Authors, poets replace reporters at an Israeli newspaper for one day

Re:Authors, poets replace reporters at an Israeli newspaper ... by nir on Friday June 12, 2009 @05:15PM (#655451)

I don't know if any of this was translated to English, the Hebrew articles are here: http://www.haaretz.co.il/hasite/spages/1091226.html

It was done as part of "Book Week", which is celebrated every year around this time in Israel. They got some of Israel's leading writers like David Grossman and Etgar Keret to take part and some of the stories are excellent.

My favorite touch was the weather report, which contains a poem for summer written by one of Israel's best known poets, Roni Somek. The weather reports talks of hot & humid early summer weather, and he writes (roughly translated):

  Summer is the least
  sharp pencil of the seasons' box
  I write with it
  a love letter
  to the tailor who cut off
  the women's blouses
  and skirts
  a few inches
  of winter.
  This year too, perhaps
  it will be hot in the valleys

(It's a lot better in the original form ;)) http://www.haaretz.co.il/hasite/spages/1091757.html

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Re:Authors, poets replace reporters at an Israeli newspaper ... by rms on Friday June 12, 2009 @05:16PM (#655454)

Any idea what the paper, English edition of Haaretz had today if not translations of these articles?

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Re:Authors, poets replace reporters at an Israeli newspaper ... by nir on Friday June 12, 2009 @05:46PM (#655481)

The authors didn't really write the whole newspaper, just some magazine-style reports and some of regular features - weather report, TV critic, letters to the editor (by another poet) etc. News, sports etc items were still there, written by the regular reporters.

(BTW, in general, Haaretz in English is quite different and better quality than the Hebrew version. This is perhaps why Haaretz is held in much higher regard outside Israel.)

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Re:Authors, poets replace reporters at an Israeli newspaper ... by rms on Saturday June 13, 2009 @03:27AM (#655941)

What makes the English Haaretz better? I don't speak Hebrew but I remember comparing the (paper) English and Hebrew editions of Haaretz and not noticing much difference. I can't specifically recall looking past the front page though.

My tour guide in Israel was a former Haaretz English translator and he nitpicked several things in my English copy, saying their translators had gotten sloppy since he left.

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Re:Authors, poets replace reporters at an Israeli newspaper ... by nir on Saturday June 13, 2009 @04:06PM (#656431)

In the Hebrew version, every other article contains spelling mistakes and glaring errors - and that's before the simply poor, Techcrunch-like level of reporting standards. Due to financial issues and internal power struggles, Haaretz lost many of its experienced writers and editors in the last decade and is unable to attract new talent when it pays sub-minimum wage salaries.

(This is true for most of Israeli media, btw, it's just that Haaretz is for some reason held at higher regard by outsiders)

All this seems to affect the English version less, probably because it contains a small number of editors/writers relative to the Hebrew one, and they tend to have learned their craft in the US/UK, which still have far better journalism standards than most of the world.

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Re:Authors, poets replace reporters at an Israeli newspaper ... by krav on Friday June 12, 2009 @05:39PM (#655473)

Love that poem. Love it.

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