I recently received an e-mail from a woman recommending her nephew for The Chronicle’s “Where are They Now” feature. And, I have to tell you, it warmed my heart.
What touched me was not the pride of an aunt in her nephew’s accomplishments, though the sweetness of that also moves me.
This time, I got excited because I realized that somebody out there must be reading the paper. Not only did this kindly woman think our paper worthy of telling her nephew’s story but she also must have had a copy on-hand with which to look up my e-mail address.
And the best part is that this reader knew the exact name of a feature that runs relatively infrequently. I love that.
This is a lonely business, running this newspaper. On the one hand, we’re constantly in touch with the community in our effort to tell local stories. But, on the other hand, we wonder if anybody reads the pages we work so hard to produce.
When I took over the responsibilities of editing The Chronicle in January, I was warned — repeatedly — about all the flak I was going to receive from angry readers and community members who felt jilted, ignored, neglected or misrepresented.
The right wing thinks the paper is too liberal. The left thinks the paper is too conservative. Some local members of the Orthodox community are sure the paper is the domain of only Reform, Conservative, Reconstructionist and secular Jews. Members of those streams are convinced that the paper has too much Orthodox religious content. In short, everybody has a gripe and they’ll all shoot their respective arrows at me.
So, with trepidation, each Wednesday, I would walk away from the production room after the final proofread and wonder: “Where is the mine buried? What did I miss? Who’s going to be angry and why?” I still do that, and I hope I’ll continue to comb through the paper cautiously.
There have indeed been errors and oversights. (And I have, of course, received calls about them.) There are stories that could have been edited better, pages that could have been set up differently. I regret every mistake.
But now, four months into my tenure, the silence is deafening. And I ask, “Where is the community?”
The Chronicle is not a dead product, a monologue. At its best, the paper is a living, dynamic medium. And we — editors, writers and community members — have the invigorating power to reinvent the newspaper from week to week as we change and discuss and churn through issues.
I’d like to arrive in my office on Monday morning and find there a pile of letters, e-mails and phone messages from people who are invested and engaged in the Jewish community and use the newspaper as their forum.
I’d like to read a letter or e-mail from somebody who’s angry about an article from a previous issue. I’d like to get a phone call from a reader who wants to respond to something but doesn’t know exactly how. I wouldn’t mind a love letter or two to balance out the angry letters, but that’s just a bonus.
This paper should be, and sometimes is, a place of community discussion (Remember the impassioned exchanges we ran about interfaith marriages earlier this year?), one in which people are not afraid to express their ideas and tell their stories. This can be a sounding board and a place for community dialogue.
So, I invite you to raise your voices and tell us what’s important to you. Share your stories with us. Read our pages and then tell us what you think about what you’ve read here or other eternal Jewish issues. Challenge us and engage in community dialogue. We want to hear from you.
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