As having the last word goes, this is particularly poignant – the personal and professional end of an era.
When I was informed that the last issue of The International Jerusalem Post would be published on November 28, and that subscribers would be moved to the younger, glossier Jerusalem Report, it did not come as a surprise. But it marks the start of a new chapter for the newspaper that has been such a significant part of my life.
The IJP reached me as a reader long before I reached it as an editor. When we were preparing for our aliyah in London in the 1970s, my family subscribed to it. At the time, it was a black-and-white newsletter on flimsy paper and reading it felt a bit like being part of an underground community.
IJP forged connections between Israel and Diaspora
It helped us feel connected to the country through that turbulent decade which included the 1973 Yom Kippur War, grisly terrorist attacks, Katyusha rockets, and, of course, some celebrations, notably: the 1976 Entebbe hostage rescue, the 1979 peace treaty with Egypt, Maccabi Tel Aviv Basketball Club’s victories, and two consecutive Eurovision Song Contest wins, the second of which took place in 1979, shortly before we left England for Israel’s sunnier shores and the opportunity to read the daily Jerusalem Post.
The International edition came back into my life in 1986 when I was taking a course on “Media in Wartime” as part of my MA in communications at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. For my seminar paper on “news filtering,” I chose to analyze the items from the daily Post that were reprinted in the International edition in the early months of what was then called Operation Peace for Galilee and is now known as the First Lebanon War.
I don’t remember exactly what I wrote, but I’m sure I made the process of selecting and editing news stories with tight constraints of time and space sound easier than I later discovered it to be.
I began working at The Jerusalem Post in November 1988 and, after various positions, became editor of The International Jerusalem Post in January 2003 – my dream job. I stayed in that position until my retirement in November 2023, many wars, intifadas, peace treaties, and success stories later.
By the time I retired, the International was a 32-page, full-color news magazine. A lot of effort was made by me and the graphic artists I worked with – in particular, Yael Oren and Debi Lerner-Rubin – to ensure that the paper looked good even when the news was grim.
Israel has a dizzying news cycle. On just one deadline day some years ago, I had to cover rocket attacks from Gaza, a military operation, a ceasefire, a terrorist bombing in Tel Aviv, and another ceasefire, while writing my column and readying the paper to send to the press.
It’s hard to keep up, and obviously, many readers now rely on the Jerusalem Post’s website and digital services for news updates, while the International concentrates more on in-depth stories and analyses. I am confident Jerusalem Report editor-in-chief Ruth Eglash will also continue this tradition.
One of the best aspects of the job was receiving feedback from readers. All were passionate about Israel, but it is hard to discern other characteristics in common.
Although at different times over the years The Jerusalem Post published a Christian edition and a New York edition, both of which pulled away some of the International’s original readership, letters and emails continued to arrive from Evangelicals in the Bible Belt, ultra-Orthodox Jews in New York’s tristate area, Reform Jews in Las Vegas, and just about every other religious stream and school in North America, Europe, Australia, South Africa, and elsewhere.
During one long school vacation when my son was young, I brought him into the office and kept him busy placing pins on a map of the world, marking each of the nearly 80 countries where the International edition had subscribers. It was educational for both of us. It was always clear to me that readers in distant places were opening their homes and letting us in to tell the news from Israel that they could not get locally.
Several years ago, I read up on the history of the Faroe Islands and Greenland before meeting enthusiastic readers who were visiting Jerusalem and asked to see me and the Post editorial offices. And for years, I welcomed annual Rosh Hashanah greetings from the Burmese Jewish community in Myanmar.
We also received a surprising amount of mail from what we fondly called “our captive audience,” prisoners in penitentiaries all over the US, and even in New Zealand.
One of the most touching letters I received included an $18 check to be forwarded to a family whose seven-year-old daughter had been murdered in a terrorist attack. The donor – writing on state penitentiary paper – apologized that he could not afford a larger donation “at the moment.”
A New York librarian once told me that the International edition was kept in the reference section after two elderly gentlemen had fought over it and, on occasion, it had been stolen from the shelf. It was a comical image, but it was extremely satisfying for me as editor.
A reader in Australia sent me a book he thought I’d like – not one he had written, but something he thought would interest me based on my weekly columns.
I took perverse pleasure in shocking digital-era interns by showing them handwritten and typed letters that had arrived in envelopes with stamps from distant lands.
The granddaughter (or maybe great-granddaughter) of a reader in California asked if we could help a fan celebrate his 100th birthday, and we sent him a mock cover of the International edition with his photo and snatches of his fascinating life story, and featured him on the letters page that week.
One couple asked for an extra copy of the issue of the week their twin sons were born, and 13 years later asked for copies in honor of their boys’ bar mitzvahs. PDFs have taken their place, but there is something special about a physical, tangible newspaper that can be treasured.
One chance encounter before I became editor proved to me the far-reaching impact of the International edition. On vacation in Scotland in 1994, I was sitting on an Edinburgh “hop on, hop off” tour bus. At one stop, a large man “hopped on,” sat down next to me and started one of those touristy conversations: What’s your name, where do you come from, what do you do?
As I answered, a broad smile crossed his face. He was a Canadian who had visited Israel a couple of years before and, on his return, had taken out a subscription to The International Jerusalem Post “to keep in touch.” As soon as he put my name and byline together – this was in the days before photo bylines – he blurted out: “Oh, I’m so pleased I bumped into you. I have a question about that piece you wrote about the Hula Valley last month.” Today, he would probably simply have sent an email right after reading my piece, but it would have lacked the magic of that meeting.
Over the years, many readers have shared personal stories and experiences; some of them had been reading the paper for decades.
Legend has it that Jerusalem Post founding editor Gershon Agron came up with the idea of a “Jerusalem Post Weekly Overseas Edition” in 1949, when the local market was shrinking as the British and Commonwealth soldiers left the newly founded state.
After a few false starts, the trial issue came out the week ending September 5, 1959, shortly before the death of Agron, who gave it his sickbed blessing. On Friday, September 18, the first full issue of The Jerusalem Post Weekly – 1,000 copies – was published, edited by the late Meir (Mike) Ronnen.
It was long before the words “global village” had become a catchphrase, in an age when journalism was still a vocation and personal computers belonged to the realm of science fiction.
Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion wrote a letter of congratulations, saying: “Modern science has made the world smaller by high-speed communication. But the nature of the world will be largely shaped by what is communicated. Anyone who promotes a wider knowledge in other countries of what goes on in his country is helping to promote peace and goodwill among nations....”
Page 3, or Page III as it appeared, carried a long piece by Shimon Peres under the headline “Slogans – Or Security” which led with: “One thing on which practically all circles in Israel are agreed is that the safety and well-being of Israel’s citizens must come before either the restoring of the ‘historic boundaries’ of the country or even peace with our neighbors....”
Both messages are still relevant in the post-October 7, 2023, world. The nature of journalism has changed over the years, but the news has been surprisingly cyclical.
Times change, and the media world has developed in ways I could not have imagined when I first started my career. I am proud to have had the privilege of steering The International Jerusalem Post through two tumultuous decades before handing it over to my friend and colleague David Brinn.
Now it is his turn to hand the helm over to Ruth Eglash and The Jerusalem Report staff, and let the concept continue in a new, high-quality, biweekly format. May there always be good news to print along with the more challenging stories as the word continues to go out from Jerusalem.
The writer’s weekly “Opening Lines” (“My Word”) columns will continue to appear at: www.jpost.com/author/liat-collins; Liat Collins Journalist on Facebook.com; Liat Collins on LinkedIn; and @LiatCollins1 on X (Twitter), as well as the Friday Jerusalem Post daily print edition.