Russel Pergament’s Jewish News Service Is Totally Old Testament

October 17, 2013

Several days ago the hardreading staff posted an item about the Jewish News Service running this ad in the Boston Herald but not the Boston Globe.

 

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We also said we’d try to contact JNS founder (and inveterate publishing bunny) Russel Pergament to ask, among other things, if he’ll be advertising in the Globe anytime soon.

And so we did. Whereupon we had a nice conversation with Pergament, a media dynamo the hardworking staff has known for over three decades, ever since he was founding the Tab newspapers and we were copy chief at Filene’s.

(Best part of that job: We met the Missus.)

Best part of Russel Pergament: He’s entirely unfazed at JNS being depicted “as foaming-at-the mouth right wingers,” as he put it, referring to this Jewish Daily Forward piece.

Instead, he says this:

Even the most left-wing Jewish writers who see Israel as an aggressive Nazi-like state get nervous about reports like this one from Swedish tabloid Aftonbladet [regarding Jewish soldiers purportedly harvesting the organs of Arabs].

 

Pergament says a dozen papers – including Christian media and secular media that “emphasize the objective nature of the facts we send” – have subscribed to JNS.  He says he’s also run ads in The New Republic and a New Britain, CT paper, while the Jerusalem Press and Chicago Tribune have picked up JNS content.

As for the Boston dailies, Pergament says he gets more bang for the buck in the Herald, and that the Herald sales rep called and asked for his business.

Hey, Globeniks – any response?

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‘David’ Ad in David Daily

October 10, 2013

The Boston Herald has an unusual ad on Page 8 of today’s edition.

 

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JNS – the Jewish News Service – describes itself this way:

JNS.org is an independent, non-profit, business resource and wire service covering Jewish news and Israel news for Jewish media throughout the English-speaking world.

We provide objective, non-partisan reporting from Jewish communities throughout the U.S., Europe, South America, South Africa, Australia and a wide array of Israel news. We also provide a rich assortment of photos and art, cultural news and features, commentary, and holiday-specific editorial packages around which our subscribers can sell seasonal-themed advertising.

 

But here’s how the Jewish Daily Forward describes it.

Fledgling Jewish News Service Rocks Boat With Strident Pro-Israel Message

Challenges JTA for Slice of Jewish Newspaper Market 

A new, right-leaning Jewish newswire is seeking to displace the Jewish Telegraphic Agency as the Associated Press of the Jewish media.w-jns-062713

Nearly two years after its launch, Jewish News Service is growing fast by promoting its pro-Israel perspective, offering ad-friendly special sections — and by giving it all away cheap.

“Some papers choose to use us versus anybody else because they think we are more respectful of Israel’s challenges,” said Russel Pergament, publisher of JNS. “Other editors prefer us because we’re less expensive. And I’ll take either.”

 

That would be old Boston hand Russel Pergament, one of the founders of the Tab chain of local weeklies. In a 2007 Boston Phoenix profile of Pergament (who had returned here to launch a new publication), Adam Reilly wrote, “Russel Pergament, the indefatigable publisher of BostonNOW, has been described as having ‘the metabolism of a white rat on amphetamines.'”

The Forward piece is long and involved – far too detailed to summarize here, but definitely worth reading. While you’re doing that, the hardreading staff will try to contact Pergament to ask, among other things, if he’ll be advertising in the Boston Globe anytime soon.

 

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Herald’s Joe Fitz Kisses Phoenix Goodbye

March 18, 2013

From our Late to the (Going Away) Party desk

Last week the Boston Phoenix got its front-page Ave atque Vale from the Boston Globe’s Joseph P. Kahn. (It also got a mournful editorial and this spiffy op-ed by ex-intern Joe Keohane, among other coverage.)

The Boston Herald? A whopping five paragraphs.

Until Saturday, that is. And from the unlikeliest of sources: Columnist Joe Fitzgerald, who notes the anomaly straight off.

DSC_8269.JPGWhen a newspaper dies, we all lose

You can add this column to the list of mourners now grieving the passing of the Boston Phoenix, even though its publisher, Steve Mindich, made no bones about his disdain for this writer.

The feeling was mutual, but that’s not what this is about.

It’s bigger than that.

You may question the objectivity of this observation, considering its biased source, but nothing serves a community the way a newspaper does.

It’s informative, annoying, provocative and vigilant, constantly stirring the pot of civic awareness, constantly poking at apathy, or at least that’s what it’s supposed to do, and the Phoenix did it well.

 

Fitzgerald adds that the Phoenix was also radical, rude, and impertinent, not to mention prone to “push[ing] the boundaries of good taste.”

Of course, leave off the “radical” and you have a pretty good description of the Herald as well. Not to get technical about it.

Regardless, it was good of Fitzgerald to send the Phoenix off.

 

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Locals Rise to Phoenix Redesign

September 19, 2012

The Boston dailies ran entirely true to form in their coverage of the Boston Phoenix facelift (and a little lipo, we assume).

Yesterday’s Globe had a front-page feature that looked at the rapid erosion of  local macher Stephen Mindich’s media holdings.

A hybrid rises from the old Boston Phoenix

Alternative paper’s longtime publisher adjusts to changing times

As summer approached, staff meetings at The Boston Phoenix grew more frequent amid mounting concerns about layoffs, an announced move to new offices, and the future of the Phoenix itself.

One indication of the meetings’ importance was the presence of owner and publisher Stephen Mindich. He has guided the paper’s fortunes since the 1970s, making it the centerpiece of a youth-oriented media conglomerate, yet he had scaled back day-to-day management duties while his son Brad ran the company.

The outcome of those staff discussions has left many observers wondering if the Phoenix they have known and read for decades — a pioneering alternative weekly paper celebrated for its lively coverage of politics, media, and the arts — will be around much longer.

This Thursday, The Boston Phoenix will formally merge with its sister publication, Stuff, a glossy biweekly, into a publication called simply The Phoenix. As a newsprint entity, the old Boston Phoenix will cease to exist.

As has WFNX-FM, stripped for parts like a car left overnight on the Cross Bronx Expressway (signal to Clear Channel for $14 million, staff to boston.com to start up Radio BDC, call letters to the web for wfnx.com). Spanish-language paper El Planeta was also jettisoned. The Mindich media empire is down to a sandlot.

Crosstown at the Herald today, the Track Gals (and Megan!) have something much dishier:

Phoenix sex ads under Twitter attack

The Boston Phoenix, which will debut a new glossy-mag look this week, was under Twitter attack yesterday after someone hijacked the name of its new adult rag and began tweeting X-rated missives at advertisers, public officials and Phoenix staffers.

@BostonAtNite is not the Twitter handle of the Phoenix’s new adult publicationBoston At Nite, according to editor at large Peter Kadzis. But the “Parody” account was tweeting up Mayor Tom Menino, Attorney General Martha Coakley, clubs and bands that advertised on the Boston At Nite website and columnists for the alternative weekly.

“Find your underage sex slave today! Sex trafficking for all,” said @BostonAtNite, adding the word “Parody” so you’d know it wasn’t real.

Not surprisingly, the Phoenix folks are not amused.  “[Editor at large Peter] Kadzis said the Phoenix has complained to Twitter about the account and is trying to get it taken down. ‘Any sick (bleep) can sign up for a Twitter handle,’ Kadzis said. ‘My prediction — and it’s probably true — is that there’s a connection to a rival publication.'”

As in the Weekly Dig, whose publisher Jeff Lawrence, the Track Gals (and Megan!) point out, just happens to be one of the whopping 19 tweeps who follow @BostonAtNite.

Fun for the whole family! Except for the X-rated part, of course.

 

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Slamming/Not Slamming the Mass. Democratic Party Edition

August 11, 2012

Yesterday’s local papers nicely illustrated the yin and yang of the 10th Congressional district election coverage.

From the copyediting challenged Boston Globe:

Democrats launch new attack on Tisei

Website part of new strategy

Democrats on ramped up Wednesday their efforts to turn the tables on Republican Richard R. Tisei, whose challenge to US Representative John F. Tierney has been boosted by the legal troubles of Tierney’s family.

State party officials announced a two-pronged effort to allege that “Tisei personally benefited by at least $30,000 dollars from the sale of a house that was among the assets his parents were alleged in court to be hiding from parties they damaged.”

The allegations — denied by Tisei, a Wakefield realtor who served in the state Senate — were recently reported in the Boston Phoenix.

The Democratic Party put up a website, http://www.TiseiFacts.com, and state party chairman John Walsh held a conference call with reporters.

Pretty straightforward, yeah?

Not if you read the Boston Herald, mister.

Front page (via The Newseum):

Joe Battenfeld column:

Mudslinging Dems sink to an all-time low

Smearing someone’s family is about as low as it gets in politics, but Massachusetts Democrats are setting a new standard in sliminess.

The party’s new website targeting Republican congressional candidate Richard Tisei claims to show his family’s “web of fraud and deceit,” but all it really shows is how dirty the Democrats are willing to get to win an election.

The joys of living in a two-daily town, yes?

 

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