The long-time voice of Judaism at The New Republic, Leon Wieseltier, has a crack piece on Jewish fear. Robert Siegel talked with Wieseltier about it on NPR Tuesday. (Robert Wright had a more press-centric take on some of the same issues. The American press always gets hit with allegations of bias on Israel vs. Palestinians, although the attacks are almost evenly split down the middle between those who think the press is too pro-Palestinian or too pro-Israeli.)
Speaking of Judaism and NPR, anybody else confused about the endless promotion they’re giving the Yiddish Radio Project? They’ve been hyping this 10-part series (!) every day for months. They promo it at least once an hour during All Things Considered and Morning Edition. I’m sure it’s great (I’ve just heard promos, not any of the actual pieces), but I’ve honestly never seen any form of media give this much promotion to anything they’ve ever done — not newspapers, not magazines, certainly not radio. While I’m sure NPR’s audience skews more Jewish than most media, I have a difficult time imagining there’s enough interest to merit that much hype.
Plus, the radio series actually has its own separate set of corporate sponsors, including (logically) Hebrew National. That always makes me leery.
Certainly I’ve got no problem with NPR having a corporate underwriter; to me, it’s just like a normal advertisement. But it bothers me when the money gets too close to the journalism — as in a corporation sponsoring a specific story. (For instance, I don’t like it that Marketplace, the fine radio business program, apparently has no problem letting companies pay for specific beats or areas of coverage. Phillips Petroleum sponsors their international business coverage, for example.) Imagine if a newspaper series ran with a little tag that said, “The Morning News’ education coverage is sponsored by Stanley Kaplan.”
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The Yiddish Radio Project was pretty good, although calling it news would be like calling Mark Cuban’s reaction to D Magazine sane. What confuses me is that — as far as I know — they’re done with airing the pieces but they continue to promote the hell out of it.
Having worked in radio and television promotions, I feel I should opine about the promotion of the Yiddish Radio Project. If I had to guess, I would say that KERA has allotted a time slot to a promotional spot in the time just before All Things Considered (which airs the YRP every Tuesday). Typically, a stations schedules a promo for an upcoming show in the half hour or so before a show airs. They probably don’t have a generic ATC promo, so are filling that slot with the YRP promo, promoting ATC coming up.
I heard what was billed as the “final” installment this week. It really was very good. It struck me as odd that they hyped it so much too, especially as it was only on one day a week.
Yeah, I heard tons of promo for the series, featuring sisters singing Yiddish swing and old ad spots for gefilte fish, but I only actually caught half an episode. I do think it was an important project, though. I never even knew Yiddish swing existed back in the day. Can’t wait to catch This American Life this weekend — they’re doing it on how the youth group at Trinity Assembly of God in Cedar Hill (Texas) puts on a “Hell House” every Halloween. I used to go with my youth group when I was a teen, and it was really fun and well put-together.