Jewtribe - a new Maven on the block...

Hat tip Josh for forwarding this. The site seems to have a very low profile - and a pretty low opinion of almost the entire Australian Jewish media.

Jews have always been known as the people of the book. Communication, especially for the diaspora, has been an important tool for keeping diverse and oft times, remote communities connected. For many years the Australian Jewish community really has had a lack of quality media representing a small but ostensibly well-educated ethnic group.

As far as print media is concerned, the Australian Jewish News has been the flagship for news for many years, both in Sydney and Melbourne, but it has suffered from a lack of quality journalism and genuine editorship for most of its existence, even though the resources for both have not been in short supply within the community. It has been generally read for what is better known as the “hatched, matched and dispatched” sections. The rest of its pages are filled with week-old news from abroad coupled with pages and pages of photo ops from recent events.......

 In reviewing the current menu of web sites and blogs there are perhaps only a handful of sites that warrant a mention. They are sites that are either quite often referenced or mentioned elsewhere or seem to attract a wide and varied comments section.

 J-wire
Its banner says Jewish Online News from Australia and New Zealand. Seems to have morphed into an online version of the Australian Jewish News (print version) .....

AJN online (Australian Jewish News online version)
No expense spared website! Looks like a free WordPress theme was used. A sad representation of what is supposedly the main source of Jewish news in Australia. Compare this to the JC (Jewish Chronicle) England

AJN Watch
The site was originally set up as a “watch’ site for articles written in the AJN that misrepresented the orthodox community in Melbourne. Its moniker states that it is the on-line voice of Australian Orthodox Jewry observes and comments on matters of interest to that community.

Reading through its articles one wonders if the orthodox community would want this site voicing its interests. It seems to represent a very small section of that community based on the content. These two recent posts perhaps best represent the values of its owners. AJN watch is listed here simply because as an oddity it does attract attention. AJN smut peddler and J-wire’s Chilul Shabbat.

...Australian Jewish media has a long way to go before it truly starts to provide a substantial and meaningful representation of the community from which its springs from. There are I am sure a wealth of informed creative writers and the like who could contribute to the discussion and provide content that’s relevant, entertaining and hopefully provocative.