Brad A. Greenberg reports for the Jewish Journal:
[JERUSALEM, Aug. 8] "You are not to directly quote the prime minister," Ehud Olmert’s press handler told a group of American Jewish journalists I’ve been traveling with this week.
This directive came today as we sat in a conference room in Olmert’s Jerusalem offices. It seemed a ridiculous request, but the prime minister’s fears made more sense once the meeting was over.
When Olmert walked confidently into the conference room, he shook some hands, said ‘Shalom’ and posed for a photo with a few journalists.
Through the UJC’s Israel Emergency Campaign last summer, North American federations sent $360 million to Israel. UJC is also the sponsor of this media trip, which was designed to show reporters and editors how American donations have been used. UJC officials have shuttled our group, including editors and writers from major Jewish publications in Washington, New York, Philadelphia and L.A., to show us the pain inflicted by war.
So why wasn’t I (or any of the leading bloggers on Jewish life) offered a spot on this junket? Lack of readers? Nope. I get as much readership as the JewishJournal.com.
Here’s the answer: Because the UJC knew they couldn’t control what we wrote. That we weren’t a bunch of sheep like the establishment Jewish press. Look at these clowns, posing for pictures with Ehud Ohlmert. These self-same jokers are the ones castigating the Jewish Journal for putting this whacko on its cover.
Most of the journalists on the trip lined up to pose with Ohlmert.
According to the Jewish Journal’s web guy, the site got these statistics for March, which would put it at twice my traffic:
Page views: 242,892
Unique visitors: 121,791
Larry Yudelson writes: "I suspect your readers donate less to the UJC than do readers to the JJ."
I disagree. My readers are more highly educated because they use the internet to get their information. They don’t want for it to be pre-chewed and printed up for them. People come to my site because they want to read about the news as it is breaking, not months later.
