on the narrative of giants

For those who oversee volunteers, whether they be unpaid interns in a newsroom or trash collectors out on a scenic byway, this is your surest tactic: make your volunteers part of the narrative.

In a single short conversation each shift, this is what Bradley does for his interns at the English website of Haaretz. When the computer network is down and no one has access to the wire, we have no choice but to sit and talk. He talks about how Ahad HaAm worked at the paper. Natan Alterman, Israel’s first national poet, was found scribbling poetry instead of writing news stories, and was fired on the spot. His desk must be somewhere in storage, and Bradley’s always wanted to look for it because it must have Alterman’s poetry etched into it.

It’s a little unfathomable. That Haaretz is the equivalent of the New York Times in Israel, and its legacy must have such controversy embedded in its name-- it was founded by Ze'ev Jabotinsky, the far right-wing military Zionist journalist.

“It’s a looney bin.” Bradley says. Even working here, he tells us, it’s hard to understand how they produce top-notch work. Everything’s disorganized, and everyone’s crazy. As an intern, this means I immediately felt needed and appreciated. In the workplace in Israel, you are automatically entrusted with more responsibility than in a suspicious American workplace :). Like all the interns, I’ve been updating the English-language website, so that when the Pentagon staff gets to work in the morning and opens this page, it’s easily navigated with neat 80x60 pixel photos under each section. I always thought there was a single webmaster who oversaw such things, someone checking every word on the website 24 hours a day. No, it’s me and a buddy. We figure things out by trial and error, drink hot chocolate, take a lunchbreak.

With a single anecdote-- like the one about the intern who with a single letter nearly triggered a scandal by writing “Jew York” on a front page headline-- we are convinced that precision is important, our work is indispensable, and that we are standing on the shoulders of giants. Which we are. Otherwise, there’s not much reason to live in Tel Aviv.

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check out Haaretz's English website at www.Haaretz.com