This morning, as I wait for my McNews, I checked a few Israeli paper websites. Israel, with a total population less than New York City, has 22 daily papers. With a literacy rate of almost 100%, and three opinions for each two people, the thirst for news never ends. The average Israeli reads at least two papers a day. In addition to Hebrew, papers are produced in Arabic, English and Russian. The oldest existing daily dates from 1918, the largest from 1939. My favorite is the Jerusalem Post, which was founded in 1932. It's a smaller hard copy paper, with a domestic circulation of 30,000.
President Kennedy was fond of quoting the Bible:
ReplyDelete“For of those to whom much is given, much is required”
I'm curious as to why there are so many newspapers in Israel. It is due to various languages? Varying political agendas? Different ethnic audiences?
ReplyDeleteAny theories?
anon 7:15, yes, many are targeted to sub-groups, but there is still a half dozen full fledged newspapers in the tiny country. i think it's fair to say that there is a passion for continuous learning.
ReplyDeleteThe Jerusalem Post is good...I always found Haaretz to be helpful, as well.
ReplyDeleteI did a little research today and found that several experts believe that many cities have multiple newspapers because of the Germans. It seems that when Germans emigrated to foreign countries they found no German newspapers so they started their own.
ReplyDeleteAn organisation called Internationale Medienhilfe (International Media Assistance) has calculated that there are about 3,000 German-language news publications, 300 radio stations and 50 TV stations all located outside Germany, Austria and Switzerland.
The Israel-Nachrichten, was one of Israel’s biggest newspapers but at the beginning of 2011 economic factors forced it out of business. The paper has appeared on and off under different names in Tel Aviv since 1938 and was above all read by German Jews who poured into Israel by the thousands at the beginning of the 20th century. Many of them did not understand Hebrew – so they resorted to reading the German daily.
This doesn't directly answer the question as to why so many newspapers, but I thought it was interesting and I hope it does not reflect a liberal bias.
gary, also concerning the nacrichten
ReplyDeleteSince then its distribution has dwindled, and today it has a daily distribution of only 1,500 copies. Last summer, the paper's long-time editor, Alice Schwartz-Gardos, died at age 91, holding the world record for oldest newspaper editor. 2007
Imagine that...Germans just going ahead and doing things for themselves as compared to looking to the local government to cater to their every need and / desire.
ReplyDeleteHow quaint yet out of touch with today's righteous contemporary values.
NICHT UEBERRASCHTE DEUTSCHER