OUR FRONT PAGE GOES BACK IN TIME
This week’s retro look kicks off our special 175th anniversary edition of the paper
THE JC was first published on November 12 1841. In this, our 175th anniversary issue, we pay homage to front pages of the past — with a rather more crowded and news-filled front page than is now the norm.
We’ve chosen the stories on this unique front page to reflect the range that has always been the JC’s strength: from major world events such as the election of a new US president to the best feature writing — this week an interview with Art Spiegelman — as well as community stories and the vibrant Jewish sports scene.
Inside, you will find our usual incisive coverage of the week’s news — beginning with six pages of analysis of Donald Trump’s election victory.
But, in addition, we look back at the JC’s own history, both with the wonderful magazine that comes with this week’s issue and with more personal memories from editors and staff.
No other Jewish newspaper has ever come close to celebrating 175 years of publication — and in Britain we are predated only by The Times and the Observer. Everyone who works at the JC takes huge pride in helping prolong and, hopefully, deepen that history — from the sales team, without whose revenue there would be no JC, through to the production and admin staff, as well of course as the brilliant journalists and writers.
Here’s to the next 175 years.
WELCOME TO this week’s special issue of the JC — 175 years to the week since our first issue. The magazine that comes with this week’s paper is a treasure trove of fine writing and highlights from the JC’s incredible time span.
In the paper itself, we celebrate memories of those involved in bringing the paper to you — and the thoughts of some of our readers.
It’s a special privilege to be editor on such an occasion.
I certainly knew about the paper’s history when I started in October 2008. But it’s true to say I had one major worry. How on earth would we find enough stories to fill the paper every week?
It took me about an hour — after my first news conference — to realise I had things completely the wrong way round.
The hardest part of the JC editor’s job isn’t finding stories to put in; it is deciding what to leave out.
My favourite party trick when I speak to non-Jewish audiences is to ask how many Jews there are in the UK. The usual answer is around 2-3 million. No one ever says less than a million.
When I tell them that the number is — depending on how you measure it — somewhere between 250-300,000, they simply don’t believe me. No wonder. For so small a community, we don’t half live life to the full. Which is just one reason why editing the JC is such an evergreen challenge.
As you’ll know, the JC is a range of different papers in one. At its root, it is a community paper that speaks to — and, occasionally, for — our community. The coffee mornings, the fund-raisers and, yes, the broiguses are all part of the bedrock of the JC.
But while most community papers are, by definition, inward-looking and small scale, we are also a national newspaper. And beyond that, we are global in our outlook. Our coverage of the Middle East is — by quite a long way — the best in Britain. And not just Israel; our criterion for a JC story is that it is something that Jews should be interested in, so it could as easily be about instability in Pakistan as the Iranian nuclear deal.
In that context, the phrase that is most used about the JC is that we punch above our weight. Because it’s not just the Jewish community that reads us. One of the joys of my job is that when my phone rings it’s as likely to be a government minister, world famous actor or global businessman as it is a reader demanding to know why we didn’t report on their shul AGM.
And they all care, deeply, about the paper. (Or rather, they care that their family cares. If I had a pound for every time someone featured in the paper told me that the best thing was that their mother would be thrilled, I’d be able to afford dinner at a kosher restaurant.) That sense of caring about the paper has held us in good stead for 175 years.
Like all newspapers, life is much tougher now for the JC than 30 years ago. But we have an asset that no other paper can count on: our readers. Specifically, our readers’ loyalty. For many readers, the weekly JC is as much a part of being a British Jew as viennas and chips. As editor, that loyalty is a privilege I try never to forget.
Not that we always get it right. I have been known to wake up in a cold sweat remembering some terrible misjudgement or failure to listen to the wise counsel of a colleague.
And it’s all a bit closer to home when you make a mistake in a paper like the JC. As Geoffrey Paul writes on the opposite page, when the paper hits the streets — or rather, now, when the iPad version appears at 5am on a Thursday — the editor’s phone (and now email) get busy. To put it mildly.
My favourite complaint was from a well-known communal figure who rang to protest that I had an agenda against him. I told him I was genuinely puzzled, since our piece had been nothing but positive. But, he told me angrily, the picture we had run showed him on his bad profile. We had clearly chosen it to do him down.
That said, I think we get it right quite a lot more than we get it wrong. And in my eight years as editor one example stands out as an example of the good we can do.
In October 2011, we exposed the barbaric — and un-Jewish — practice that had led to many stillborn babies being buried in unmarked graves, so that parents did not even know where their child was laid to rest. Working with the United Synagogue, by highlighting the story on the front page we were able to reunite many parents with their children’s grave — some after as long as 40 years.
More recently, our front page last August posing a series of questions to Jeremy Corbyn on his unsavoury friends and associates transformed coverage of his ascent to the Labour leadership. We have led the way since then in holding Labour to account over the antisemites in its midst.
But the JC is about far more than the paper itself. As we reflect elsewhere this week, for some smaller communities it is the glue that keeps them together. I’m often asked to speak as editor and although it’s nice to have a crowded hall in north London, I always find it more rewarding addressing a smaller group that doesn’t have speakers living on the doorstep.
In my first week as editor, I had agreed to visit a shul one night that required a couple of hours’ travel. I had a splitting headache and it was pouring with rain. It was the last thing on earth I felt like doing. But when I
We have an asset no other paper can count on — our readers’
arrived the warmth of the welcome changed my mood completely — not least when, the moment I walked in, the hostess said to me: “You’ve had a long journey. You must need the loo.”
(It stands in contrast with another shul group who, when I rang saying I had walked for 40 minutes from the station and was lost, replied angrily that they couldn’t delay the meeting if I was late and I should have planned my journey better. And then, when I finally made it there, did not even offer me a glass of water, let alone a cup of tea.)
The media and journalism are currently undergoing fundamental change. Who knows what the future will hold. But it’s important that although we look back, we look to the future, too. Which is one reason why we are launching a new website later this month, at last giving us the tools to match online the skill with which the hard copy of the paper is put together.
Here’s to the next 175 years!