Times: Ethnic Jewish e-magazine Tablet Launches in a pretty bubble

Nice of David Carr at the Times to mention "Tablet" in his "Media Decoder" blog in his post, "A New Online Magazine About Jewish News and Culture." It would be nicer yet if he read the site and made some comments about its content.

He quips to conclude his blurb,

With the tag line “A new read on Jewish life,” Tablet features a podcast of Joy Ladin, a poet and a professor of English at Stern College for Women at Yeshiva University who underwent a sex change. Safe to say that not everything that will be covered in Tablet came down from the mountain on those original stone artifacts.

We looked around the new site and have praise for its attractive design and impressive sounding staff. The mag also has clever headline writers.

But "a new read" is a bad tag line. What happens after three months when it is no longer "new"? Do they shorten the tag to "a read"? And BTW it's not descriptive of the nature of the content is it? Are they progressive or conservative? Young or old? (Of course, silly question, everyone on the web is young.) If they are a "read" does that include multi-media? (There is "weekly" audio on the site.) And are they pro-religion or anti-religion? Pro-Zionist or pro-Palestinian? Do you really want us to guess about all of these questions?

And then what of the other part of the tag, "Jewish life." Nothing about dead Jews? No obituaries? We gather that this means concern with "culture" but as opposed to what?

Culture, religion and politics of an ethnic group. Look at us. We are so hip and special.

No, no. Please tell us what distinguishes you from a hole in the wall.

Why do we need another Forward or Jewish Week?

What big stories did your people break in their previous lives?

What kind of new knowledge will you create? What value will you add?

Will you be honest with us? Too much among the stories, posts and reviews that you published so far that claims or insinuates they are your own new discoveries - when they are not. Other journals or blogs have written witty insights on those subjects days or weeks ago. Are you hoping nobody will notice that?

Are you planning to stay in the sparkly bubble that you so gleefully appear to have erected around your enterprise?

And please realize that we mean all of this interrogation in the nicest way. We would like to see you succeed, not just float around the Internet until this pretty bubble bursts. [hat tip to henry and others]