The People Speak
With A Little Help
NEIL RUBIN SPECIAL TO THE JEWISH NEWS
I have to retire about 20 years
early, which means in about 20
years. That's to live long enough
to read everything that I keep
saving "for when I have time."
As visitors to my office know,
here's a pile of old Southern Is-
aelites threatening to cascade
ff the shelf directly above my
omputer and into my lap. A
tack of faxes sits in a basket on
he left of my desk. Jewish pub-
cations from around the coun-
ry are haphazardly plopped
top the files next to that con-
ainer. And the bottom of my
ook case is crammed with
about 50 back copies of our sis-
ter publications.
I'm supposed to analyze them
by last Wednesday to know what
my colleagues are talking about
when they call to urgently dis-
cuss their communal crises.
So what do I do about it all? A
few months after deftly tossing
Neil Rubin is editor of our sister
paper, the Atlanta Jewish
Times.
.
something into the correct pile,
I defiantly plow through the
rummage. As I do so, trusty
trash can at my side, I brusque-
ly announce to no one in partic-
ular, "That's irrelevant now.
Trash. That's long passed.
Trash. Why did I save that?
Trash." Of course a week later
comes, "Aaah. Why did I throw
that out?"
I'm a particular hoarder of
Jewish community studies. And
I do refer to them for articles —
when I can find them in the
mess.
But Jewish surveys are a
beloved subset of an overriding
passion, which is studies about
the general community. As a
kid, I hungrily memorized pub-
lic opinion polls and spent long
hours culling irrelevant trends
from baseball statistics.
Then, in college, I took a
course from Harrison Hickman,
a leading Democratic pollster.
He taught me how to make
numbers lie. That is, how to ma-
nipulate data to gain the desired
trends and how to ignore what
doesn't help your cause.
So this week I drooled when
some great new numbers
crossed my desk. The recent re-
port by the Center for Media and
Public Affairs measured the at-
titudes of Americans toward the
media. And it got me thinking
about how a similar analysis of
the Jewish media would look.
So here are the real results of
this study followed by the slight-
ly fictitious responses of Jewish
readers. To gain the latter, I've
spent a few months personally
calling each of the approxi-
mately 95,400
persons in At-
lanta's Jewish
households,
which means
places where at
least one person
is Jewish. (By the
way, that's why
it's been so hard
to reach me late-
ly.)
* In the cen-
ter's study, more
than 60 percent of
Americans be-
lieve journalists
are influenced by
powerful people
and organiza-
tions.
cent believed journalists too ar-
rogant and two-thirds felt that
they were influenced by "pow-
erful people and organizations."
In the Jewish readers study,
51 percent of those reached
thought it "amazing chutzpah"
to be called during a rerun of
'Seinfeld." Another 10 percent
told me that they did not want
to switch to AT&T, but that they
liked Candice Bergen.
The other 49 percent wanted
to know why their newspaper
was late — again. After I told
them that it's a problem with the
Post Office, 28 percent said,
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In the Jewish readers study,
103 percent believed that the
Jewish Times staff is influenced
by groups other than their own.
(I let my friends vote twice.)
* In the first study, 85 percent
approved of "news councils" to
investigate complaints about re-
porting and to issue corrections
when necessary.
Among Jewish readers, 97
percent felt that various versions
of articles should be printed to
satisfy as many people as possi-
ble and that to make amends the
Jewish Times should write a
profile of a great person — them.
* In the center study, 42 per-
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