OK, so some of you may have clicked on the Jewish Chronicle website in the distant past. A relatively early participant in the digital age, www.thejc.com won some awards before the shutters went down on anyone who wasn't a paying subscriber. That - in the age of Google, blogs and iPhone RSS feeds - just isn't acceptable: if you're not linked to, you just don't exist. So when I arrived at the JC two-and-a-half years ago, having previously been editor of The Guardian's internet sites, I knew the newspaper had to rethink. Yes, a free-to-access website would be a risk to our print business model - as with every other paper that has confronted the digital challenge. But in a world where media consumption is changing radically, we simply couldn't afford to rely only on what had previously worked.
The first battle was to lift the subscription wall. It took time, and for commercial reasons a few sections, such as the archive and Social & Personal pages, remained accessible only to paying subscribers. But then we thought about what the website could do. Obviously there would be things that would add a new dimension to what the newspaper is doing - such as video reports; staff blogs; and all the detailed community news that fights for space in our limited pages. Yet there was also an opportunity to create something that, despite looking pretty hard, we never managed to find: a credible British-Jewish meeting point online, that not only told people what was going on, but invited their participation and gave them the tools to create their own content while networking with other users.
Our new baby was finally born last week - weighing in at a few thousand web pages and video feeds, and bringing much naches to the 270,000 or so close relatives. TheJC.com is still in Beta, which means we're still correcting and improving as we go, but what is very exciting for us is to see organisations and individuals starting to build their own blogs and home pages, adding picture galleries or simchah pages, and (always an editor's favourite), arguing back at us in their comments alongside our own articles. From Jewish Care to the boxer Roman Greenberg - and notably our friends at the JCC - are starting to build a presence. We're calling the site "The Jewish Community Online" rather than the Jewish Chronicle website - as the intention is to make us, the mere journalists, just a tiny part of an online community dominated by you, the wider Jewish world - however you define your Jewishness.
Now, you may have noticed that our Jewish world contains many opinions, generally strongly expressed. And as you might guess, a prominent publicly accessible "Jewish" website may attract less-than-friendly outsiders who wish to spoil the party. Opinions - they're great, as long as they're not offensive or unlawful, as our terms and conditions dutifully set out. But how on earth are we going to manage this project - which is, by any standards, a pretty bold experiment in community media?
Stay with this blog, and I'll give you some answers as the project develops.
And don't just follow the project - join in. We'd love to have you register as a user of TheJC.com. It should only take a minute, and of course is free. And then give me your thoughts (by email here) on how we can improve the site. We have the next 167 years to think of, after all.
