A Tangle of Publishing Rivalries : New Newspaper Challenges Old for Jewish Hearts, Minds

In his cluttered, fortress-like Vermont Avenue office building half a block from the Santa Monica Freeway, Herb Brin--his wild, white fringe of hair a hirsute barometer of his emotions--fulminates against dark conspiracies. Outside forces are circling that he believes could annihilate his business--the publishing of Heritage, an independent Jewish newspaper.

In temporary, 10th-floor offices in the mid-Wilshire district, Gene Lichtenstein, the editor of a new newspaper, ponders Herb Brin and his fears and dismisses both as “not that interesting.”

Groundless Charges

Brin, he says, is an irritant, not a serious force--a man whose fantasies fuel groundless charges. When the Jewish Journal begins publishing late next month, Brin will be ignored in the paper’s pages, Lichtenstein says, with a touch of relish.

While they have never met, Brin and Lichtenstein are two of the most visible soldiers in an escalating battle of hyperbole and vitriol that has stretched all the way from Los Angeles to Jerusalem. At stake, some say, is the ultimate character of the Jewish press in America--who will publish it, how free it will be and whether it will be capable of serving as a rallying point for the community during a time of crisis.

The choice in Los Angeles is between the as yet undefined Journal, which Lichtenstein promises will be a sophisticated blend of local, national and international articles, and Heritage, a feisty concoction of editorials and reports on local and national issues such as the split between blacks and Jews, news from Israel, remembrances of the Holocaust and community items--all bearing the stamp of Brin’s often mercurial personality.

Power Play Seen

Those on Brin’s side of the trenches see the publication of the weekly Journal as a power play by the Jewish Federation Council of Greater Los Angeles, an umbrella fund-raising organization representing Jewish charitable groups and the major single social structure within the Jewish community, to be the dominant voice in Jewish affairs here.

The tactic has been used in other cities by other federations, they say, and threatens the often struggling, independent Jewish press nationwide.

The Journal--an ambitious replacement for the federation’s weekly paper, the Jewish Community Bulletin, that will cease publication at month’s end--will siphon advertising revenue from the weekly Heritage, which almost certainly will perish in the financial drought, Brin and his supporters say. The federation is bent on snuffing out free enterprise and free speech in favor of a subsidized periodical that will be bland at best, they charge.

Brin and his supporters point particularly to a $660,000, 10% interest loan from the federation that will cover the Journal’s start-up costs. The loan itself raises ethical issues such as using charity money for a non-charitable cause, they say, as do the facts that the board overseeing the Journal will have a majority of federation-appointed members and the federation will pay subscription fees to the Journal. (Every contributor to the United Jewish Fund/Israel Emergency Fund will receive a subscription, with the Journal getting about $3 per subscriber from the federation.)

Nonsense, backers of the Journal reply. The new publication is independent and, in fact, the federation has taken elaborate steps--including setting up a new, non-affiliated board to direct the Journal--to assure editorial freedom.

Not a ‘House Organ’

The Journal is being launched after careful study, the paper’s backers say, noting that their analysis showed that the local Jewish community would be best served by a publication that was not a “house organ” of the federation.

As for the loan, they point out that it is to be repaid in five years and Lichtenstein says he doubts that the federation will throw more money into the Journal if it runs into financial trouble.

Moreover, the Journal will better serve the community’s interests because it will reach more people, its backers say. Brin’s paper, with a circulation of about 13,500, is seen by few in the Jewish community, while the Journal will go to about 75,000 households that formerly received the Bulletin, they note. And, they add, Brin has had 30 years in which to build his newspaper. If he goes under, it will be the payoff for years of ineptitude in the marketplace, they charge.

These are the major strands of the controversy.

But there are other elements, including the federation’s annual $40-million fund-raising drive for Israel and domestic charity programs, which apparently is being somewhat affected by this brouhaha. Some longtime donors are refusing to contribute because they side with Brin or are upset about the loan. The federation, through its fund-raising arm, the United Jewish Fund, is sending out letters asking holdouts to reconsider.

Low Penetration

Another major concern, one that is sometimes voiced with reluctance, is that neither the Heritage nor the Journal reach more than a fraction of the estimated 500,000 to 750,000 Jews in the Los Angeles region. This low penetration of the Jewish community is disturbing to nearly everyone involved because, they say, it may reflect a community that is fragmented and largely unconcerned with local and global Jewish affairs. (There are two other Jewish newspapers in Los Angeles, the weekly B’nai Brith Messenger, which does not disclose circulation figures, and Israel Today, a five-days-per-week national daily with an international focus that claims a circulation of 106,000, most of it in Southern California. A third paper folded last year.)

Meanwhile, there is also the question of Brin’s pending 2-year-old, $1.4-million lawsuit against the federation, which charges unfair competition, a legal offensive indicative of the history of rancor between Brin and the federation that pre-dates the Journal.

Before the Journal was conceived, Brin had waged a long campaign against the Bulletin, charging that the federation’s paper had cost him hundreds of thousands of dollars in advertising revenue. He also claims that the federation broke an agreement with him to limit the size, advertising content and publication frequency of the Bulletin.

Yet another aspect of this tangle of publishing rivalries and strategies is the fate of five employees of the Bulletin who will be out of jobs at the end of the month. A complaint filed with the National Labor Relations Board was withdrawn last month and no specific alternative legal moves have been planned on behalf of the five, their attorney said.

If there is a central point of dispute in this controversy it is this: Is the Journal a truly independent newspaper that will operate without fear of the federation’s clout?

Chief Reason for Doubts

Those who say no usually cite the loan as the chief reason for their doubts. A second reason is that 13 of the 25-member board of directors of the journal will be appointed by the federation.

Joseph Sinay, a former chairman of the federation’s fund drive and a man often cited by others as a contributor to federation causes, said the loan troubles him, as does the makeup of the board. Although he declined to discuss specifics, Sinay, chairman and president of R-B Furniture, said, “I know that it has affected (federation) fund raising.” (A federation spokesman said that some money has been withheld by donors but that the impact has been minor.)

Sinay suggested that the Journal should be purchased by a group of investors from the community, thereby cutting the appearance of ties with the federation. “It’s such a simple solution,” he said, adding, “I feel a little guilty that I haven’t been out there pushing it.”

But while Sinay floated a possible local solution, Jerry Lippman, editor-in-chief of the Long Island Jewish World in Great Neck, N.Y., was calling for a national forum on the subject of the Jewish press.

A former president of the American Jewish Press Assn., Lippman said that the rise of federation-controlled newspapers has become a major threat to the independent Jewish press. Of the 130 or so English-language Jewish newspapers published in the United States, more than half are owned, supported or subsidized by federations and other charitable groups, according to Lippman.

“No private guy can compete with the bottomless pit of a charity,” Lippman said, charging that federation-sponsored papers have become “a way for wealthy, quote, liberal, unquote, Jews to conduct business.” Federation owned or supported newspapers may be the only answer in smaller communities where resources are limited, he said, but in bigger cities where an independent press is possible newspapers should be unfettered, he said.

Front-Page Coverage

Like Sinay, Lippman proposed that an independent group of investors purchase the Journal, adding that when he was asked to offer his advice to the Los Angeles federation, he urged officials not to set up the Journal in the manner they did.

That there is widespread interest in the birth of the Journal is reflected by the fact that last month a story about the controversy made the front page of the Jerusalem Post, a position of prominence that surprised parttime local correspondent Tom Tugend, who also is senior associate editor of Brin’s Heritage.

Although he said he is squarely in Brin’s camp when not reporting on the controversy, Tugend noted in an article last summer that “no one has ever accused Herb Brin of excessive understatement.” In the same article he also noted that Brin’s rhetoric “has been the subject of arguments within the Heritage editorial staff.”

By filling his weekly tabloid with attacks on the federation, which he believes has been trying to put him out of business for years, Brin seems to have set the strident tone of the debate.

One recent day he gestured toward an expensive piece of computerized equipment that the paper bought with the help of royalties earned by his son, science fiction novelist David Brin, and declared, “Without David’s support we couldn’t have that machine. That’s why they don’t have a right to do this, they’re destroying a family.”

A Sense of Guilt

Brin, who left the Los Angeles Times 30 years ago to publish Heritage, said he thought at the time, “I’m crazy to do this, go into Jewish journalism.” But he did, he said, “Out of a sense of guilt that I hadn’t done enough for the Jewish people in the days of Hitler.”

Now, his son Dan, who is editor of Heritage, acknowledges that his father may have contributed to this latest thrust. “People may be saying, ‘We’ve had it with Brin, we’re just going to take over,’ ” he said.

But Ted Kanner, federation executive vice president, scorns Brin’s allegations that the federation is out to destroy him as “nonsense, just plain nonsense.”

Brin has had every opportunity to make his business stronger, Kanner said. “We’re talking about free enterprise . . . They’ve had years to promote that business. I don’t think the community should reward inadequacy.”

Lichtenstein said he has been assured by Kanner and others that Brin’s charges of interference by the federation will be proved wrong. “They have underscored again and again the separateness and independence of the paper,” he said. “In fact, they have said, ‘Let us know if you’re getting any pressure, we’ll see what we can do because the people at the Jewish agencies are not going to understand this, they’re going to be upset.”

Lichtenstein, a former chairman of the journalism department at the University of Rhode Island who has worked at the New York Times, emphasized several times during an interview that the federation will not receive special treatment.

“I believe that we will have an independent newspaper and by that I mean we will have a newspaper in which the federation will have no voice . . . this is not the federation newspaper so their stories are probably not going to run on page one of the newspaper and may not run in the newspaper at all. . . .” Instead, he added, the federation will get most of its coverage through special supplements it will produce for insertion in the Journal.

The Journal’s staff of five, none of whom worked at the Bulletin, began work last week. Lichtenstein said he wants to produce a paper that is heavy on local news but also will include contributions from correspondents around the world and occasional pieces from major writers such as David Halberstam and Philip Roth.

Nonetheless, it’s clear that Brin has colored Lichtenstein’s perception of his role.

“I have not met Herb Brin, though he’s written about me as if we have met,” Lichtenstein said, adding that charges that “the federation is out to ruin them (Heritage) is between them and the federation. . . . My sense is that the Heritage has a political cause now and that is beating on me and our paper. It’s a cause they can use to try to generate circulation, to be martyred, the David against the Goliath. I think they’re going to hold on to that issue for all it’s worth for as long as they can. I am not about to take on the Heritage and do battle with them. I don’t think that’s interesting. . . . He (Brin) can take all the potshots at me he wants and if he libels me, I’ll sue him. . . . Until then, I’ll let him give the free press a bad name.”