{"id":63945,"date":"2015-02-20T16:17:09","date_gmt":"2015-02-21T00:17:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=63945"},"modified":"2015-02-20T16:24:12","modified_gmt":"2015-02-21T00:24:12","slug":"writing-acknowledgments","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=63945","title":{"rendered":"Writing Acknowledgments"},"content":{"rendered":"

David Shenk writes in the New York Times<\/a>: <\/p>\n

\u201cA few inquiries remain unanswered. I would still be delighted to hear from: David Cesarani, Liane Dirks (on Polityka), Guido Knopp (on sources), J\u00f6rg M\u00fcll\u00adner (on the sound editing of the tapes) and Time Inc.\u201d \u2014 Bettina Stangneth, writing in the acknowledgments section of \u201cEichmann Before Jerusalem.\u201d<\/p>\n

An author interrupting her own published thank-yous in order to call out uncooperative sources? I like it. I couldn\u2019t muster the chutzpah to do that myself, but I notice that it draws me in, makes me even more eager to read Bettina Stangneth\u2019s book. I have a small writer\u2019s crush on any serious intellectual who works so hard to satisfy all the major conventions \u2014 and then flouts a small one for the hell of it.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This is how I began my book Yesterday’s News Tomorrow: Inside American Jewish Journalism:<\/p>\n

What They Said
\n\u201cYesterday\u2019s news tomorrow.\u201d \u2014Yori Yanover\u2019s description of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency
\n\u201cIf you publish this, I will fuck you for the rest of your life.\u201d \u2014Malcolm Hoenlein to journalist Walter Ruby<\/p>\n

\u201cI guess it\u2019s new for a journalist to go in and treat a congregation journalistically.\u201d \u2014Stephen Fried, The New Rabbi<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you believed in a God and a Final Judgment, would you have written the book the same way?\u201d \u2014Rabbi Bradley Sharvit Artson, rosh yeshiva of the University of Judaism, to Stephen Fried<\/p>\n

\u201cDear Mr. Ford; I did review your Web site, and \ufb01nd it imbalanced and toxic, particularly toward rabbis and Conservative Judaism. I am not willing to participate in your panel.\u201d \u2014Rabbi Artson<\/p>\n

\u201cDear Mr.Ford: I do not wish to be included in your book. If there is anything negative about me or my family in your book you will hear from my attorney.\u201d \u2014Rabbi Sheldon Zimmerman, former president of the Hebrew Union College\u2014Jewish Institute of Religion<\/p>\n

\u201cDear Mr. Ford: I appreciate your interest, but I\u2019d just prefer to pass on this.\u201d \u2014Seth Lipsky, former editor of the Forward<\/p>\n

\u201cI am annoyed at your annoyance, your presumption to tell me what I\u2019m quali\ufb01ed to talk about when you don\u2019t even know me, your insinuations that I refuse to be \u2018transparent and accountable,\u2019 along with your slam on my trusted and most-valued colleague, Larry Stammer. He is not a \u2018crappy reporter,\u2019 as you put it.\u201d \u2014Teresa Watanabe,The Los Angeles Times<\/p>\n

\u201cYou don\u2019t want Jewish journalism. You want an orgasm.\u201d \u2014Tom Tugend, Jewish Journal<\/p>\n

\u201cI am the moderator of the AJPA listserv and I will be sending out an email to all the editors later today to tell them of my unprofessional and discourteous experience with you.\u201d \u2014Benyamin Cohen, Jewsweek.com<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t understand what you are doing here. Who\u2019s your publisher?\u201d \u2014Rabbi Shmuley Boteach,Kosher Sex<\/p>\n

\u201cDon\u2019t write about me!\u201d \u2014Amy Klein, managing editor of theJewish Journal<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re all kind of mediocre.\u201d \u2014E.J. Kessler, deputy managing editor of theForward<\/p>\n

\u201cLarry [Cohler] was essentially driven out. He found out that Gary [Rosenblatt] was without balls. Larry may sometimes be without brains but he is never without balls. Gary tends to be tame and timid.\u201d \u2014Dr. Michael Berenbaum, former director of the United States Holocaust Research Institute<\/p>\n

\u201cOf course Gary lacks balls. He\u2019s the editor of a Federation paper. If you want to keep these kinds of jobs, especially long-term, lacking balls is a requirement.\u201d \u2014Allison Kaplan Sommer, journalist<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Jews who look to Jewish journalism tend to want to be anesthetized.\u201d \u2014J.J. Goldberg, editor of theForward<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m not sure the Jewish community wants a compelling paper.\u201d \u2014Marc S. Klein, editor of j. the Jewish news weekly of Northern California<\/p>\n

\u201cJewish men who are accused of kicking women are not popular.\u201d \u2014Dwight Owen Schweitzer, editor and publisher of the Jewish Star Times<\/p>\n

\u201cYou want to be involved with Israel because it is a sexier, crookeder, funnier, nastier, more backstabbing, more backbiting, crazier, more psychotic place than Hollywood.\u201d \u2014Larry Yudelson, journalist<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t plant bombs but ideas.\u201d \u2014Rabbi Avi Shafran, spokesman for Agudath Israel<\/p>\n

\u201cThe main problem with Jewish journalism is one organization runs almost the entire show. Almost an entire ethnic media is subservient to one organization.\u201d \u2014Steven I. Weiss, journalist<\/p>\n

\u201cAs for the \u2018Kahanist rag\u2019 comment\u2014obviously a retort made by a retard.\u201d \u2014Jason Maoz, editor of The Jewish Press<\/p>\n

In my Preface, I wrote: I tried and failed to get interviews with the following persons: Joseph Aaron, rabbi David Ackerman, rabbi Bradley Shavit Artson, Peter Beinart, David Biale, Wolfe Blitzer, Aaron Cohen, Vincent Coppola, rabbi Elliot Dorff, rabbi Hillel Goldberg, Jeffrey Goldberg, Eric Greenberg, Lawrence Grossman, Sue Grossman, Yossi Klein Halevi, Aron Hirt-Manheimer, Malcolm Hoenlein, Lisa Hostein, Phil Jacobs, Gershon Jacobson, Mark Joffe, Debbie Kalb, Marvin Kalb, Amy Klein, Neal Kozodoy, Jerome Lippman, Seth Lipsky, Arthur Maguida, rabbi Joel Meyers, David Myers, rabbi Perry Netter, Martin Peretz, Naomi Pfefferman, rabbi Perry Rank, Ira Rifkin, Jay Rosen, Jonathan Rosen, rabbi Jay Rosenbaum, Hershel Shanks, Ira Stoll, Teresa Strasser, rabbi Brian Walt, rabbi Arthur Waskow, Teresa Watanabe, Julie Weiner, Lauren Winner, Leon Wieseltier, rabbi Sheldon Zimmerman, and Nancy Zuckerbrod. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

David Shenk writes in the New York Times: \u201cA few inquiries remain unanswered. I would still be delighted to hear from: David Cesarani, Liane Dirks (on Polityka), Guido Knopp (on sources), J\u00f6rg M\u00fcll\u00adner (on the sound editing of the tapes) … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[14564,20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-63945","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-journalism"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63945","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=63945"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63945\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":63949,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63945\/revisions\/63949"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=63945"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=63945"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=63945"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}