Rabbi Hillel Goldberg and Shana Goldberg reflect on the legacy of the Intermountain Jewish News (IJN) as it marks its 110th year. They delve into IJN's dedication to unbiased journalism, its profound impact on the Jewish community, and the evolving landscape of news. IJN's journey underscores the value of balanced journalism, the significance of community engagement, and the importance of adaptability in the ever-changing media landscape.
Episode chapters:
(01:58) – The importance of the Intermountain Jewish News to its community
(06:49) – IJN’s footprint and approach to news
(12:17) – The 110th Anniversary Edition
(15:39) – The importance of national news for local audiences
(21:46) – Changes to the business of news at IJN and the Jewish press more broadly
(31:57) – Words of wisdom
Listen to the episode here:
Links:
- Intermountain Jewish News: web, Facebook
- Rabbi Hillel Goldberg: about
- Shana Goldberg: LinkedIn
- Local News Matters: web, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn
- Colorado Press Association: web, Twitter, Facebook
- Tim Regan-Porter: bio, Twitter
Bios:
Rabbi Hillel Goldberg started his journalistic career with high school buddy Dick Gould at George Washington High School in Denver, when the two published their own newspaper. One year later, their magazine, Tempo, was featured in Time.
Since then, Rabbi Goldberg has earned rabbinic ordination in Jerusalem, a doctorate in Jewish intellectual history at Brandeis, and has taught at The Hebrew University (Jerusalem) and Emory (Atlanta).
He has written for the IJN for over 50 years, 12 years as its Israel correspondent (1972-1983). During his time in Israel, he penned a weekly column, The View from Jerusalem. He was executive editor from 1983-2017, when he became editor and publisher. He has won first-place journalism awards in news, features, profiles, arts, editorials, commentary, reportage from Israel and graphic design.
Shana Goldberg is the assistant publisher of the IJN and digital editor of the IJN. She is an honors graduate of history and political science at Brandeis University and the London School of Economics.
Shana has edited an international relations website for the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH Zürich) and worked at the Audiatur Stiftung, an Israel advocacy foundation in Zurich, Switzerland. She has also taught English as a foreign language and guided international students in the college application process. Shana is a member of the executive committee of the American Jewish Press Association.
Full transcript:
(recorded via Riverside.fm; transcript automated via Castmagic.io, virtually unedited)
Rabbi Hillel Goldberg [00:00:00]:
These days, it's often considered, you know, bad journalism to do both sides because obviously only one side is right, and it's my side. Everybody knows that, right? We don't subscribe to that. So we try to get both sides out there. I think that's one of the reasons we're respected we're read is because people can, you know, see their own selves in the paper, but see other selves too. That's important.
Tim Regan-Porter [00:00:30]:
Welcome to the Local News Matters podcast, where we explore pathways to stronger journalism, better businesses, and healthier communities. I'm Tim Regan-Porter, CEO of the Colorado Press Association. In each episode, I sit down with guests from newsrooms and others in the local news ecosystem to highlight the innovative work of local newsrooms and those that support them, as well as the crucial questions they face.
This episode, I’m excited to bring you my conversation with Rabbi Hillel Goldberg and his daughter Shana Goldberg.
Rabbi Goldberg is the editor and publisher of The Intermountain Jewish News, which celebrated its 110th anniversary this summer. The Rabbi earned rabbinic ordination in Jerusalem, a doctorate in Jewish intellectual history at Brandeis, and has taught at The Hebrew University in Jerusalem and Emory University in Atlanta. He has written for the Intermountain Jewish News for over 50 years, 12 as its Israel correspondent, 34 as its executive editor and the last six as its editor and publisher.
Shana Goldberg is the assistant publisher of the IJN and web editor of the website, blog and eNewsletter. She is an honors graduate in history and political science at Brandeis University and the London School of Economics.
I hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I did.
And now I bring you Rabbi Goldberg and Shana Goldberg.
The importance of the Intermountain Jewish News to its community
This year you celebrated your 110th year for the Intermountain Jewish News. I believe it's about 100 years ago, the paper changed its name from The Denver Jewish News to the Intermountain Jewish News to reflect its broader reach. So congratulations on that. And why don't we just start with talking to me and our listeners about the importance of intermountain Jewish News to its community, its readers.
Rabbi Goldberg [00:02:26]:
The Intermountain Jewish News is important to its readers, and obviously this is why we are here. But it's also important in a broader sense. It is a newspaper. It focuses on literacy. It presumes it's important to be able to read something and analyze something and not just take something in really quickly and not just live by sound bite news. So in that sense, we regard ourselves, regard the Intermountain Jewish News as part of the larger effort in society to sustain literacy and to sustain careful analysis and argument and consideration. The Intermountain Jewish News, more particularly, is important to the Jewish community in many ways. First, it provides basic information. So you might say, well, today information is available every know, anywhere, instantaneously. It's not really. So, for example, our coverage of Israel is much more comprehensive than you'll get in any single place, no matter which buttons you push. Number two, we gather opinions with diverse opinions. The Intermountain Jewish News is the place where the diverse parts of the community talk to each other. Our community, like communities everywhere, unfortunately become more polarized, more divided. So we like to believe that our opinion pages are not predictable. And certainly we like to keep our opinions out of the news stories very consciously. We try to cover both sides. We are very much on the both sides spectrum these days. It's often considered bad journalism to do both sides because obviously only one side is right and it's my side. Everybody knows that, right. We don't subscribe to that. So we try to get both sides out there. And I think that's one of the reasons we're respected where we're read is because people can see their own selves of the paper, but see other selves, too. That's important.
Shana Goldberg [00:04:28]:
I think that's a feedback we do get from readers. Something that's interesting is we have a significant number of subscribers from out of state people who may have lived here or just in some cases, just come across the paper. And that's one thing when I speak to them, they often say is that they feel that there's really no other paper like this in the sense that it is kind of a one stop shop. Like what my father was saying. To seek everything out does take a huge effort. We do put a huge effort into putting together what we believe is a great newspaper every week that's covering lots of different things. And so for readers, it's an opportunity to just sit back, know, kind of enjoy the fruits of that and get a really comprehensive view of what's going on in the Jewish community globally as well as locally.
Regan-Porter [00:05:21]:
Yeah. Our sales director, Scott Coons, moved here from New York two and a half years ago. And he's a lifelong Jersey New Yorker, spent 20 years at the Times, and he's part Jewish and he's very read up on Jewish news in New York. And so when he came here and started getting his paper at the office, he commented on just how well done it was. And part of it is exactly what you're saying, that it's very balanced and nuanced. And that's not always the case with any newspaper. But with some of the Jewish publications he was familiar with in New York, they tended to take sides, in his opinion.
Shana Goldberg [00:05:57]:
And it is challenging because the community here is really diverse and so there are people belonging to all sides, but sometimes they're not keen on hearing the other side. But our readership is really diverse. So we have readers from across the spectrum Jewishly, politically, socioeconomically, everything. So we really try to keep that readership in mind when we're producing the newspaper.
Rabbi Goldberg [00:06:23]:
I'm going to break the rule which says never be negative. Number of years ago, we got two cancellations of subscriptions, and each one came with a note. You are too pro Obama. You give Obama a pass. This is wrong. Next note, next cancellation. You're so against Obama, it's not fair, et cetera, et cetera. So we didn't like losing the subscriptions, but we took it as a good sign.
IJN’s footprint and approach to news
Regan-Porter [00:06:49]:
So talk a little bit about your approach to news. So how much of it is curation? Do you have a lot of freelancers? Do you have staff reporters?
Shana Goldberg [00:06:57]:
Well, we've got a mix of all of what you said. We have two full time reporters and then other people, such as myself, my father, and our associate editor, who write as well not as frequently, obviously, as those full time reporters. Then we rely on a couple of different wire services. With the wire services, we do put a lot of effort into making sure it's high quality. Some of it comes directly from Israel, and it's translated, and one can immediately identify that it was not translated by native English speakers. So we read everything really carefully. We don't just publish an article that comes from a wire service and a lot of wire services. Now, unfortunately, the opinion creeps into the news coverage. We try to edit it carefully so that it really is just the straight news. And then we have a few freelancers, although those are mostly on the commentary side, and we try to do that on a pretty regular basis and with the idea that each of them is contributing a different perspective, a different stage of life. Some of them are based in Israel, some are based in California. And it's just the idea know, they bring something else that one of us are never going to be able to bring because it's just not our milieu.
Rabbi Goldberg [00:08:16]:
We have one lovely contributor, unfortunately, he was a victim of the closure of the print edition of the New York Jewish Week. Steve Lipp, great reporter, great writer, did a number of essays for us on Ukraine and the Jewish community in Ukraine and how it suffered under the invasion and how they're holding up and what are they doing, and did a series and won an award last year for that. He just sent us a piece on fascinating piece about two of the oldest synagogues in the country, one in Newport, Rhode Island, one in Charleston, South Carolina, and he discovered that each of them was built in part by slaves. Fascinating story went into not only the history, what did the people, or at least the leaders in each synagogue say today? Newport synagogue, very famous as where George Washington sent his letter, which said, we give to bigotry no sanction. And so that synagogue was built in part with slave labor. Fascinating history, and people in charge today want to somehow another you can't make up for what happened 2300 years ago. We're doing their best to confront the ethical issue, so that comes along too.
Regan-Porter [00:09:45]:
Tell me what about your footprint? You have readers all over people who used to live here, but you've also got just pure distribution in the surrounding states. How big of a part of that is that of your distribution, and how does that affect how you tell the stories you pick?
Shana Goldberg [00:10:01]:
The intermountain part is not necessarily the biggest part of our distribution. Our distribution is primarily in Colorado, Denver, Boulder, Colorado Springs, representing the largest portion of that. We do distribute to other states. And that does play a role, though, in terms of reaching out. We publish an annual community directory, and we always include those states and what they're doing there. And in that sense, whenever I'm the one doing that this year, so that creates a sense of community. They know that we care about what they're doing. We have a page every week of different events that are taking place. We always include events going on in other states. There's a new rabbi that just moved to Laramie, Wyoming. We did an interview with him. So we keep abreast of what's going on in these other places. And as things happen, like, there's a new campus opening up in Great Falls, Montana, of a Jewish institution in New York. We had a big photograph of that ribbon cutting ceremony just this past week. So it plays a role in fostering that sense of a larger Jewish community that we're kind of all part of this together.
Rabbi Goldberg [00:11:15]:
You talk about how are we different from 100 years ago? Well, when the paper has been in the same family for 80 years, you do acquire some lore. So for all these years, up until a few years ago, I always thought that my father received the intermountain Jewish news from the community organization back then, something called the Central Jewish Council for $1. Turns out I was wrong. It was $10. So we corrected that major error in our reportage in this magazine, this large size commemorative magazine we did for 110th anniversary. So you collect lore and you collect lore also about the people who work for you. Many of the people work for us, have been with us 45 years and longer, and then other people who've retired were with us for 30 years. So we've got a lot of institutional memory.
The 110th Anniversary Edition
Regan-Porter [00:12:17]:
Let's talk a little about that 110th anniversary edition. So normally you are broadsheet and you’re weekly and then I believe you do these every five years. And so it is large format.
Rabbi Goldberg [00:12:29]:
It's about ten x 16 or something like that, maybe a little bit larger. 18 months goes into this edition. We try to present the past in a different way every five years. One of the things we did this year that we haven't done before is we picked out 16 pages of very dramatic photos, and they were picked out for their artistic value, not necessarily for their news value, just an artistic statement, an aesthetic statement. Although many of them were of important news value. We for the first time reprinted many of the obituary editorials we've done. People have commented that they like the way we remember people. There was a man who was the editor of the paper in Kansas City, and he always used to say, when I die, I want to die in Denver. And so how come? He says, well, because nobody does obituaries like the intermountain. Should we snooze? So we reprinted. We thought we were just really an act of piety and paying some respect. That important. People who had died, that's what we thought we were doing. It turns out, based on comments we were getting that really performed a larger service because many people commented to this event, oh, I forgot about so and so. So we actually brought a lot of past history to life.
Shana Goldberg [00:14:02]:
Just to jump in for a second. One thing that's powerful about that is for our Denver's Jewish community, like the larger community here has grown a lot, so there are a lot of newcomers. And for them, something like this, those obituary editorials, it gives them a sense of what this community is about. Because they're newcomers, they might not know much about it, and so it serves that role as well.
Rabbi Goldberg [00:14:27]:
The other thing in the magazine is we don't want to focus only on the past. So we have a section called Generations. So we've done some interviews about contemporary issues there. We interviewed a pediatrician who we interviewed 20 years ago. We said, what's changed in pediatrics between now and then? We interviewed some older people. I'll use that very vague phrase about why people are very reluctant to be called seniors when they're 65, when they're 70, when they're 75, what do you call yourself? Wait a minute, here what's happening. Boomer. Forever. So we went into that. We had a little fun. We did an interview with a person who had managed the Historical Society and Jewish Historical Society and asked basically, what's the difference from how records are preserved today and what are you interested in today as opposed to 40 years ago when this person stated started so it is the past, but it's also the present because we're looking to the future.
The importance of national news for local audiences
Regan-Porter [00:15:39]:
One of the things I think that is distinctive about probably Jewish press in general, but certainly Intermountain, a lot of our members, a lot of newspapers nationwide have begun to understandably treat national and international news as a commodity that people can get anywhere. And so they've zeroed in on local. I think that probably makes sense for most of them, but because of the nature of your audience and the news that affects them, you're covering everything, as you said, from Israel to Denver to I was just looking at your homepage today, and I think you had something about something happening in Israel. Talk a little bit about how important that range of news and why you wouldn't just do local news and why that's needed for the Jewish community.
Rabbi Goldberg [00:16:24]:
Well, we had a story a couple of weeks ago about a shooting outside of a school in Memphis. That's just not something people would access. Otherwise you wouldn't think if you're trying to figure out what's happening in the Jewish community around the country, you wouldn't just tap in Memphis. So we do bring people news that they otherwise wouldn't get. And that's an important piece of news because it's not just something happening far away. Because these days, unfortunately, if there's a shooting outside of a school in Memphis, the first thing readers in Denver are going to say, wait a minute, what's happening with our school? Do we have the appropriate security?
Shana Goldberg [00:17:02]:
And we wrote about that in terms of the Tree of Life shooting in Pittsburgh, and I remember this very clearly. I mean, within, I would say a week or ten days, every synagogue in this city know almost immediately looking at what they needed to do. So the Jewish community is very tied together. The concerns are beyond what every city has its unique concerns, but it's really a connected community.
Rabbi Goldberg [00:17:31]:
I would say this we do need to remember, reading a newspaper also has to be fun. It can't just be all the serious stuff of which there is no lack. So I don't know if it's fun exactly, but we had a big feature this week on the drying up of the Dead Sea and how that might be reversed with a stress on the word might, because it's certainly not clear that it'll happen. But it's a fascinating place in the world. It's the third most visited site by tourists in Israel, so a lot of our readers have been there. And so we run this kind of stuff, not just necessarily the Hezbollah, Hamas, and terrorism, but at the same time.
Shana Goldberg [00:18:18]:
The local news is really valuable to our readers and certain people who are accomplishing things in the community that beyond the community might not be massive, but it's really important for people here. And so we make sure to cover that. Or even on the negative side, there was a spate of an anti Semitism related thing at Cherry Creek High School earlier this year that's not going to make the national news because fortunately, it was terrible, but it wasn't a national news story. But for our readers, it's certainly extremely important. And so we covered that very closely.
Rabbi Goldberg [00:18:58]:
We also define who's. Well, I wrote for the Intermountain Jewish shoes from Israel from 1972 to 1983, and when I came back here, I saw right away, if we don't begin to focus on the youth, we're not going to have a readership going forward. And so we did many things to focus on the youth. One of the things we do is we publish a feature once a year called Top Teens, and we do some research which kids are doing these fantastic community service projects which kids are getting the top scores on the acts and ASAT. We have one this year coming up we've never had before. We have a graduating high school senior who's a licensed pilot. We've had people going into the military. We have people who have gone to the Olympics. So we focus on great kids. We carry that through. We have a feature we call 15 under 40 so Young Leaders. We have a Hanukkah coloring contest for kids in grades kindergarten through 6th grade, get hundreds of entries. So we're talking to kids because people talk about, well, what's the future of the press? You need to have readers who are not just older people.
Regan-Porter [00:20:19]:
Before we leave the serious and tragic, certainly over your 110 years as a publication, you've seen all kinds of anti-Semitism and bigotry and everything. I think the stats show that hate crimes have gone up in the last 5-10 years. As Jewish press, are you sometimes the target or are you more reporting on what's going on with the community at large? Are you sometimes a target?
Shana Goldberg [00:20:43]:
I don't believe we have been aside from that one instance with that Westboro Baptist Church.
Rabbi Goldberg [00:20:48]:
And we weren't targeted, really. The Westboro Baptist Church targeted everybody they could find, if you remember them. So they demonstrated outside of our office and they're demonstrating and they're screaming and yelling. Meanwhile, we had a couple of reporters out there and they locate a couple of the demonstrators who start having some friendly conversations and start sort of way. It was like it was a game, it was a play, so to speak. Have some friendly conversations and some smiles and this and that. We're 5ft away, somebody know, holding up the sign and looking very serious. But no, we haven't been targeted.
Shana Goldberg [00:21:29]:
But after what happened with Charlie Hebdo in France, we did make sure to take our own security more seriously.
Rabbi Goldberg [00:21:38]:
Yeah, we put in place a couple of measures and thank God they've not needed to be. They've not revealed anything.
Changes to the business of news at IJN and the Jewish press more broadly
Regan-Porter [00:21:46]:
Let's talk a little about the business and I think our listeners will certainly know what's happened with the newspaper industry over the last almost 20 years now. How has it been different for in amount in Jewish news? Has the Jewish press been more insulated from both the reader changes as well as the advertising shifts that have gone on in the industry?
Shana Goldberg [00:22:08]:
Well, what's interesting in the Jewish press level is there's a lot of different stories. What I've noticed going to the annual meeting of the Jewish press is that the independent newspapers have actually done a little bit better than some of the newspapers that were community funded and produced, which was sort of surprising, especially during the Pandemic. So a lot of them did have to switch to other models. We worked really hard during the Pandemic to make sure that we never missed a single issue and that was very important to us in terms of being a newspaper that publishes legal notices, but also just in terms of a commitment to our readers, because our readers, the feedback keeps coming back, even from younger, newer subscribers. They rely on the print. And so we have really committed ourselves to continuing to produce that for them. But in other communities it's been a different story and they haven't necessarily weathered the storm. My father mentioned this writer that we now have as a contributing know, he'd been one of, one of the flagship newspapers and they switched to a digital model. But it's really just a even it's not really a newspaper anymore. So there have been different models, kind of the way it's been in Colorado trying out nonprofit newsrooms. And some have seen more success, some have seen less success.
Rabbi Goldberg [00:23:39]:
And some of the models are very simple. Everybody who's a publisher starts looking, what could we cut? What do we really need here? And what can we live without? What's a luxury and what isn't? And we did an awfully lot of that. And I have to say you got to work twice as hard to get to the same place. And I'm hoping we're working on the assumption we're going to keep going, but you got to recreate it every week. There's no long term. Somebody sugar daddy coming along and say, yeah, we'll take care of all the expenses for two years. It doesn't happen. We greatly appreciate the readers, greatly appreciate.
Shana Goldberg [00:24:20]:
The advertisers, and we have long standing relationships with so many advertisers as well with law firms. These are relationships that we nurture. And both sides of it, I guess, know that we're committed to what we're doing. And I think that we value that in those advertisers. And I think that's something they do value about us.
Regan-Porter [00:24:48]:
You mentioned ensuring that you're speaking to, writing about engaging younger readers all the way down to kids in school. Have you found that millennials, Gen Z, that they're picking up the print paper? What are you seeing there?
Rabbi Goldberg [00:25:02]:
Haven't taken any surveys, but anecdotally I do know that there are older people, sixty s, seventy s, eighty s, they want to read the paper online. And there are younger people, twenty s, thirty s, they want it in print. I haven't taken surveys, I don't know what the proportion is. But I do know this idea that if you're young, you only look online and if you're old, you only want it in print is not so. There's another aspect. You talked about your first question, maybe what might be unique about it about in Jewish news or the Jewish press in general. And that is a lot of people like to read their paper on Shabbos on the Sabbath. We publish on Fridays. So a lot of people just like to relax with their hard copy print, and especially if you're a Sabbath observant and not using electronic devices. So there is still an appreciation for print and I think the idea that let me give a little anecdote. We go back maybe 30 years, I'm not going to mention any names or cities, but there was a dear colleague, wonderful man, who, when computers first came on the scene, invested something like $80,000 in those original Macs. You remember those square rectangular boxes, which today you could realize you could write out something by hand faster than you could do in that machine. Well, because it was the latest and the greatest, he invested in it. Over time, his paper went out of business because he put so much money into this technology. And the reason he did is because this is the future. And it was not thinking. It was like a fad. So the idea that, oh, we're going to to go go to digital, we'll do better, there's a certain fad mentality to that. And for some, of course, it does work, no question about it. But in our newspaper at least, we find that keeping the print, keeping the digital both important. And when you subscribe to the Intermountain Jewish News, you can get it digitally or print or both for the same price.
Shana Goldberg [00:27:20]:
And one thing I wanted to mention is a few years ago, I was at an AJPA. That's the name of the American Jewish Press Association conference, and they were having every year there's a panel about the same topic because it's important to everyone. And one of the people said, when did 20 year olds ever subscribe to newspapers? Just in the history of newspapers, nothing to do with digital. That was 50 years ago. Did a 20 year old subscribe to a newspaper? It's something that you do more as you become an adult. And in our case, we've found people with families, young families, he was saying the equivalent. Now, the gen zers, they were never going to subscribe to a newspaper when they were 20. So that's not necessarily who we're even necessarily trying to reach. It's like young families. And it's a family newspaper in the sense, of course, not everything's appropriate for children because it's terrorism and whatnot. But we do get that feedback a lot that the family reads the newspaper. And so that's also where the print product is really valuable, because it's something that's in the family's home, and people might come over for Sabbath dinner to their parents, and that's where they're seeing the newspaper. So we do have gen zers that are reading the paper. They're probably not subscribing, but they're seeing it.
Regan-Porter [00:28:40]:
So advertisers and subscribers are very important for you as a business. Are there other components that are part of your revenue mix? Are you doing events? Are you looking at podcasts or do you have email newsletters? What's sort of the range of things you're doing?
Shana Goldberg [00:28:54]:
Well, we do a lot of the things you said, although we're not necessarily monetizing it, which is something we want to work on. We're starting a new podcast, and we're doing it as a very soft kind of thing because it's very new to us. And so in the first instance, we will monetize it, but on a very small level because we're starting out, we don't want to oversell something we're not comfortable with. And then I think down the road, we want to monetize that more seriously once we develop the product and really feel confident in what we're selling. Because anything you sell, you don't want to promise something you can't deliver. So in terms of newsletters, we do have a weekly newsletter. It's monetized sometimes if an advertiser does have the option to include a banner within the newsletter, so we do that sometimes if that's something an advertiser is interested in, it's part of the mix of what we offer events is something we've talked about getting into. We're doing a huge event next week, and, yeah, we're doing a reception for 110th Anniversary Magazine. And then we collaborated with the Golden Mayor House Museum. Goldberg mayor being one of the prime ministers of Israel. She lived in Denver, actually, 110 years ago. Her sister lived here, and she ran away from home in Milwaukee to live with her sister. And she always said that that's where she was awoken to Zionism and politics, socialism, et cetera, because I guess her sister's house was kind of a hive of political activity. So we collaborated with that museum to do exhibition that picks individuals from some of the individuals from Colorado, jewish individuals who just had a huge impact in Colorado, but beyond, like, for example, Apropos, the person who invented Barbie was a Jewish woman from Denver. So people like that who were from here, but they really had a massive impact. So that's an event that we're doing. It's not monetized again. We're putting our foot into it, and we're just kind of seeing the components that are involved with doing something like this. And I think that it is something we would like to do because I think that we could do some great events because of our relationships with different people in the community could really bring something to an audience. Like, we were talking about that recently.
Rabbi Goldberg [00:31:25]:
Yeah, but on the other hand, you asked, how do you adjust to the more difficult economic atmosphere for newspapers? Well, a lot of other places that do events, they're basically independently funded, and so that's very nice. But if you're not independently funded and then you decided to fund an event, those are the kind of hard decisions you need to make and the priorities you need to establish. What do we want to do here? Have a great event or make sure the paper comes out next week?
Words of wisdom
Regan-Porter [00:31:57]:
All right, well, I would like to end to see if you have any words of wisdom. So 110 years for the paper, 80 years in the Goldberg family. I'm sure you had a lot of wisdom passed down.
Rabbi Goldberg [00:32:09]:
Funny you should ask that question because I have been gathering over the last eight or twelve weeks little pieces of wisdom that have been articulated by my parents, by a few other relatives, and by other people who are friends. And I'm not publishing it yet because these are things that just pop into your head. You have never made a list. And they keep popping to my head over time, so I'm not rushing to publish. But my dad used to say, for example, I wish I had a rich father like you have. Or he used to say, influence is something you think you have until you try to use it. My mother used to say, So apropos when you read all these medical statistics, well, 70% of the patients do very well, and 98% and so forth. My mom used to say, if it happens to you, it's 100%. Another thing she used to say, very apropos about the context of newspapers is there are no secrets in this world. She used to say, the most expensive things in life are those that are for free. I've collected a couple of others that I have heard I don't think are printed. Abe Ibn, the famous orator from Israel, once said, an expert is somebody who knows everything, but nothing else. My friend Michael Steinberg from St. Louis just told me a great one. He said, Success is a poor teacher. Rabbi Salaveshik, I heard say, thank God for all the prayers that weren't answered. So we're gathering up the little pieces of wisdom. We'll be publishing them sometime in the next month or two.
Regan-Porter [00:33:59]:
Shayna and Rabbi, thank you very much.
Rabbi Goldberg [00:34:01]:
Thank you for the opportunity. Thanks so much.
Regan-Porter [00:34:07]:
Thank you for listening to the Local News Matters podcast, and thanks to the Rabbi and Shana for the important work you do. Check our show notes to find links to IJN and others.
A final thanks to our production partners at Pirate Audio. Pirate Audio believes every community deserves great things to listen to, and they are on a mission to help local newsrooms reach their communities via audio. If you're interested in starting a podcast or need production support for an existing one, let me know and I'd be happy to connect you.
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