Progressive Jewish Community Weekly, Anyone????

I've had two brushes with newspapers in my left career.  In 1973 or so I helped to write, edit, and distribute a newspaper (monthly?) about the trial of Daniel Elsburg and Tony Russo, who copied and smuggled to the NYTimes the Rand Corporation documents exposing we were losing in Vietnam and that our political standins were unpopular.

In 1975, I worked with Tim Reagan and Tim Nesbitt to form the Oakland Study Center which conducted investigative reporting on Oakland City politics.   These were published in a local liberal weekly.  Our big issues were making the Port of Oakland an economic benefit for Oakland, and making Oakland politics more representative of communities.

If you're Jewish you know that every urban and many suburban Jewish communities have weekly newspapers.   These are not exactly money making machines and in some cases they are supported by organized jewish federations.   They are full of pictures of rich Jews who have given money to charitable organizations,    Their politics on Israel are usually derivative of the Israeli "right."

So I've had this idea for many years, but at almost 66, it's one I probably won't get to.....fund raise money to buy one of these papers in a relatively liberal community, and making it a more egalitarian, progressive, and populist paper.   Why buy?   I don't think you could survive starting from scratch.   But most of these are the only show in town.   I would probably shift the politics somewhat gradually, but considerably up the coverage of and identification of Jewish folks whose community stature is based on more than being charitable or being employed by a Jewish organization.....kind of like taking Howard Zinn's view of American history and applying it in the hre and now to a Jewish community paper.   It would probably be a lot of fun, but more importantly, it could provide an alternative voice for diaspora jews which is based in the roots of their current community.