Wednesday, May 25, 2005

Abandoned Jewish blogosphere

There's been some discussion in the J-blogosphere recently about the large number of recently abandoned Jewish blogs. Personally, I think it's nothing more than a function of the expansion of the blogosphere in general. As you get more blogs, you will naturally get more people quitting, including some of those who have been at it for a while and are relatively successful but find they can't take the pressure to post frequently / think their identity is about to get exposed etc. I fully sympathise -- coming up with good material every day is extremely difficult and as OOSJ noted a couple of weeks ago, the mainstream media hasn't been particularly inspirational lately. And it's not even the summer yet.....
One blog whose disappearance is worth noting, though, is Jewish Whistleblower, who seems to finally have shut up shop. For those who have not been following its very public battle with Yori Yanover of USAJewish, suffice to say that the end was extremely nasty. I'm not sure exactly why he/she pulled the plug in the end, other than that they were getting a liberal dose of their own medicine, but I am glad that a website which did so much harm (including harm to a very worthy cause) is out of business.
Another Internet phenomenon which has simply stopped updating, without explanation, is Jewsweek (editor Benyamin Cohen seems ??? to be concentrating on Atlanta Jewish Life ). Noteworthy because Jewsweek was so often cited as an example of how the Internet can attract a young, hip Jewish crowd which the mainstream Jewish media can't. I always thought it was over-hyped, particularly because there was so little original content. However, what's interesting here isn't even that it stopped, but that its end generated so little comment. Has anyone even noticed it's gone?

UPDATE: A reader has emailed me to say that Jewsweek has a new editor, former Jerusalem Post writer Jenny Hazan, who is based in Tel Aviv. Unclear why the website hasn't been updated for a month. The reader adds: "I don't know exactly... why such a proverbiallyAmerican operation would be Israel-based." I look forward to finding out...

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