Mik Moore writes for The Jewish Week:
…Yet, when liberal bloggers — denizens of that noisy, cranky, high-intensity region of the Internet where individuals air their personal views, analyses, musings and, at times, reporting — held their major conference earlier this month, Jewish groups were nowhere to be seen.
…[T]he Jewish community has not figured out what to do about the new forms of communications, networking and organizing represented by blogs and various Web 2.0 tools. Although there were some people at YearlyKos who came only for the politics, I think the overwhelming majority were bloggers or otherwise engaged in online communication or community building. Note that this absence extended to the Jewish blogosphere. The blog I edit, jspot.org, is one of a small handful of Jewish blogs with credibility and relationships outside of the Jewish blogging community.
One of the inherent challenges that blogging presents to more established organizations is the premium the forum places on candor, independence and individuality. Traditional Jewish organizations typically have one spokesperson and the message is tightly controlled, as vividly demonstrated by the recent dismissal of the New England regional director of the Anti-Defamation League for acknowledging the Armenian genocide. If these groups are interested in entering this world as members of the online community, this will have to change.
The openness and unpredictability of blogs has already tested the Jewish community’s understanding of the medium. Because blogs and other online forums are open to all users, on rare occasions visitors to the sites write anonymous comments that are racist, sexist, anti-Semitic or otherwise inappropriate. Partisans have sought to use these comments to negatively characterize Web-based groups like MoveOn.org or blogs like DailyKos, and by implication any candidates who accept their support. Thus far, nonpartisan Jewish groups have not taken the bait, but they will be tested repeatedly as the election season gets closer.
"Mik, I was fascinated to find out that this "is one of a small handful of Jewish blogs with credibility and relationships outside of the Jewish blogging community."
How interesting. Pray tell to whom do you have credibility and with whom do you have relationships? How do you measure your credibility and relationships vis-a-vis other Jewish blogs? Do you have more than the blogs at JewishPress.com or JewishJournal.com? More than canonist.com and the other blogs on the Jewish blogads network? When judging by media mentions, the number of sites that link to yours, and your Google page rank, you are not exactly leading the pack in the Jewish blogosphere.
James comments on Jspot: "The bigger issue is that DailyKos has become a sounding board for anti-Semites. It regularly tolerates anti-Zionist themes that push the boundaries of acceptable civil conversation into anti-Semitism. Even if none of the regular contributors are anti-Semitic, their clear anti-Zionism creates a refuge for anti-Semites in anti-Zionist clothing. The anti-Zionism alone is enough to explain why there is no Jewish representation at YearlyKos. The forays into anti-Semitism make DailyKos and, by extension, YearlyKos off-limits to any major Jewish organization."
