A new journalism fellowship focused on Judaism and Israel is trying hard, its director told JNS, to ensure that it brings a balanced set of political perspectives to its work. But thus far, it’s struggled to enlist the kind of volunteer mentors on the right that it has already secured on the left and in the center.
Rob Eshman, a senior columnist for The Forward, and former top editor and publisher of the Jewish Journal in Los Angeles, serves as director of the Karsh Fellowship, which describes itself as a “nonpartisan, ideologically pluralistic space for journalists to immerse themselves in the study of core Jewish issues and to develop their own ideas.”
The fellowship currently lists 12 volunteer journalist mentors on its site. Eshman told JNS that organizers reached out to many more, including from right-wing publications, but had difficulty securing the kind of political balance it seeks.
The fellowship extended its deadline for a month and a half “to expand the pool of candidates,” said the Jewish Federation Los Angeles, which is part of the program. Eshman told JNS that the fellowship is “actively looking for people across the political spectrum, because that’s how you do journalism education.”
The CNN political commentator Van Jones, who has supported Israel since Oct. 7, is listed as a mentor in the program, as is Jodi Rudoren, who oversees newsletters at The New York Times and is a former editor-in-chief of The Forward.
In her latter position, Rudoren wrote on April 5, 2024, that “an immediate ceasefire is a moral imperative and the best thing for Israel” and accused Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of not wanting “to declare victory and exit Gaza, because he knows it will lead to his own exit from power.”
The same day that Rudoren published the op-ed, the American Jewish Committee stated that “at every turn, the United States must be clear that its policy continues to be that there can be no ceasefire agreement without the release of all the hostages, as these two issues must remain inextricably linked.”
Two days later, Netanyahu said that “there will be no ceasefire without the return of the hostages. It simply will not happen. This is the policy of the government of Israel, and I welcome the fact that the Biden administration made it clear on Friday that this is still its position as well.”
“Hamas is preventing a deal. Its extreme demands are designed to bring about a ceasefire and leave it intact, to ensure its survival, existence and ability to endanger our citizens and soldiers,” the Israeli premier added. “Capitulation to Hamas’s demands would allow it to try and repeat the crimes of Oct. 7 again and again, as it has promised to do.”
The Los Angeles Federation told JNS that it “will not take positions on the political views of individual mentors.”
“One of the great strengths of the Jewish tradition, and of a healthy democracy, is robust, respectful debate, even, and perhaps especially, on difficult issues,” Federation told JNS. “This program is rooted in a deep commitment to the State of Israel, and we believe that engaging with a range of perspectives ultimately strengthens our collective understanding and resilience.”
Several of the listed mentors on the fellowship site have denounced U.S. President Donald Trump and Netanyahu extensively on social media, including in the days since the fellowship was announced. One listed mentor has posted messages supporting the U.S. president and Israeli prime minister.
Eshman told JNS that the mentors must come from news outlets that serve all sides of the political spectrum, and the criteria for mentorship were people with “excellent credentials.”
“We want journalists to be exposed to the full spectrum of viewpoints,” he told JNS. “A diversity in points of view, diversity of opinions, diversity of approaches. It’s designed to build better journalists.”
‘Oct. 8 Jewish journalist’
Jacki Karsh, a philanthropist and on-camera field reporter for the news magazine LA County: Closeup on the station LA36, self-identifies as “the definition of an Oct. 8 Jewish journalist.”
Just as many Jews have said they rethought their Jewish identities in the aftermath of Oct. 7, Karsh, who is funding the new fellowship with her husband, told JNS that she didn’t really cover Jewish stories before Oct. 7.
“I have always been involved, but I wasn’t using my skillset as a journalist for the benefit of our community,” she said. That all changed after Hamas’s attack.
“I wake up in the morning asking, ‘How am I going to help the Jewish people today?’” she told JNS. “I go to sleep at night asking, ‘How am I going to help the Jewish people tomorrow?’”
Karsh and her husband, Jeff Karsh, founder and managing partner of a real estate investment firm, recently created the eponymous program after she realized that Israel needed to succeed at an “information war” in addition to its defensive military operations against terror groups.
“The information war was something nobody was prepared for,” she said.
‘The storytellers of tomorrow’
A board member of the Jewish Federation Los Angeles, Karsh pitched the idea of a new fellowship for journalists to fight anti-Israel and antisemitic misinformation to Rabbi Noah Farkas, Federation president and CEO. He told her that Federation isn’t in the news business but ought to be, she said.
Karsh and her husband stated that they created the national fellowship to provide mainstream media journalists in the United States with “the training and resources necessary to report on Jewish issues with accuracy, depth and nuance.”
She told JNS that they funded the fellowship personally “to enable the program to be fully funded from the outset and to provide stipends directly to each fellow.”
The fellowship comes with a $4,000 stipend for participants to create in-depth research projects about Israel or the Jewish world. They must attend three in-person training sessions in Los Angeles, New York and Washington, D.C.
Farkas told JNS that Federation is “proud to support this innovative and timely fellowship,” which is set to welcome its inaugural cohort later this year.
The fellowship aims to “craft journalists who will report on Judaism and Israel with accuracy and fairness, who understand Judaism in all its diversity,” Karsh told JNS. “I want to invest in the storytellers of tomorrow that will continue telling Jewish stories that we have told for centuries.”
The philanthropist and broadcaster told JNS that she is trying to avoid the rise in “activism masquerading as journalism” and that the fellowship aims to “produce excellent journalism.”
“The only thing we’re really pro is pro-facts,” she said.
Past fellowships have helped Jewish journalists tell Jewish stories, but the new program focuses on “Jewish issues, not Jewish journalists,” Eshman told JNS, adding that non-Jews are welcome to apply.
Karsh thinks there aren’t enough Jewish reporters in mainstream newsrooms to cover all the news coming out of Israel and Gaza, and reporters, whether Jewish, often lack the background and knowledge to grasp the context of the story.
“I don’t anticipate that our journalism fellowship is going to change the problem as a whole,” she told JNS. “But it can still shift some of the narrative.”
