A couple of days ago, I sat down to write an article about the Newtown tragedy for the Huffington Post. When I stood up an hour later, I looked at what I had written and realized the shooting and the media surrounding it had affected me more strongly than I had thought. I wound up questioning my own profession, and the values and ideals it represented:
“Is Jewish journalism’s purpose only to find an angle? Do we as Jewish journalists simply search each story from every direction until we can find some obscure slant that will make the article “Jewish” enough to be published? This seems a dishonest use of a profession with a higher calling. No, not every article must be a platform for discussing and furthering the Truth, whatever that may be. Some articles are meant simply to entertain or explore. But this desperate clawing for a foothold in every popular story is less than appealing. In fact, it’s downright disillusioning.”
Today, Jane Eisner, Editor-in-Chief of the Forward, published a response to my article. She points out, accurately, that people look to relate to bigger events through their own prisms. She cites Naomi Zeveloff’s touching piece about the Pozner family published yesterday as an example of smaller stories that help us connect to tragedies that we might not be able to comprehend in their hugeness:
“Not to exploit, but to explain. This is how we make sense of the seemingly senseless, by delving into the personal and connecting the granular details of horrific events to help us understand. Making this Jewish connection, as our Naomi Zeveloff did in her brilliant story about the Pozner family, makes it even more powerful. I was moved to learn that Noah’s family was determined to bury him in a tallit, even though he was too young to have had a bar mitzvah. I was impressed by Veronique Pozner’s insistence that the family sit shiva for her son, and haunted by the way she philosophized about good and evil using a very Jewish framework.”
It’s an interesting discussion. It serves to remind journalists everywhere that we must constantly question our own motives for stories, and make sure, as Eisner put it, that we are aiming for the nobler deed, “not to exploit, but to explain.”
