Jodi Rudoren of the New York Times is coming home. Two days ago, Joe Kahn, the international editor of the Times, tweeted:
I’m thrilled to announce that @rudoren will return from her distinguished tour in Israel to help lead international coverage at @nytimes
— Joe Kahn (@nycscribe) November 25, 2015
She’s coming back after less than four years on the job. The appointment is regularly described as a four-year term. Her fourth anniversary would be in April 2016.
Jodi Rudoren wrote this generous statement yesterday on Facebook that begins by saying she’s leaving right on schedule….
I knew this would be my last Thanksgiving in Jerusalem, but I had not expected to be cooking amid packing up and saying goodbyes. The Rudorens depart Jan. 1 for New York. I will be deputy on The Times’ international desk, a thrilling and daunting next step as we continue to expand our global audience and transform our report in the digital age.
On this Thanksgiving — or, as it is known here, Thursday — I am so grateful for the incredible, generous, insightful and intrepid Palestinians and Israelis who enabled me to do this most demanding work, and experience this most complicated place. You have taught me endlessly, you have supported me thoroughly, you have challenged my brain, you have filled my heart. Journalists who guided me, sources who shared with me, friends who embraced me — even advocates who attacked me: you have helped me grow and see and question, and question. Exactly why we came here, exactly why I’ve been doing this journalism thing all these years.
So, thank you. And as my feed broadens its lens beyond this backyard, I hope you’ll keep following, commenting, reading the report and pushing me to do and be my best. Todah and Shukran!
And so the revolving door turns in the edifice of official journalism. I wonder if she isn’t glad to be getting out. This is the highest pressure reporting job in the print media, it can’t be much fun. The pressure from the Israel lobby is much greater than the pressure from the equal-rights-grass-roots. Look at the retweets on Kahn’s announcement, it’s all from Israel supporters bashing Rudoren.
When I met Rudoren in 2012, I told her that imho her job was to communicate to the elites and the influence leaders back home that the two state solution was dead, or all but dead; there’s no way that we are going to see a viable Palestinian state whose capital is East Jerusalem. She did not take up that responsibility; one cannot be ahead of the Washington Narrative here; and so the challenge remains for her dashing successor. Two weeks ago there was the unconfirmed report that New York Times White House correspondent Peter Baker will be replacing Rudoren as Jerusalem bureau chief.
We were initially sanguine about Rudoren. My hangover lasted for years. I started saying that Rudoren was culturally bound: from the Jewish community, for the Jewish community. Next Monday night she’s speaking at the JCC in Manhattan; sold out, but on livestream. She’s spoken to an American Jewish Committee group and to the National Council for Jewish Women, who were having a “celebrate” Israel event. I can’t remember any speeches she’s given to Palestinian groups, or church groups either, let alone at anti-Zionist gatherings.
I think some of this is structural; it’s the Upper West Side, Jake. The Times is under institutional pressure from the pro-Israel NY establishment. As former Timesman Neil Lewis wrote at CJR: “It is no exaggeration to say that for a century [the NYT] has served, in effect, as the hometown paper of American Jewry.” Rudoren’s predecessor Ethan Bronner after the usual protestations about objectivity has worked as a flack for the Israeli army, not long after his son served in that organization.
She’s learned the rules for reporting from Israel. Didn’t take too long. Initially she appeared to promise to be better than the previous skunk, but the white-stripe accessory was just too good to pass up,
How long will it take for her to learn what can (and what cannot) be said about all the other countries whose existence the NYT acknowledges?
Welcome home.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=dU7OqGCIcak
No doubt she will be doing Israel dirty work in NY too. She has poisoned many minds with her biased reporting.
As if there wasn’t ample proof that PW operates, thinks and opines in the bubble of bourgeois northern east coast, left-wing academia infused fringe we have statements like:
” ..I told her that imho her job was to communicate to the elites and the influence leaders back home that the two state solution was dead…”
So the paper of record should naturally be directed at the left-wing elitists who naturally, again, know better then anybody else about what is good and what is the ‘moral’ way to portray and report upon the I/P conflict. I would go on to illustrate how many ways in which the far-left fringe has failed to grasp the realities and the de-facto rules that have been set for decades but it would be useless as the bubble in which PW and his MW staff and commenters is far to tough to be penetrated by anything so simple and blunt as reality.
People don’t like tribal explanations because it reduces the amount of intellectual flourishes you’re able to go out on.
But that’s exactly the reason for why Rudoren acted the way she acted. It’s why the NYT will only appoint Zionists(Jewish or not) to the post. Baker is married to a Jewish Zionist. When the TNR changed mast, he was tweeting in support of the older crew. That should be telling you where he falls in the liberal spectrum. For me, the TNR regime change was a watershed moment.
It signalled the beginning of the end of the PEP crowd, who so often traficked in anti-Arab and anti-black racism and never shied away from running with their neocon fellow travellers in boosting wars in the Middle East(and motivated by what, exactly, again tribalism).
Yet Baker went out of his way to bash the new understanding how the old liberal elites were too racist and too warmongering. If you expect any miracles from this guy, you’re delusional.
We have to be honest with the fact that “reform from within” is dead and finished. It will be forced from the outside and the Jewish institutions, of which I count the NYT as one, will never change until their door is slammed down and they are dragged kicking and screaming to a place which isn’t enabling and enforcing a culture of racism against Palestinians.
It’s not what you want to hear, Phil, you believe in the Jewish redemption story, but this is what is happening before our eyes. The anti-Zionist Jews are growing in number but if your base is zero any growth at all looks amazing. It’s still a highly marginal element.