American Jewish leaders and representatives of the world press will join this Thursday in marking the fiftieth anniversary of the establishment of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, the only worldwide news service devoted exclusively to the collection and distribution of information of special concern to the Jewish people and the State of Israel.
Robert H. Arnow of New York, president of the agency, will preside at an anniversary luncheon to be held Thursday at the Americana Hotel. Principal speakers will be Louis J. Fox, of Baltimore, president of the Council of Jewish Federations and Welfare Funds, which represents more than 200 local Jewish federations and welfare funds, and J. D. Weiler, a national chairman of the United Jewish Appeal, the major instrument of the American Jewish community for financing its philanthropic activities overseas and in Israel. They will speak on the role of JTA as a major source of factual information for the Jewish community and as a link joining the scattered Jewish communities around the world with the American community and Israel. Mr. Arnow will discuss plans for JTA as it enters its second half-century.
The American Jewish Press Association will present a special award to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency at the luncheon.
The Jewish Telegraphic Agency was established in 1917 in Holland by the late Jacob Landau as the Jewish Correspondence Bureau and it functioned throughout World War I, serving the press from its neutral base on both sides of the lines. It suspended activities at the close of the war but was reestablished in London in 1919 by Mr. Landau and the late Meir Grossman at the urging of the late Dr. Thomas G. Masaryk, later the first president of the Czechoslovak Republic. The agency began operations in the United States in 1921 and subsequently New York became headquarters for the worldwide system.
JTA has six major news distribution centers outside the United States. Its daily news bulletins are published in five languages and its news service reaches the Jewish communities in almost every country of the free world. Its newspaper subscribers also include Jewish newspapers in Poland and Rumania. JTA has nine news bureaus and correspondents in nearly every Jewish population center in the free world.
In the United States, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency publishes the JTA Daily News Bulletin; the JTA Weekly News Digest, an interpretive review of the news, and the JTA Community News Reporter, devoted to the activities of the communal agencies in the various cities. It provides special news and feature services for the American Jewish press. Its radio printer circuits transmit news daily to London, Tel Aviv, Johannesburg, Buenos Aires, Lima, Peru and Sao Paulo, Brazil.
The Jewish Telegraphic Agency, a non-profit organization, is directed by a representative board representing all elements of the American Jewish community. Ownership of the agency is vested in a foundation the members of which are the members of the JTA board.
There will be no fund-raising at the luncheon. Reservations can be made at the JTA office in New York.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
