Times to the Jewish newspapers that have been so much a part of the communal life of our community. The recent recession was just the latest blow to an industry that has been adjusting with great difficulty to seismic shifts in the way Americans receive their news and information.
In so many ways those changes have enriched our lives. Jewish Week readers can now access Israeli news instantly, with just the click of a mouse. Want information on Jewish housing in east Jerusalem, or U.S. Iran policy, or the latest celebrity divorce in Hollywood? A little Googling and it’s at your fingertips.
But it’s also increasingly difficult to sort the wheat from the chaff amid the cacophony known as the Internet. The information revolution has also produced a revolution in misinformation, rumor and spin.
In this dramatically changed climate we pledge to offer an up-to-date Web news experience without forsaking the journalistic standards you have come to expect from The Jewish Week. We promise expanded local news coverage and more original analysis and perspective stories even as we draw in other news sources around the world. Jewish Week blogs will be expanding, but you’ll always know the difference between news and opinion.
The Web is critical to our future, but we will never stop improving a print edition that has earned its status as the leading Jewish newspaper in America.
More than ever, we want you to be part of what we are doing at The Jewish Week. We want your comments, your letters to the editor, your participation in online forums and your pictures and videos. Welcome to The Jewish Week of the 21st century. We hope you’ll find it exciting, informative and probing.
The New York Jewish Week brings you the stories behind the headlines, keeping you connected to Jewish life in New York. Help sustain the reporting you trust by donating today.
