Rivalries in L.A.’s Jewish Press

Garry Abrams sure had us fooled. The Times reporter who wrote about Heritage’s battle with the Jewish Federation Council (“A Tangle of Publishing Rivalries,” Jan. 19) seemed like a charming, agreeable sort who would at least be fair to all parties in the controversy. Abrams’ piece turned out to be a snide and unfair commentary on my father’s personality rather than a serious investigation into the state of Jewish newspapers in Los Angeles.

Apparently, Abrams saw fit to ridicule a man’s struggle to save his business from being snuffed out by a monolithic enterprise funded by charity money.

Abrams may poke fun at how “Herb Brin--his wild, white fringe of hair a hirsute barometer of his emotions--fulminates against dark conspiracies,” but there are a lot of other independent publishers of Jewish newspapers across the country who feel threatened by their local federations in exactly the same way.

Abrams’ sense of humor seems to end at the doors of the new Federation newspaper, the Jewish Journal. He fails to see anything amusing about the Journal’s protestations of “independence” when most of its directors are Federation people, when it is funded by more than $650,000 from the Federation in low-interest sweetheart loans (which certainly will be forgiven when their five-year term is up) and when it is supplied with 100% of its subscription payments (to the tune of at least $250,000) from the Federation treasury.

In Abrams’ distorted account, it looks as if Herb Brin is responsible for all of the ruckus, and if he’d only shut up, everything would be just fine. Apparently, it should be beneath one’s dignity to fight for the life of his family’s business.

In his article, The Times reporter could have delved into the deeper issues of how federations across the country are creating newspapers to shut out dissenting voices and to freeze out competing Jewish agencies, such as the Jewish National Fund, Israel Bonds and the various Israeli universities.

He could have talked to the publishers of other independent Jewish newspapers in Los Angeles and discovered that Herb Brin is not alone in fulminating against “dark conspiracies.”

Instead, Garry Abrams apparently finds it more comfortable to laugh along with the rich and the mighty.

DAN BRIN

Editor, Heritage