Yeshiva World News and Vos Iz Neias you decide:
Where do you get your frum Jewish news (loshon harah) online from?
I used to go to Yeshiva World News (YWN) until I discovered that Vos Iz Neias (VIN) was simply much better. You see YWN censors its news like all good right wing news outlets. Don’t get me wrong, all news is censored and rewritten to suit the needs of the audience- but YWN and VIN have the same audiences, which are the chassidish and yeshivish communities.
News stories that have anything to do with making frum people look bad are withheld from publication on Yeshiva World News, while stories that make Lubavitchers or the modern orthodox community look bad are published with glee. VIN simply publishes everything, incuding scandals and child molestation cases within the frum community – which make for some great commentary – mostly people gasping “oh it couldn’t be true” and why should we beleive the FBI over our instinct that no frum man can succumb to the evilness of child molestation.
Although the Yeshiva World News site is not nearly as attractive as Vos Iz Neias’s site, I will hand it to YWN for allowing people to vent all day long about all the problems of the frum community. Take a visit to the coffee room which should really be called “we don’t want to wait for a whole week to read the readers respond section of the Yated” so that we can complain about how untznius everyone is, how off the derech kids are enjoying false happiness and how the shidduch crisis is getting worse because people demand pictures on the shidduch resumes.
Another overlooked but great way to censor news and make money at the same time is by only allowing registered users to comment. YWN does this, thus allowing them to sell your name to companies seeking to send email blasts out to clients. VIN, however does not censor its commenters, and allows for dissenting commenters and “liberal” or “frei” commenters to state their opnions. There is even one thread in the YWN coffee room entitled “should pro-freikeit commenters be allowed to comment?” that is just plain old scary.
I have decided that YWN caters to non-working stay at home moms of one in Lakewood and Monsey that have nothing better to do then vent in a “kosher” environment- to me its not too kosher- but who am I. If you really want to see the hate and problems within the frum community just visit “out of the mailbag” and you can read what people in the “heimishe circles” really think.
So if you want to read about the newest “crisis” in the frum community or what the wives in Lakewood think of shidduch back round checks head over to yeshiva world news, and if you want to read a more professional account of the days news with more interesting articles head over to vos iz Neias.
By the way if I wasn’t a blogger I would probably just stick to tattered copies of the Economist and Atlantic Monthly for my news as well as Google.
49 responses so far ↓
1 YWN Hater // Oct 30, 2008 at 11:16 am
Those guys at YWN are such lousy SOBS!
Buncha mother fuckers
2 Yanky // Oct 30, 2008 at 11:55 am
If you ever want to see “sinas chinam” at its absolute worst, read the comments on either of those sites.
For the record, I like VIN better. Two reasons:
1. They will post stories that may make the frum community look bad. Ignoring these issues as YWN does won’t make them go away.
2. YWN posts way too much Israeli politics.
As an aside, it is such a pet peeve of mine when they edit people’s names. Editing some guy’s name out of a story is pointless. If I see that “Chaim S.” from Monsey recently stole/cheated/raped/etc., I’m sure as hell googling the story to find out who they are talking about.
3 Wolfish Musings // Oct 30, 2008 at 11:57 am
“YWN does this, thus allowing them to sell your name to companies seeking to send email blasts out to clients.”
To be fair, I don’t recall ever receiving a single spam email from a YWN advertiser.
The Wolf
4 Dave // Oct 30, 2008 at 12:05 pm
VIN does actually censor posts. All posts go through a moderator, and they drop a fair number of “frei” posts (or at least my posts).
I will admit to having been pleasantly surprised on a number of occasions though; posts I thought for sure would be blocked were instead posted.
5 Left Brooklyn and never looked back // Oct 30, 2008 at 12:27 pm
I glance at at both sites but I much prefer the secular Jewish Week.
6 Frum Satire // Oct 30, 2008 at 12:28 pm
Mr Wolf all of these companies sell their lists- whether or not they use them is their business. For instance Saw You At Sinai told my company that they would charge $500 for an email blast to all of its 27,000 members.
7 tesyaa // Oct 30, 2008 at 12:28 pm
Seriously, who would actually choose to get their news from either of these sites? They’re all a big loshon hora fest. If I were a person interested in becoming frum, YWN would send me running as far in the opposite direction as possible.
8 Dave // Oct 30, 2008 at 12:37 pm
Tesyaa,
Forgot the Loshon Hora (*), the amount of casual racism in the comments on VIN and YWN is astonishing and profoundly repellent.
(*) To be fair, it is one of my hobbies. Or as my wife says, “If you don’t have anything nice to say, come sit by me”
9 Frum Satire // Oct 30, 2008 at 12:53 pm
Dave- you call it casual racism – seems more like blatant disregard for anyone who is anything but heimishe
10 Dave // Oct 30, 2008 at 12:57 pm
I see both. Disregard for the non-heimish, and some pretty egregious racism. Sort of the chocolate and peanut butter of the intolerance candy.
11 Frum Satire // Oct 30, 2008 at 1:23 pm
Agreed 100% dave
12 chnyock // Oct 30, 2008 at 1:55 pm
VIN is the best simply because of the reasons mentioned but mainly because it updated most often. you will almost never see yesterdays anywhere near the top of the page. matzav.com was pretty decent too when they started. lately a little shvach but they also post news that ywn wont.
13 Phil // Oct 30, 2008 at 2:34 pm
I don’t like reading news sites at all, they almost never have any good news to report. I will occasionally glance at TV news head lines once a week or so while flipping channels. My home page is set to the weather channel at least that’s news that I really need to know.
These Jewish “news” sites are basically an outlet for bored people to rant with each other. I like to keep my rants confined to Frum Satire, at least most readers here are level headed / open minded and realize that this is a comedy based site. If people just chilled out a bit more often, everyone would enjoy life more.
14 Frum Satire // Oct 30, 2008 at 2:39 pm
Wow Phil I feel so honored- am I your source for Jewish news
15 Phil // Oct 30, 2008 at 3:07 pm
More like my source of frum comedy, but close enough. My daily dose of Jewish news is overhearing conversations at Shacharis, got weather, business, stock market, kashrus alerts, community politics etc. The guys at the table next to mine routinely solve world crisis’s on a daily basis.
16 abandoning eden // Oct 30, 2008 at 3:16 pm
i read so many blatantly false statements on that coffee room place that I almost want to sign up to argue…almost.
There’s some guy there insisting that my alma mater (CUNY-Hunter) is a community college because CUNY is a member of the association of community colleges…sigh.
17 tesyaa // Oct 30, 2008 at 4:01 pm
abandoning, don’t sign up for the coffee room–if you start refuting idiots you’ll never be able to stop. You’ll have to quit your job and any other activities and stop eating and sleeping to refute the populace over there.
18 Another Hater // Oct 30, 2008 at 7:52 pm
I always have this urge to start arguing with those ridiculous posts in the coffee room, but I try to resist it.. anyway he probably wouldn’t approve any semi-intelligent posts that actually speak the truth.
FrumSatire, unfortunately stay at home lakewood moms are not the only ones visiting his site.. the site is held in such high regard in the charedi circles.. What’s laughable is that anyone who actually knows Mr Yweditor is aware of the fact that he is the last person in the world that these people want be getting their news from!
19 ML // Oct 31, 2008 at 8:04 am
I read off from both sites and I wont be surprised if YW news and anything going through it, is controlled by the rabonim. Personally I like VIN better for the reason given in this post.
20 tesyaa // Oct 31, 2008 at 8:24 am
OK, so who is the YWN editor? Someone please out this guy, I am dying to know!
21 bd // Oct 31, 2008 at 9:38 am
Of course it’s controlled by the rabonim.. they found their little pawn who will do anything for them.
tesyaa – His name is yehuda ekstein – not much of a secret
22 chossid // Oct 31, 2008 at 11:37 am
bd,
Why? Why did you do that? How on earth can you justify this?
23 Freida // Oct 31, 2008 at 2:18 pm
24 Freida // Oct 31, 2008 at 2:23 pm
[IMG]http://i37.tinypic.com/ofrby0.jpg[/IMG]
25 miriam // Nov 1, 2008 at 4:48 pm
Thanks for the tip!
I usually go to Arutz Sheva Does that count?
26 Frum Satire // Nov 1, 2008 at 7:06 pm
Of course it counts but they never write the juicy stuff
27 bd // Nov 2, 2008 at 2:31 am
Why did I do what
28 Peace Not War // Nov 2, 2008 at 12:33 pm
I personally dislike both sites, in fact i think i hate them. I used to hate the fact that VIN news kept making claims like “In a VIN EXCLUSIVE Interview with the FBI” etc, when a little bit of googling will prove that it was exclusive to NY Post and such. They would always plagiarize and steal articles from reputable news sources and claim it as their own.
YWN is just plain disgusting, I can’t understand how a frum Jew can manipulate large crowds into believing the shit he spews. I would SEO VIN news for free, just so YWN never shows up first on google, They don’t deserve it. In fact, I bet i Can make a Jewish news blog that will be visited far more often then those two, and I can save the lives of 1000’s of people that get sucked into the abyss of YWN. They remind of “Pravda” News during the USSR communist times. I betcha if YWN one day decided to write that Chanukah is now 9 Nights, you would see 1000’s of people scrambling to find the new 9 branch menorahs. Why do people trust YWN so much? Why do people follow them? It disgusts me.
VIN Data | YWN Data
29 Frum Satire // Nov 2, 2008 at 1:50 pm
Woa peace not war- fancy comment- I don’t think anyone ever embeded an alexa graph into a comment before.
I like how both sites follow each others traffic patterns
30 Peace Not War // Nov 2, 2008 at 3:41 pm
Well, i know how to cheat your site! Muah ha ha ha.
The graphs are pretty similar because of shabboss.
31 Anonymous // Nov 2, 2008 at 7:33 pm
If YWN is actually reflective of the frum community I want no part of it. YWN has so much hatred towards the non-black and white factions of the frum community you would think the modern orthodox community had some sort of disease or something.
32 Joel Katz - Religion and State in Israel // Nov 3, 2008 at 3:35 am
This is a BIASED Hat Tip.
Check out Religion and State in Israel
http://religionandstateinisrael.blogspot.com/
As far as I know, its the only (English) review of media coverage on (only) issues of religion and state in Israel.
And, most important – Religion and State in Israel is not affiliated with any organization or movement.
33 Charlie Hall // Nov 3, 2008 at 11:00 am
The racism expressed by commentators on both sites makes me ashamed of my people. If I did not know from personal experience that my fellow Orthodox Jews as a whole are not like that, I would conclude based on those sites that we aren’t any better than Al Sharpton and his supporters.
34 tesyaa // Nov 3, 2008 at 11:31 am
Charlie, you are welcome to spend your time however you like, but I think it’s beneath your dignity to post on the YWN site. You’re not convincing anyone, and your little voice of reason is lost in the huge void therof. I’ve commented there in the past, under my own name like you do, but I long since stopped. I will admit that I had to close all my accounts there in order to stop my yetzer hora from getting involved.
35 Frum Satire // Nov 3, 2008 at 12:21 pm
Classic yetzer harah disguising himself as something harmless. What could be harmless about a seemingly “frum” site and then wham the loshon harah is flying around and everyone is hating on each other.
This is not to say that my site is better. But mine is all in good fun.
36 Honestlyfrum // Nov 3, 2008 at 12:46 pm
The comments on both sites are, more often than not, shamelessly biased. Some of the comments I have been reading about the election are down right racist. VIN is more objective in his reporting, but Yeshiva world takes the cake for censorship. The guy who runs it, Eckstein, is a spineless little twerp, who is probably over more issurim in lashon harah than any other blog. I took him off my blog roll. It is frankly embarrassing to read some of the comments, and the YU/MO bashing is just stupid already. On VIN, there is at least the opportunity for an intelligent discussion without having your opinion shut down b/c it does not agree with that of the editor. I still have not seen a heter on his site from his gedolim allowing him to host a blog on the traif internet, the guy is a hypocrite. And to Wolf, I get YW junk mail periodically.
37 zach // Nov 3, 2008 at 12:48 pm
To be fair, I don’t recall ever receiving a single spam email from a YWN advertiser.
I have, and told YWN to remove my name from their database. Apparently they didn’t, because I could still comment with the “removed” ID.
38 Mavenmarvin // Nov 3, 2008 at 2:02 pm
I posted this on the new thread but maybe it belongs here (?)
Between Yeshiva World’s intimidation, right wing agenda, and lack of news, as opposed to VIN – Chasidish slanted and Chasidish style spelling and grammar mistakes, I choose VIN.
Most of the time, I go to :
http://www.hamercaz.com
No bias, constant updates, respectful and professional
On the plus side – Hamercaz has the most news, the most professional look, and a constantly updated Multimedia section.
On the negative side – They have no comments and every time some Rebbe blows his nose they feel the need to make the video available.
39 brooklynnorth // Nov 3, 2008 at 3:09 pm
First you can find an article on YWN with no names and select sentences removed ( i.e. the male/female lit.professor at Y.U.), then hop over to VIN to see the same article with just the initials of the offender,molestor,deviant, or crook, and then look at AP or your local paper for the full story, with names and lurid details.
But only if you are a stay at home mom with loads of time. Not like all you men who have posted while you are super busy at work…;-)
40 Daniel // Nov 6, 2008 at 1:40 pm
Um, the Chanukiya is, in fact, a 9 branched menorah.
41 Anonymous // Nov 13, 2008 at 7:26 pm
i get my news from this site http://www.frumreport.com/
42 Anonymous // Dec 29, 2008 at 5:48 pm
Thanks for the chumra. I’ll be lighting tonight, but only 8, not 9. S’faika d’yoma doesn’t add a night, it just pushes e/t off by one.
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44 AWoman_outside_Bklyn // Dec 31, 2008 at 4:15 pm
#41, the frumreport.com site is so cute – looks just like drudgereport. And both it and YWN are I believe created by Duvys.com.
45 chareidi // Feb 13, 2009 at 11:08 am
frumreport is run by yeshivaworld. they are both hosted on the same ip. do a reverse ip lookup. you can google it to find out how to do one.
its a place where a sucker like eckstein who wishes he could spew forth all his garbage but is restricted for business reasons on yeshivaworld – now has an outlet to do so.
what a hypocrite.
46 good jew // Feb 13, 2009 at 11:10 am
did anyone ever see the site matzav.com – i just found it on youtube when i was watching an interview with lipa shmeltcer that they conducted. it looks very professional, high standards with no loshon hara, and very informative quality written articles.
btw they have the best and funniest videos. no clue when they started. i never heard of them before. anyone know who they are?
47 Anonymous // Mar 27, 2009 at 10:52 am
I can’t believe you would even let the first comment in you should be ashamed of yourself or maybe you speak that way also so you don’t see anything wrong.NEBACH!
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49 anonymous // Mar 31, 2009 at 9:03 pm
Anonymous, March 27 – lol – good thing you didn’t see the REAL first comment which was deleted months ago..
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