Jewish Exponent's editor takes on mission of redefinition

After conducting an interview with Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat in Tunisia in 1993, a Jewish Exponent reporter excitedly called her editor.

He was equally pleased by the coup, but her story never ran. The Jewish Federation of Greater Philadelphia, the Exponent's publisher, spiked it, saying it gave a platform to the enemy.

Sixteen years later, the reporter is back at the Exponent, and this time she's calling the shots.

"I've always felt that knowledge is power, and to know your enemy is to know what you're up against," says Swarthmore College graduate Lisa Hostein, 48, who took over as executive editor Jan. 5.

Clearly, this isn't your Jewish grandmother's Exponent.

The federation's micromanaging days are long past, but Hostein, like all her print brethren, faces a steeper challenge: how to make the 122-year-old Exponent - once a "must read" in the region's large Jewish community - relevant again.

The weekly newspaper, which has a circulation of 40,000, lost 20 percent of its readership over the last decade under editor Jonathan Tobin, an unabashed conservative who left to become editor of Commentary.

Some find the Exponent too mainstream, too conservative, too old. The joke among the Jewish press, Hostein says, is that the median age of Exponent readers is "death."

Actually, it's a comparatively robust 57, according to general manager David Alpher. Ten years ago, however, it was 50.

Hostein, a 25-year veteran of the Jewish press, acknowledges that criticism of the Exponent as appealing only to a narrow demographic "is true and has been true."

"I know a lot of people who felt, for whatever reason, unconnected to the newspaper and, by extension, from the community. I want to change that."

The key, she says, is inclusiveness. She plans to push beyond the Exponent's comfort zone to reflect all segments of the area's estimated Jewish population of 205,000.

That means accommodating other points of view instead of being perceived as toeing the party line of the federation.

"My goal is to cross every spectrum - religious, political, socioeconomic, demographic," Hostein says. "Everything important to the Jewish community is up for discussion as far as I'm concerned.

"Everybody should feel engaged in the Jewish community, and a newspaper is a great way to make that happen."

Rabbi Dayle Friedman, 52, director of the Center for Aging and Judaism of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College in Wyncote, agrees that the Exponent needs to expand its scope.

"The Jewish community is much richer and more diverse than what's been reflected in the Exponent," she says. "There's a lack of openness to some of the less conventional things happening."

One example is same-sex marriage announcements, she says. Friedman, a heterosexual resident of West Mount Airy, would like to see the Exponent publish notices of such unions.

Though numerous mainstream publications - most notably the New York Times - have carried those announcements for years, it is against the policy of the federation's 19-person publications board, says board chairman Bennett L. Aaron.

"I'd be glad to take the flak I'm sure we'd get from the Orthodox community, which would be in an uproar," says Aaron, 75, a lawyer. "It's a very touchy issue, no doubt about it, but I'd be happy to raise it."

Says Hostein: "Any Jewish person who feels connected enough to the Exponent to want their announcement in it should be included."

Hostein is all about building community. She's been doing it since she was growing up in Rhode Island, her big sister says.

"I was the mouth. I did the arguing. She was quieter, calmer," says Ellen Auster, 50, a tax consultant with a large New York accounting firm and a University of Pennsylvania graduate.

"Lisa always tried to resolve things. She was a consensus-builder and a great listener. She can get along with anybody."

In Hostein's debut issue, Jan. 8, she wrote an editorial supporting Israel's recent incursion into Gaza, a situation that triggers intense passion on both sides throughout the Jewish community.

Though not a disciple of "Israel right or wrong," Hostein has a deep love for the country and lived there for 18 months in the mid-1980s. All her positions stem from that connection, she says.

She "would consider" running op-eds critical of Israel "as long as [the writer] made a very legitimate argument based on love for Israel and concern for its security."

War is nothing new for Israel, but this time "there's a real existential crisis" in Hostein's view. "Even . . . those most to the left of Israeli society worry about the nuclear threat from Iran."

The Exponent, like all newspapers, faces its own existential crisis.

The weekly, to which every federation donor receives a subscription, last year posted a "modest" loss and is expected to lose money this year, Aaron says. It turned a profit in 2006 and 2007.

Still, he bullishly predicts that it will be around "for the foreseeable future - at least 10 years."

One reason is that the Exponent's readers are attractive to advertisers.

They average $145,000 a year in income and $1.2 million in net worth, says business manager Alpher, 46. Eighty percent are college graduates; 40 percent have advanced degrees.

As for Hostein's personal demographic, she grew up outside Providence and belonged to a Reform synagogue her parents helped found. She was active in Jewish youth groups locally and, later, at the national level.

During her senior year at Swarthmore, she joined the Exponent as an intern. After graduation, in 1983, she turned down the New Republic to work at the Exponent full-time, she says.

The same year, she met her future husband, lawyer Joel Oshtry, through his personal ad - where else? - in the Exponent. They married three years later, have two young children, and live on the Main Line.

In mid-1994, Hostein was named editor of New York's JTA, the worldwide Jewish news service that provides most of the national and international news to Jewish media outlets, including the Exponent.

She commuted to New York until returning to the Exponent in December. Now she's picking up the conversation where it left off 14 years ago.

"A healthy Jewish community is one that engages in disagreement and debate," she says. "That's what Judaism is all about, going back to the Talmud.

"That's what I intend to do on the pages of the Exponent."