Literary Lesson: Authors, Poets Write the News

For one day, Haaretz editor-in-chief Dov Alfon sent most of his staff reporters
home and sent 31 of Israel’s finest authors and poets to cover the day’s
news.

The idea behind the paper’s June 10 special edition was to honor Israel’s
annual Hebrew Book Week, which opened the same day, by inviting Israeli authors
to get away from their forthcoming novels and letting them bear witness to the
events of the day.

This wasn’t a Sabbath supplement, a chance to balance the news with extra
color. This was a near complete replacement of the newspaper itself. Save for
the sports section and a few other articles, all the reporters’ notebooks were
handed over to poets and novelists, both bestselling and up-and-coming. Their
articles filled the pages, from the leading headline to the weather report. — Daniel Estrin, Forward

So, did the reporters go home and write poems? If so, this would resemble that episode of The Brady Bunch where Mrs. Brady went to the office, and Mr. Brady stayed home with the kids.

Thanks for the tip, Mike.

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