Is the Jewish News being honest with circulation figures?

Maybe we are missing something here, but as we read it, the Sydney edition of the AJN claiming that the ENTIRE Jewish community in that city reads this newspaper (100% reach in the Jewish community each week"). What an amazing and brave or rather foolhardy statement.

Media experts that we spoke to suggested that they risk being charged with false advertising.

We aren't quite sure where to find their latest circulation figures (or if the AJN even bothers to get audited these days), but we did find this thanks to Google:

showing us that in December 2010 their circulation was 3897 - and going south. It wouldn't be unreasonable to presume that two and half years later that figure would be closer to 3500 - if not less.

Now lets's have a look at the same AJN (from the edition 2 weeks ago) where they reported the results of the latest census which showed that the Jewish population of NSW - mostly in Sydney - was 39731.

So the AJN wants us to believe that each copy of their newspaper is actually read by 10 people!

We wonder how well that would go down with the ACCC and their views on "Misleading & deceptive conduct" and false advertising.

One often wonders when seeing non-Jewish advertisers spending big dollars with the AJN, what circulation figures they have been sold. A previous editor of the newspaper admitted publicly that "the Jewish News isn’t a newspaper based on circulation".

Looks like the current powers that be have gone back to making unbelievable circulation claims.

Let's hope it doesn't get them into an embarrassing public mess.

Comment on change of editors at the AJN

By Les Rosenblatt on the Galus Australis site:
http://tinyurl.com/m5km9d

Les Rosenblatt says:
September 16, 2009 at 2:40 pm
I expect australia’s small Jewish community mainly based in melbourne and Sydney will continue to look to the AJN for its social reflection in all the photos of well-groomed would-be noticeables at various fund-raisers, openings, etc.
It will also read with more or less interest the odd bit of coverage of scandal in the courts, stresses in the jewish education system, the latest on Jewish births, deaths, marriages, and Australian/Jewish political system/personages interaction.
In other words, standard ethnic community newspaper fare – tabloidish, parochial commercial, social, cultural and sporting material.
Where the AJN has been remarkably disappointing is in its hard-faced denialism of complexities of Jewish identity, religious belief, and political diversity amongst Australian Jews with particular reference to the contradictions and complexities of Jewish nationalism in relation to global and middle-east (including Israeli-Palestine conflict) issue engagement.
It was sadly evident that the sportingly fair-minded (to the extent that a former sports editor turned AJN editor could continue to be so) Ashley Browne would run up against the Jerusalem Post-loving owner of the AJN who would be happy to see the Likud/Irgun/Labour militarist orthodoxy of Israel embraced as the pre-eminent beacon of security for Jews nervous about their place in the world.
Absolutely no need to even admit to any alternative possibilities. Simply give AIJAC its weekly column, extract large slabs of copy from the Jerusalem Post, publish press releases from the Israeli embassy,and showcase Michael Danby as local hero. The rest is spam or real estate.
Ashley did allow a variety of opinions in his letters columns and did at least try to be reasonably inclusive of the not too controversially border-line article. But it was not going to wash with the owner and his command of his property.
I predict the new editor will last perhaps 18 months and be a bit like the Jonathan Shier effect in the ABC during the Howard years – a dull flash in the same tarnished pan.

Les Rosenblatt.

Editor of London Jewish 'throwaway' confirmed as new AJN chief

As we reported on Tuesday, Zeddy Lawrence of London will be taking over the AJN following the dismissal of editor Ashley Browne.

"It can't get worse", seems to be the general commentary in a quick Vox Pop that we conducted on the appointment. (The AJN is welcome to quote.) We sure hope so.

Of course, we'll continue to keep an eye on developments.

Meanwhile we did some research on Lawrence's current newspaper the 'London Jewish News' and we see that it is a free weekly "throwaway" - a la the Leader newspapers here - albeit aiming at the Jewish community. The ENTIRE newspaper (page-by-page) is also available for view on the net. See http://tinyurl.com/kq5ld2 .

Maybe the new editor will convince AJN's publisher to go down that past. Giving the paper away would do wonders for the lousy circulation figures. And of course nobody would ever again complain that they overpaid for it...

After all, the PRW, one of the better sections of the Jewish News is already being distributed free of charge - so why not go the whole way?

Ashley Browne: Was he pushed or was he sacked?

Can anyone make head or tail of this?

Nice to see that the Sunday Age is now following the blog.

Magid: "Thanks for a wonderful job, Ashley. Now bu***r off..."

"Burying bad news is no answer"

AJN Editorial (July 31, 2009)

Burying bad news is no answer

NEWS that rabbis were among 44 individuals arrested in the United States on charges of political corruption, money-laundering and even trafficking in human organs triggered some reflection at The AJN on how to cover the story. Closer to home, the imminent committal hearing in Adelaide of Rabbi Yossi Engel, facing charges over a school-funding application, focuses attention on our role as a newspaper for the Jewish community.
When Rabbi Engel was charged last month, our front cover drew criticism from those who believe the role of a Jewish newspaper is to run public relations for the community to the wider Australian community and beyond. They believe we should turn a blind eye to Jewish figures, and rabbis in particular, who are facing court, or who have been convicted, even while mainstream newspapers freely report these events. We disagree. SNIP
Yet to ask Jewish newspapers to censor themselves is no remedy. It might keep negative news away from the newsagent shelves, but what we would lose in the process is far greater. It is akin to expecting Jewish figures to be given a free pass. Burying bad news does our community no favours. It would create an unhealthy culture, encouraging some to do as they wish, free of public scrutiny. It is not how newspapers in a democracy should conduct themselves.

We, like many others who follow happenings in the Jewish media, have been wondering when the Jewish News' website - and in particluar its soon to be departed/deported editor Ashley Browne on his blog - will give us the full details of his sudden untimely demise. But until the time of writing, there has not been a single word about this on either location.

Does this mean that sometimes "burying bad news" IS the answer?

The answer is obviously "Yes". When the bad news is about AJN staff, publishers or their families - the Jewish News certainly believes in burying it.

Another Jewish News editor bites the dust...

Who caused this? "Hamodia' or 'AJN Watch'...?


From J-Wire:

Change at the helm of the AJN
August 21, 2009 by Henry Benjamin

Ashley Browne, the current editor of the Australian Jewish News will oversee his last edition of the national Jewish weekly paper next week.

The 44-yr-old Melbourne-based newspaperman has spent the last two and a half years as its editor. He told J-Wire: ”It has been a privilege to have worked as editor of the AJN and I have enjoyed my time here. I wish the incoming editor and all the AJN staff the very best for the future.

Browne told J-Wire that he did not know who the knew editor would be but there may be a possibility that the position might be taken up by an overseas contender.

While few will be surprised to see Browne being let go, it is a fact that the AJN goes through editors like a losing footy club goes through coaches.
We can't remember all of them but some recent editorial has-beens include (in no particular order) Sam Lipski, Deborah Stone, David Bernstein, Vic Alhadeff, Dan Goldberg, Susan Bures and now Ashley Browne.

Let's see what the AJN management comes up with next.

NY Jewish Week on 'Chareidi bashing'

Article from the (secular) NY Jewish Week

(Compare this with the hatred-spewing blog of AJN editor Ashley Browne http://tinyurl.com/l284us )

Rush To Judgment in Gay Club Killings
by Jonathan Mark - Associate Editor

On August 1, a masked man burst into a gay club in Tel Aviv, spraying bullets, killing two. The killer escaped, his identity unknown. According to the Associated Press (Aug. 1), Tel Aviv police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said it was “most likely a criminal attack and not a terror attack.” The AP even pointed out that “Tel Aviv has been a target for Palestinian militants in the past.” The Tel Aviv police commissioner, David Cohen, cautioned against speculation.

Everyone’s speculating anyway. But let’s go back a few years. We live in an era in which it is considered inappropriate to characterize religious or racial groups because of the criminal acts of one, or even many. After the planes hit the World Trade Center, but
before the buildings even fell, news anchors said we shouldn’t blame Islam. The next day, Secretary of State Colin Powell went on NBC’s “Dateline” to say that what happened “should not be seen as something done by Arabs or Islamics; it is something that was done by terrorists...”

More recently, when four Islamic men were arrested for attempting to blow up two Riverdale synagogues, the Daily News headlined (May 23), “Riverdale Rabbi: Don’t Blame Islam...”

But in Tel Aviv, let’s blame the Orthodox. After the murders, an editorial in Haaretz (Aug. 3) admitted, “it is still to early to draw conclusions,” but so what. After all, the ultra-Orthodox and even the regular “religious,” said Haaretz, “openly incite against gays and lesbians and their rights.”

Time magazine online (Aug. 3) headlined, “Gay vs. Orthodox,” reporting that Tel Aviv’s gay community “was not hesitant about assigning blame... [pointing] to Orthodox Jewish gay-bashers.”

As far away as Australia, Orthodox Jews were blamed. The Sydney Morning Herald (Aug. 7) headlined, “Hate from the right stoked gay murders,” an opinion piece that compared the killings to the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin. Commentator Yossi Sarid echoed in Ha’aretz (Aug. 3), “Here they don’t just shoot the prime minister. They also shoot homosexuals.”

Rabin’s murder, of course, was blamed on Orthodox incitement in ways that the assassination of Robert Kennedy is never blamed on Palestinian incitement. Kennedy’s assassin, Sirhan Sirhan, a Palestinian, said he timed Kennedy’s killing (June 6, 1968) to coincide with the first anniversary of the Six-Day War, but who in the media ever brings that up?

Maybe the police didn’t know the Tel Aviv killer’s motive, but Haaretz reported (Aug. 2) that opposition leader Tzipi Livni knew. It was a “hate crime” born of “homophobia,” she said. MK Shelly Yachimovich (Labor) told a rally: “The pistol did not act on its own, the gunman did not act on his own — what stood behind him was incitement and hatred,” hatred by guess who?

In the United States, news agencies quoted a statement from the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism and the (Conservative) Rabbinical Assembly who charged that “some voices in [Israeli] society seek to incite violence against the gay and lesbian community; they should be held to account.” Which voices? Take a guess.

Maybe you’re guessing wrong. In 2006, Time reported that Israel’s Islamic clerics were quite vocal against Israeli gays parading in Jerusalem: “Not only should these homosexuals be banned from holding their parade,” says Jerusalem’s Sheikh Ibrahim Hassan, “but they should be punished and sent to an isolated place.” And “Christian groups were also upset,” reported Time, “by what they saw as the deliberate flaunting of sexuality in Christendom’s most sacred place.”

Some Christians say the current charges of incitement unfairly smear Christianity. In the Christian Post (Aug. 6), Linda Harvey, president of Mission America, said people “have the right to oppose homosexuality for religious or other reasons without being called accessories to murder. The motive is still unknown; why engage in slanderous speculation?” The speculation is itself “bigotry ... wildly irresponsible, unjust and inaccurate.”

Why blame the Orthodox? A recent Haaretz-Dialog poll has found that 46 percent of Israelis consider homosexuality a perversion while only 42 percent do not. In fact, less Orthodox Jews (44 percent) think it a perversion than do local Arabs (64 percent) or Russian-speaking immigrants (57 percent). Maybe the killer is a secular Israeli; one of four (24 percent) secular Israelis believe homosexuality a perversion, too.

In Yediot Ahronot (Aug. 3), Michel Dor, who is neither gay nor religious, wonders if the killer was a jilted lover, “maybe someone who wasn’t loved back? Or maybe a mentally unstable individual who decided to take action?”

If someone were to shoot up a shul or yeshiva, “and there was uncertainty in respect to the perpetrator,” asks Dor, “who would the religious community have to blame? Members of Meretz? The radical left?”
Yediot Ahronot (Aug. 4) headlined an Orthodox complaint: “Haredi Public Used As Punching Bag.” Moshe Glasner, editor of the Kikar HaShabbat website, said Israel is experiencing “an unprecedented incitement campaign against the haredim.”

The Jerusalem Post (Aug. 2) also sensed something was wrong. Their editorial said, “Some in the media and in the political establishment have jumped to the conclusion that the rampage was motivated by homophobia.... We reserve judgment...”

Imagine that. That’s what old-fashioned journalists – and rabbis, for that matter -- used to do before they had the facts. They reserved judgment.

Said the Jerusalem Post, “it is important to maintain perspective. Whoever did it — gay or straight, observant or secular — was a wild weed and not indicative of their community.”

In any case, Israeli gays “are not oppressed,” said the Jerusalem Post. “Same-sex couples can today legally adopt children. Gay marriages abroad can be registered as legal in Israel ... Contrast the situation in Israel to gay life in neighboring Arab and Moslem countries.”

If anyone is persecuted in Tel Aviv it is the ultra-Orthodox, which may explain the rush to judgment. The Los Angeles Times (Aug. 6) noticed that secular Jews in one Tel Aviv neighborhood “organized a campaign to drive the haredim out,” the secular anger aimed even at the genial Lubavitchers.
Back in the spring, Haaretz headlined (May 14), “Anti-Semitism is Rearing Its Head in Tel Aviv;” anti-Orthodoxy, to be more exact.

Gideon Levy, writing in Haaretz, noted that “the entry of a handful of ultra-Orthodox Jews to [one] lovely, modest and tranquil neighborhood has provoked an unlovely wave of racism, tearing the thin veil of openness and liberality from this seemingly left-wing community. If anyone were to behave this way toward Israeli Arabs, the residents might raise a hue and cry, but when it comes to haredim the gloves are off because attacking the ‘blacks’ is the fashion.”

Haredim, he writes, are “the punching bag of the left. What nationalist Israelis do to the Arabs, the left does to the ultra-Orthodox. There’s no difference. Demonization, dehumanization, scare tactics and the sowing of hatred. Hatred of the Other is the same, whether the Other’s name is Mohammed or Leibele, whether he wears a kaffiyeh or a shtreimel. It makes no difference whether the racist is an Arab-hating Kahanist or a Haredim-hating leftist: He is still a racist.”

Australian Jewish News, Australian Goyish News or Australian Gayish News?

Anyone reading this week's edition of the AJN will be wondering if he/she didn't mistakenly pick up a copy of the "Australian Gayish News". Why?

Because there are no less than 9 items(!) about the AJN’s current sweethearts – the homosexuals (or to use the full label - “Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transvestites”).

Yes – 9, including the ENTIRE front page, an editorial (where naturally blame for the killings in Tel Aviv is insinuated upon the ‘ultra-orthodox’)...


...a couple of repeat letters from the usual Torah-hating, gay-loving, single-issue-obsessed letter-writers (see top right) and of course a Kron cartoon.

Additionally, editor Ashley Browne in his blog uses the gay killings to assail the Hamodia newspaper. (That's the second time in 4 weeks that the Hamodia has been attacked in the AJN. Looks like this upstart weekly a biting deeply into the AJN’s sales and advertising revenue.)

The world according to Hamodia:
no gays, no murder

ASHLEY BROWNE

The shooting attack in a gay community centre in Tel Aviv on Saturday night that killed two people is creating a huge stir in Israel.
This should come as no surprise. Disregarding the Orthodox population, Israel is one of the more gay-friendly countries in the world and you don’t have to spend too much time in the more vibrant sections of Tel Aviv to become aware of a strong and tolerant gay culture.
AJN columnist Haviv Rettig Gur updated his Facebook status yesterday to say that the shooting was “a reminder that when the peace process with the Arabs ends, there are some culture wars to be won inside our country.”
The Israeli media is all over this story - as is the world media - with one notable exception. According to the Jerusalem Post, the Orthodox newspaper Hamodia, has pulled the bedsheet over its head, closed its eyes, blocked its ears and is pretending that the story did not happen.
That’s right. No gays. No murder.
And yes, this is the same newspaper that a section of the Australian Jewish community believes should become our community’s paper of record.

Just like Browne and Bersten, we too have no idea who the TA gays killer is. But there is as much a chance - in fact far greater - that it was another homosexual (jealous lover's tiff, maybe) as it being the work of an 'ultra-orthodox'. But that shouldn't and doesn't hold back Browne from taking an opportunity to smear frum Jews.

And we would advise Ashley to leave the Hamodia alone. They know EXACTLY what they are doing and understand the audience that they are catering to. The last thing their readers are interested in is what is happening in Tel Aviv snakepits of dreck and perversion.

At the time that you struggle to fill a few miserly pages of your paper with anything newsworthy – thus sinking to a new low with 9 items extolling and supporting TA homosexuals, the Hamodia (even the fledgling Australian edition) carries 4 or 5 times as much Israeli, world and Jewish news and features as does the AJN. In fact, the only half-decent reporting one finds in the Jewish News are the articles that you copy and paste from the Jerusalem Post. Sadly for you, even that is a waste of time and newsprint. Anyone who is interested has already read these on the JPost.com website. People no longer wait a week to read your “plagiarism”.

Your comment that “Israel is one of the more gay-friendly countries in the world and you don’t have to spend too much time in the more vibrant sections of Tel Aviv to become aware of a strong and tolerant gay culture” indeed nauseates, depresses and disgusts not only Hamodia readers, but all decent, civilized and moral people - of all religious beliefs. Your pride and delight that Israel has become a world-leader in depravity and debasement says much about you and your publication.

As for Ian Bersten's repetitive attacks on the Torah and his predictable idiotic comments again proves that this man is a total ignoramus as well as an apikorus (if an ignoramus can qualify for this title.)

"The Jewish News isn’t a newspaper based on circulation"

Forging a new identity
Editor's Blog ASHLEY BROWNE

THE doomsayers will tell you that the clock is ticking on newspapers, and that within 10 years, newspapers might be obsolete. These doomsayers tell us that we will be consuming our news on the internet and increasingly on our Blackberrys, iPhones and other cool devices. Convention now tell us that young people don’t read newspapers at all and the blogosphere is full of a story about a 15-year-old intern at Morgan Stanley’s London office, Matthew Robson, whose report on teenage media habits spelled further gloom for the newspaper industry.

It is in these challenging times that we at the AJN launch our new website. It is more visual than before, gives more prominence to our multimedia content and engages in social media, particularly Facebook and Twitter like never before. The challenge here at the AJN is how to grow our brand in the online space without compromising our 115-year history as a newspaper.

The Jewish News isn’t a newspaper based on circulation - we like to talk about readership here because we know the paper gets passed around. Three families might read one copy of the paper, particularly during Shabbat. Using that statistic, a significantly large percentage of the community read our newspaper.

So what to do? We are planning to break more news on our website and in most cases, we won’t be won’t be waiting for the print edition of the newspaper to publish our main stories. But the news component of the paper will remain strong because we know we have many elderly readers for whom newspapers remain their their first and most trusted source of news from our community and Israel.

And we’ll save some of the best features, opinion and analysis for the newspaper and then online. And the whites and blacks (simcha and death announcements) will appear first in the newspaper for the considerable future. But we’ll be working hard to engage Gen Y and Gen Z (yes, my 14-year-old daughter tells me her generation now has a label) through Twitter, Facebook and other emerging social media. Now and as always, we want you to tell us how we can make the AJN talk best to you. And send us your photos, your stories, your tweets and your updates.
http://jewishnews.net.au/2009/07/15/forging-a-new-identity/

The future doesn't look too promising, does it?
AJN is not based on circulation? Yeah, try and tell that to savvy advertising agencies and see how far you'll get.

Years ago, when they had more respectable readership figures, the AJN circulation was voluntarily audited by an organisation still used by other publications. These days, of course, it would quite rash to reveal how low the figures have really sunken to.

As we've mentioned previously, the cut and paste jobs from the Jerusalem Post website isn't going to encourage anyone to spend $3.50. Nor the regurgitated media releases supplied by Jewish organisations and neither the PRW, which arrives - free -in everyone's letter box weekly - together with the rest of the junkmail.

Looks like it's up to the "whites and blacks" to save the AJN.

We'll be watching with interest.