The following was crossposted to Jewschool. It was also emailed to New Jersey Jewish Standard Editor Rebecca Boroson, who you can also email at editor@jewishmediagroup.com. For a little background, check out today’s Reading List.
To the editor:
As a member of both the New Jersey press and the Jewish press, I am deeply disturbed by your shameful decision to apologize to “the traditional/Orthodox community” for printing a gay wedding announcement.
Your editorial of apology is an example of journalism of lowest, most cowardly order. Journalists publish corrections when they get the facts wrong–but we never apologize for it. Worse than that, you did not even apologize for factual inaccuracy. Instead, you apologized for offending someone. Get over it. We are journalists. Sometimes people get mad at us.
But I should hope that if you continue in this groveling manner, you at least have the decency to do so with some consistency. And if you do that, I have a prediction for you: Next week, you will be apologizing to the wider Jewish community for jumping at the snap of some Orthodox bullies’ fingers. You will be forced to apologize to unaffiliated, non-denominational, Reform, Reconstructionist and Conservative Jews for forgetting that they are the vast majority of the community.
Despite your otherwise pusillanimous handling of this journalistic catastrophe, you somehow managed the chutzpah to apologize for the “pain and consternation” you caused a few noisy homophobic readers. When can we expect your apology to the gay community for the pain and consternation you have no doubt caused them? And when can we expect you to stop running photographs of women? Some Jews find that offensive too, I hear.
Sincerely praying for the return of your journalistic chutzpah,
David A.M. Wilensky,
Features Editor, The Acorn, Drew University, Madison, NJ
Editor at Large, New Voices
