21. Hymietown: The Jewish Gawker
My friends and long-time readers are likely aware that I first made my mark in the Jewish community as a blogger, launching one of the first ever Jewish blogs, Jewschool, back in 2001, long before blogging had become mainstream. Even before Jewschool, I had been blogging on Jewish issues on various other blogs I had founded (going all the way back to 1998), and following the success of Jewschool, I was instrumental in launching many other popular Jewish blogs including JSpot, JVoices, The Jew & The Carrot, Israelity, Canonist, and CampusJ to name a few. During my tenure at JTA, in addition to revamping the organization’s overall Web site, I co-created three new JTA blogs, including The Telegraph, The Fundermentalist and Capital J, each of which are now considered essential reading in Jewish professional circles. All of which is to say, that when it comes to Jews and blogging, I’m generally your go-to guy.
So, speaking in that capacity (even though I haven’t been much of a blogger for the last two years), I wish to identify a ginormous hole in the Jewish blogosphere, that is so painfully obvious and yet so easily filled, that I’m kind of embarrassed that I haven’t pulled it together yet.
Has anyone else noticed that, 10 years in, there is still not a single blog covering the NYC Jewish community in a thoughtful, entertaining and irreverent way? The Biggest Jewish community in America, the second biggest in the world, 20% Jewish population city-wide, and not a single blog worth reading.
Oh, we’ve got papers which publish their Web editions on a print schedule. We’ve got Jewish blogs which talk about New York happenings. And we have the NY Times, sort of. But, we have nothing that covers New York Jewry at the pace of New York and with the tone of New York Jewry.
And so, I give you Hymietown: The Jewish Gawker. (And I know what you’re thinking: Gawker is the Jewish Gawker. But gimme a break.)
Tell Jesse Jackson we takin’ it back.
Hymietown would cover local politics, transportation, education, real estate, media, finance, philanthropy, medicine, arts, sports, dining, dating, spiritual life, social life, and professional life, providing both original reporting and curated content from NY’s Jewish and non-Jewish newspapers, radio stations and television networks. The site’s focus would be on the New Yorker and the Jew, exploring the city and its people — their relationship, past and present.
Hymietown would aspire to the creativity of the Times and the snark of Gawker: to be inquisitive, prolific and over-the-top funny. The site would be informed secularly and religiously, knowing precisely the right buttons to push to steer the public interest and provoke discourse.
Hymietown would tell you where to get the cheapest kosher and kosher-style digs, what that Hebrew on the side of that building is from, where to daven if you’re looking for the least strollers, which Jews’ Night Out Christmas party will be the least embarrassing, which turd Shel Silver stepped in this time, which non-profit CFO got caught shtupping which hedge fund manager, which real estate mogul lost his shirt on high rise condos, which hasidic sect erupted in riots, which Jewish neighborhood is next to get screwed by MTA service cuts…Real Jews, real New York, real Jewish New York attitude. For 21st century Jews who want to find out today, not Thursday, and who want to chortle while doing so.
I’m shocked — shocked, I say — that it still doesn’t exist.
Seeking qualified contributors…
