The Forward: Our Vision, Mission, and Values
Graphic by Angelie Zaslavsky
At the Forward, our Vision and Mission articulate the change we want to see in the world, and how we can help make it happen. Our Values describe the essential pieces of who we are and how we operate. After 120+ years spent serving the Jewish community, and with our new global reach and purely digital focus, there are a lot of stakeholders who rightfully feel a deep connection to the Forward and what we do. The articulation of our Vision, Mission, and Values is informed by that history and those relationships.
Vision
The Forward envisions a vibrant, connected global Jewish community informed by our shared history and committed to justice, compassion, truth and our collective responsibility to bridge our divides.
Mission
The Forward is the most significant Jewish voice in American journalism. Our outstanding reporting on cultural, social and political issues inspires readers of all ages and animates conversation across generations and different segments of our community. Our English and Yiddish platforms build on a century-old legacy maintained in our archives and lead to a deeper understanding of what it means to be Jewish in the 21st century.
Values
Integrity: We provide fair and full reporting in the highest tradition of public-service journalism, a cornerstone of resilient democracy. Through our work, we help build the foundation for a just, open, pluralistic society.
Courage: We pursue the truth wherever it takes us, delivering the news, investigations, narrative storytelling, and commentary that our community needs and deserves.
Independence: As a nonprofit supported by our readers and a broad array of philanthropies, we are not beholden to any individual, institution or ideology. We are always relevant but also irreverent, challenging conventional wisdom in respectful ways as we showcase the full spectrum of voices shaping our experience.
Accountability: Through rigorous, even-handed journalism, we hold leaders accountable to the people and communities they serve. At the same time, we believe we must continuously earn the public’s trust by delivering on promises, operating with empathy, and upholding our core values.
Yiddishkeit: We revel in the richness of our culture and history, providing a smorgasbord of art and politics, argument and understanding. We also share our rich Yiddish heritage, promoting it as a living treasure for future generations. Sharing stories, in English and Yiddish, of the diverse ways Jews of all backgrounds — and our neighbors — live and think and celebrate and mourn enhances our human connections. Ours is a particularly Jewish-American way of looking at the world: contrarian, cosmopolitan, fiercely intelligent and wickedly funny.
This is a moment of great uncertainty. Here’s what you can do about it.
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This is a moment of great uncertainty for the news media, for the Jewish people, and for our sacred democracy. It is a time of confusion and declining trust in public institutions. An era in which we need humans to report facts, conduct investigations that hold power to account, tell stories that matter and share honest discourse on all that divides us.
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