spotlight News In Israel Hebrew media is imploding, but Israeli English press booming. Ben Sales J TA Tel Aviv 0 n Oct. 17, seven Israeli English news websites led with seven dif- ferent stories. The Jerusalem Post had a piece on Egypt's commitment to its treaty with Israel. Haaretz's English site ran with a recently released Israeli document on Gaza. Ynet News, Yediot Achronot's English site, led with threats to a retired Israeli secu- rity chief. Then there were the stories on the websites of the Times of Israel, Israel Hayom's English edition, Israel National News and +972, a popular news and commentary blog. Twenty years ago, of these seven publica- tions, only the Jerusalem Post existed. While Hebrew newspapers and TV channels are struggling, the Israeli English- language news market appears to be boom- ing. But with the business of journalism under threat worldwide due to declining revenues, Israel's English-language media face an uncertain future. "We see an explosion of new media because online platforms are cheap and easy to use,' said Noam Sheizaf, CEO of +972. "We couldn't have done +972 four years ago. Times of Israel would have been a much more expensive operation five years ago" The past few months have seen an implo- sion of the Hebrew press. Maariv, a tabloid founded in 1948 and, for its first 20 years Israel's largest circulation daily, recently was placed in the hands of a court-appointed trustee and could shut down within weeks, leaving 2,000 people jobless. Haaretz, Israel's leading broadsheet, did not print on Oct. 4 due to a staff protest of 100 proposed layoffs. Israel's Channel 10 TV is in deep debt to the government and faces possible closure. Many in Israel blame Israel Hayom, a staunchly conservative, freely distributed paper funded by American casino mogul Sheldon Adelson, for aggravating the crisis in Hebrew media. The tough environment "is exacerbated by the fact that in Israel we have the most generously funded free newspaper in the world:' said Times of Israel founding editor David Horovitz, who before starting the site in February was editor in chief of the Jerusalem Post. "That's made life hard for all the publications in Israel:' Online Growth Much of the growth of Israel's English media has been online. In May, Haaretz, the only one of the Hebrew papers to have an English print edition, put up a paywall on its popular English website, charging digital subscrib- ers $100 annually for unlimited access. It's still uncertain whether the strategy will pay off, though the paywall experiment will be expanding soon to the Haaretz Hebrew site. "It's unrealistic to rely solely on a print model to fund our journalistic operation:' said Charlotte Halle, editor of Haaretz's English edition. "We wouldn't be taking care of our journalistic future if we didn't seek additional sources of income.' The Jerusalem Post has pursued additional revenue opportunities by printing a range of publications beyond its daily newspaper. The Post has international, Christian and French editions — all produced, along with the daily, by just 60 employees. The Times of Israel, which combines origi- nal reporting with articles that repackage information reported on Israeli TV, radio and news sites, would not disclose reader- ship statistics. But Horovitz says the site is exceeding expectations and has garnered 40,000 "likes" on Facebook since its launch eight months ago. Horovitz says the publication's "non- partisan agenda!' stands in contrast to the right-leaning Jerusalem Post and left-leaning Haaretz. The news coverage seeks to strike an unbiased tone, he says, while hundreds of bloggers, all unpaid, opine on a range of topics. "We strive to tell it like it is:' .Horovitz said. "People want to know what's going on, and they don't want to feel like it's filtered through some political agenda:' With such a crowded market in such chal- lenging times for the news industry, Israel's English-language journalists are not without trepidation about the future. "There will be some sort of reevaluation" of the Post print newspaper's viability in a few years, Brinn said. Beyond competing for the same reader- ship, the publications must vie with an ever- expanding cyber universe that occasionally breaks stories before they do. "Social media has served to democratize the media market in Israel: said Avi Mayer, the Jewish Agency for Israel's director of new media and a prolific tweeter of Israel news. "When people share information through Twitter, it is a personal experience' While many Israeli journalists have become active tweeters, +972's Sheizaf is concerned that publications that are thriving now are resistant to change, which could hurt them in the future. "People are not experimenting; he said. "The readers are evolving and changing but the journalists, the stories they write, look like the stories written in the 19th century. We need to be a lot more creative." ❑ Earn Generous Life Income & Support Israel's Bright Future In these challenging economic times, some things never change. The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, founded in 1918 by Albert Einstein, Chaim Weizmann and Sigmund Freud, continues to be Israel's #1 institution for comprehensive higher education and research, forging vital advances in fields ranging from biomedicine to environmental studies. 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